25 of the Scariest Stephen King Moments

Stephen King’s creative output spans galaxies of grotesquerie and freaky terror, with monsters that run the gamut from otherworldly to terrifyingly human to reminds-you-way-too-much-of-someone-you-know. We set out to highlight some lesser-known but still stellar scenes, choosing just one moment to represent each project. It is entirely possible, though, that a couple of King’s greatest hits landed at the top of the roster (“Here’s Johnny!”).

Entertainment Weekly’s The Ultimate Guide to Stephen King, inside the mind of horror’s most prolific author, is on sale now. Buy it here.

With all the wild nightmares that populate King’s work, one shouldn’t forget his ability to capture brutal real-world fear. An interlude between housewife Dolores (Kathy Bates) and good ol’ boy husband Joe (David Strathairn) took a sudden — and assaultive — U-turn when he slams her in the back with a piece of firewood.

Freshly undead youngster Ralphie Glick (Ronnie Scribner) floats scratching at his brother’s window, his silent smile a request for entry. Danny (Brad Savage) obligingly opens the window. We don’t see much of what happens next.

Of all the phantasmagorical creations populating the Dark Tower saga, none is more memorably deranged than Blaine the Mono, a monorail gone rampant in apocalyptic old age. Blaine is a tauntingly strange figure, a suicide machine that just wants to have fun.

A classic moment from the Creepshow anthologies: A King-scripted short finds germophobic Upson Pratt (E.G. Marshall) living every New Yorker’s nightmare when his apartment is invaded by cockroaches. And then Pratt’s body is invaded by cockroaches— and inevitably there’s nothing left but roaches, roaches, roaches.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre director Tobe Hooper overcooked a short story about a killer laundry press, but there’s a terrifying power to the film’s first death scene, when a worker gets swallowed whole.

Frequent King collaborator Mick Garris helmed this low-key horror thriller, which features an absolutely memorable moment. “People really should learn to keep their hands to themselves,” energy vampire Charles (Brian Krause) tells meddling Mr. Fallows (Glenn Shadix) after he pulls off Fallows’s hand.

King remains apologetic about his sole directorial effort, but it does include one brilliant sequence: A Little League baseball coach tries to get soda from a faulty vending machine — only to be killed when the homicidal machine launches cans at high speed straight at him.

Poor tormented Sue Snell (Amy Irving) returns for another round of high school terror in the by-default best of the many shoddy sequels to King adaptations. Grown-up Sue’s a guidance counselor trying to guide Carrie’s half sister away from mass homicide. For her troubles Sue winds up skewered by a fire poker.

The never-ending franchise kicked off with an intense sequence the author only hinted at in his original short story: the fine citizens of Gatlin getting massacred by their own smirking children.

King’s talked openly about his past struggles with addiction, which gives this short story a searing subtext. A longtime smoker contracts a company to help him kick the habit. Soon he discovers the company’s brutal policy: Smoke a cigarette, and his family can pay with their lives.

In King’s novel, madman murderer-rapist Frank Dodd slashes his throat when he suspects his jig is up. In director David Cronenberg’s brilliant adaptation, the demented deputy sheriff goes one step further, chomping on the blades of a pair of scissors.

Adapted from one of King’s later lengthy masterworks, the small-town-snowglobe series never quite lived up to its initial promise. But what promise! When a mysterious dome descends over Chester’s Mill, a poor bovine citizen is caught inside and outside. It’s maybe the single grossest visual CBS ever allowed on television.

A professional hit man (David Johansen) gets an unusual assignment: kill a black cat. It’s a Monty Python-worthy premise gone Lovecraftian, and the scary part isn’t when the homicidal feline actually kills the hit man, crawling inside his mouth and devouring his insides. The 15 scary part’s when the cat crawls back out.

When horror legend John Carpenter turned King’s novel into a cult-classic film, he gave new meaning to the phrase “car chase.” The possessed vintage Plymouth Fury hunts down bullying Moochie (Malcolm Danare), chasing him into an alleyway. The car leaves the alley; Moochie doesn’t.

A surgeon is stranded on a Pacific island. He keeps a diary. It’s all very Robinson Crusoe, except he has little food, and rescue won’t come. When he injures his ankle, he has to amputate— and maybe now has food.

By the last page Louis Creed has put his dead wife in the mystical Indian resurrection mound. In his empty house he awaits her return. The novel leaves Louis hanging on a freaky final sentence: “ ‘Darling,’ it said.”

 One of the anthology film’s most memorable moments is complete with an abominable monster living inside a wooden crate. When Professor Northrup (Hal Holbrook) realizes the beast can’t stop killing, he introduces it to his wife. Divorce, King style.

The standout entry from the King anthology film is “The Raft,” which finds a group of coeds terrorized by, of all things, a man-eating oil slick. In the middle of a lake, the last survivors think they’re safe — and then the oil slips through the cracks.

Locked in a haunted hotel room, Mike Enslin (John Cusack) tries to get the attention of a man across the street. When Mike holds a lamp to his face, so does the man—and that’s when Mike realizes the man is him. Mike turns—just in time to avoid the SLASH.

The jump scare as high art. At the end of Brian De Palma’s teen-terror classic, lone survivor Sue (Irving, again) has a somber dream about laying flowers at the grave of Carrie White (Sissy Spacek). It’s a moment of quiet serenity. And then the bloody hand grasps out of the ground.

Mom Donna (Dee Wallace) leans over her son (Danny Pintauro) to unbuckle his safety belt. The camera moves up behind her, as if ready to attack—and then slobbering, rabid Cujo the Dog almost jumps through little Tad’s window.

What’s in the mist? Nothing: That’s what bag boy Norm (Chris Owen) thinks when he volunteers to walk outside and restart the super- market’s generator. But when the loading door opens, he’s grabbed by constricting tentacles, pulled screaming into the ether. Like much of King’s work, the greatest scare is what you don’t see. What the hell are those tentacles even attached to?

A little boy named Georgie Denbrough loses his paper boat in a storm drain. Inside the sewer lingers Pennywise, a clown with tufts of blood-red hair. He offers the boy balloons. “They float . . . they float.” Georgie reaches his hand into the sewer and quickly loses it. Our nation’s Clown Terror began here.

Why would Sheriff Merrill (Joanna Cassidy) collect scary dolls? Of course they attack her when she tries to call for help. They. Are. Scary Dolls. Also, they’re controlled by aliens, or it’s a hallucination, or something. The point is: SCARY DOLLS. DON’T BUY THEM.

No one ever watched Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show the same way again. The freaky-hilarious announcement Daddy Torrance delivers through the freshly axed-in door is somehow vintage King: pure pop-referential nuclear- family mania. What sells it is Jack Nicholson’s murderous smile. He’s broken all-the-way bad, and he’s never been happier.

Entertainment Weekly’s The Ultimate Guide to Stephen King, inside the mind of horror’s most prolific author, is on sale now. Buy it here.