There’s a reason that everyone is afraid of clowns, and it’s basically this: it’s Stephen King’s fault. Ok, maybe 90% his fault, because there also was a serial killer who dressed up as a clown in the 60’s, but you can Google that on your own time.
There’s just something utterly terrifying about Tim Curry’s portrayal of Pennywise the Dancing Clown that is just so insane, but the scary part of it is, is that he doesn’t even reach the terror that the written version does. That book is scary.
So, with the remake coming out this fall, I got to thinking about who else in Stephen King’s literary world creeps me out, and frankly, I’m more scared about these characters than I am about the clown.
He at least understands the power of love.
Annie Wilkes
Misery
If you every want to know what being famous gets you in terms of fans, it’s this. This is the dark side of being a famous author/actor/musician. In Misery, Kathy Bates plays Annie, a woman who happens to come across the scene of an accident where her favourite author Paul Sheldon, has been run off the road by a blizzard.
While she starts off nursing him back to health, she eventually becomes a psychotic fairy godmother, who’ll do anything to ensure that Paul doesn’t leave including that infamous sledgehammer hobbling scene.
Yeah, while King’s other monsters might be supernatural in nature, Wilkes is entirely too real and too plausible in today’s insane fan culture.
The Overlook Hotel
The Shining
Is there anything creepier than an old hotel in the middle of nowhere during a blizzard, especially when it’s the Overlook Hotel? There’s just something dark and festering about the place that causes hallucinations, and prevents the ghosts trapped there from resting. Instead they relive their violent deaths, and cause the Torrence family a lot of grief.
But it’s not just the ghosts of the hotel that are scary, but the structure itself. The decor is jarring and spooky, and the geography of the building doesn’t make any sense, making everything more confusing.
In fact, maybe it’s just all hotels in the Stephen King universe. Look at the short story 1408. That hotel’s not a picnic either.
Andre Linoge
The Storm of the Century
This one might not be as well known as his other works, but this miniseries scared the crap out of me when I was a kid. The whole story’s about a strange man who comes to a Maine town during the worst storm they’ve ever seen, and demands an heir.
It’s not so much the wizardly magic he wields, but the words, dark secrets and theatrics he uses to turn the town against one another and unravel everyone. It’s a great mini series if you can get your hands on it.
Margaret White
Carrie
You’d think that maybe Carrie might be the villain of her story, but she’s really not. Sure she killed everyone at the high school prom, covered in pigs blood, but she was bullied into it. While the classmates that were behind her mistreatment get what they deserve and are truly nasty people, they’re not the worst.
Carrie’s mother is. Margaret White, from the day that Carrie was born, was the most evil abuser imaginable. She bullied, beat and made her daughter feel like she wasn’t a human being, especially because she believed that Carrie’s telekinetic powers were from the Devil.
In the end, Margaret gets what she deserves.
Blaine the Mono
The Dark Tower Series
If there’s anyone who can turn a train into the stuff of nightmares, it’s Stephen King. He takes an innocent choo-choo and turns it into an insane, riddle-spewing homicidal and suicidal vehicle in the Dark Tower series.
Throughout the series, he uses his mind to tell riddles and threaten the lives of Roland and his crew. Whether or not he’ll be seen in the upcoming film remains up in the air, but the fact that this crazy monorail train is out there in the Stephen King universe, is chilling enough.
Leland Gaunt
Needful Things
There’s always something evil about Castle Rock, Maine – it’s something that runs through almost all of King’s books. Especially when it comes to the store called Needful Things. The proprietor there, Leland Gaunt, is a demon disguised as a shopkeeper, who offers the town’s residents the perfect items that they’re looking for, in return for a little mayhem and their souls.
The movie version of the character is played well by veteran actor Max Von Sydow, but it’s just not chilling enough. The way King wrote him in the novel, however, requires you to read with all the lights on.
Kurt Barlow
Salem’s Lot
When it came time to write his second novel, King went with the tried and true villain of the vampire. Setting his tale of predator blood suckers in the small town of Jerusalem’s Lot (Salem’s Lot for sure), it preys on our feelings of safety in communities, as well as our fear of the dark.
The head vampire is Kurt, who by day is an Austrian immigrant, but by night shows his true form as a Nosferatu and tries to turn the entire town into a vampire city. I still can’t get the image of the floating vampire kid at the window, begging to be let in. Chills.
Greg Stillson
The Dead Zone
I never considered this guy a terrifying villain until the most recent election. Now he’s