Welcome to Castle Rock, Population: Your Nightmares
Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2018, 9:47 a.m.Northeast Library
Welcome to Castle Rock, Population: Your Nightmares
Books to Accompany the Stephen King Hulu Original Show
Original programming on streaming platforms have been all the rage for several years now, gaining even more prominence after Hulu’s adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s classic dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale became the first online streaming show to win the Emmy for Outstanding Series. There’s a lot of quality television being produced for online platforms, including another recent Hulu adaptation, Castle Rock. The new horror-mystery series, executive produced by J.J. Abrams, is based on the stories, settings, and characters of Stephen King. While not adapting any single King story directly, the show weaves together plot points, familiar faces, and eerie locations from a number of interconnected short stories and novels to form a new, frightening tale that plays out in King’s favorite creepy little hamlet. Check out the following works by the Master of Horror that feature the town and townsfolk of Castle Rock in order to spot all the Easter Eggs the show planted, and maybe get a hint at what’s to come. My educated guess? Nothing good.
Different Seasons
King's second short story collection is notable for containing some of his most well-known tales (three of which were immortalized on screen) and for being the first published work to showcase King's talent outside of the horror genre. The four novellas, strung together through a loose seasonal theme, are varied in style, tone and length, but they still share that unmistakable King quality that reminds you that you're in the hands of a master storyteller. Of particular note for the Hulu series would be the first story, “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption,” perhaps best known to us now by the film adaptation starring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman. When Andy Dufresne comes to Shawshank Prison and refuses to cow before violent inmates and corrupt guards alike, he sets in motion a chain of events that will alter the fate of everyone and everything around him, most of all his closest friend, Red. A deep and impressive character study that showcases King's unique and shrewd gift for deconstructing a single human being and bringing something universal to the surface, “Shawshank” introduces readers to the infamous prison that plays host to much of the action in the show’s first season.
Cujo
It happens innocently enough, but doesn't it always? A big, friendly dog chases a rabbit into a hidden underground cave - and stirs a sleeping evil crueler than death itself. A terrified four-year-old boy sees his bedroom closet door swing open untouched by human hands, and screams at the unholy red eyes gleaming in the darkness. The little Maine town of Castle Rock is about to be invaded by the most hideous menace ever to savage the flesh and devour the mind. One of King’s grimmest tales (that’s saying something, I know), the events of Cujo are referenced in the show as one of many horrible incidents that have plagued the town’s history and left a mark on the collective psyche of Castle Rock’s inhabitants.
Needful Things
Leland Gaunt opens a new shop in Castle Rock called Needful Things. Anyone who enters his store finds the object of his or her lifelong dreams and desires: a prized baseball card, a healing amulet. In addition to a token payment, Gaunt requests that each person perform a little "deed," usually a seemingly innocent prank played on someone else from town. These practical jokes cascade out of control and soon the entire town is doing battle with itself. Only Sheriff Alan Pangborn suspects that Gaunt is behind the population's increasingly violent behavior, and he’s determined to put an end to it. The character of Alan Pangborn is a King legend, so to speak, and has played major roles in this novel, The Dark Half, and the short story “The Sun Dog.” He is played by Scott Glenn in the new Hulu series, and is essential to the strange, overarching mystery surrounding his troubled town.
The Dead Zone
In Castle Rock, Maine Johnny Smith awakens from a five-year coma after a car accident and discovers that he can see people's futures and pasts when he touches them. Many consider his talent a gift; Johnny feels cursed. His fiancée married another man during his coma and people clamor for him to solve their problems. When Johnny has a disturbing vision after he shakes the hand of an ambitious and amoral politician, he must decide if he should take drastic action to change the future. While there’s no gore or outright horror in The Dead Zone, there’s plenty of paranormal terror and shrewd psychological insight. Throughout Johnny’s journey, we’re taken into the minds of both a demented serial killer and a dangerous, egomaniacal politician (you decide which is worse), and confronted with troubling truths about human nature. Frank Dodd, one of the novel’s main antagonists, and his terrible deeds, are nodded to several times in the Hulu adaptation.
IT
Derry, Maine is a small town as hauntingly familiar as your own hometown. Only in Derry, the haunting is real. It begins for the Losers on a day in June 1958, the day school let out for the summer. The day Henry Bowers carves the first letter of his name on Ben Hanscom's belly and chases him into the Barrens, the day Henry and his Neanderthal friends beat up on Bill Denbrough and Eddie Kaspbrak. It ends in August, with seven desperate children in search of a creature of unspeakable evil in the drains beneath Derry. In search of IT. And then it’s finished. Or so they think. One of King’s greatest and most ambitious works, IT has re-entered the pop culture hive mind in full force after last year’s terrifying new film adaptation. It’s a towering epic of horror that offers surprising musings on that strange time when we pass from the bright mysteries of childhood into maturity. Though not set in Castle Rock, IT introduces us to Derry, a neighboring town in Stephen King’s version of Maine, and equally as troubled. The events of IT are also nodded to in the show’s opening credits and Bill Skarsgard, who played Pennywise the Clown in the 2017 film, plays a creepy prisoner found in a cage deep underneath Shawshank Prison in the Hulu show; it is this discovery that set the strange events of the story in motion.
Different Seasons
King's second short story collection is notable for containing some of his most well-known tales (three of which were immortalized on screen) and for being the first published work to showcase King's talent outside of the horror genre. The four novellas, strung together through a loose seasonal theme, are varied in style, tone and length, but they still share that unmistakable King quality that reminds you that you're in the hands of a master storyteller. Of particular note for the Hulu series would be the first story, “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption,” perhaps best known to us now by the film adaptation starring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman. When Andy Dufresne comes to Shawshank Prison and refuses to cow before violent inmates and corrupt guards alike, he sets in motion a chain of events that will alter the fate of everyone and everything around him, most of all his closest friend, Red. A deep and impressive character study that showcases King's unique and shrewd gift for deconstructing a single human being and bringing something universal to the surface, “Shawshank” introduces readers to the infamous prison that plays host to much of the action in the show’s first season.
Cujo
It happens innocently enough, but doesn't it always? A big, friendly dog chases a rabbit into a hidden underground cave - and stirs a sleeping evil crueler than death itself. A terrified four-year-old boy sees his bedroom closet door swing open untouched by human hands, and screams at the unholy red eyes gleaming in the darkness. The little Maine town of Castle Rock is about to be invaded by the most hideous menace ever to savage the flesh and devour the mind. One of King’s grimmest tales (that’s saying something, I know), the events of Cujo are referenced in the show as one of many horrible incidents that have plagued the town’s history and left a mark on the collective psyche of Castle Rock’s inhabitants.
Needful Things
Leland Gaunt opens a new shop in Castle Rock called Needful Things. Anyone who enters his store finds the object of his or her lifelong dreams and desires: a prized baseball card, a healing amulet. In addition to a token payment, Gaunt requests that each person perform a little "deed," usually a seemingly innocent prank played on someone else from town. These practical jokes cascade out of control and soon the entire town is doing battle with itself. Only Sheriff Alan Pangborn suspects that Gaunt is behind the population's increasingly violent behavior, and he’s determined to put an end to it. The character of Alan Pangborn is a King legend, so to speak, and has played major roles in this novel, The Dark Half, and the short story “The Sun Dog.” He is played by Scott Glenn in the new Hulu series, and is essential to the strange, overarching mystery surrounding his troubled town.
The Dead Zone
In Castle Rock, Maine Johnny Smith awakens from a five-year coma after a car accident and discovers that he can see people's futures and pasts when he touches them. Many consider his talent a gift; Johnny feels cursed. His fiancée married another man during his coma and people clamor for him to solve their problems. When Johnny has a disturbing vision after he shakes the hand of an ambitious and amoral politician, he must decide if he should take drastic action to change the future. While there’s no gore or outright horror in The Dead Zone, there’s plenty of paranormal terror and shrewd psychological insight. Throughout Johnny’s journey, we’re taken into the minds of both a demented serial killer and a dangerous, egomaniacal politician (you decide which is worse), and confronted with troubling truths about human nature. Frank Dodd, one of the novel’s main antagonists, and his terrible deeds, are nodded to several times in the Hulu adaptation.
IT
Derry, Maine is a small town as hauntingly familiar as your own hometown. Only in Derry, the haunting is real. It begins for the Losers on a day in June 1958, the day school let out for the summer. The day Henry Bowers carves the first letter of his name on Ben Hanscom's belly and chases him into the Barrens, the day Henry and his Neanderthal friends beat up on Bill Denbrough and Eddie Kaspbrak. It ends in August, with seven desperate children in search of a creature of unspeakable evil in the drains beneath Derry. In search of IT. And then it’s finished. Or so they think. One of King’s greatest and most ambitious works, IT has re-entered the pop culture hive mind in full force after last year’s terrifying new film adaptation. It’s a towering epic of horror that offers surprising musings on that strange time when we pass from the bright mysteries of childhood into maturity. Though not set in Castle Rock, IT introduces us to Derry, a neighboring town in Stephen King’s version of Maine, and equally as troubled. The events of IT are also nodded to in the show’s opening credits and Bill Skarsgard, who played Pennywise the Clown in the 2017 film, plays a creepy prisoner found in a cage deep underneath Shawshank Prison in the Hulu show; it is this discovery that set the strange events of the story in motion.
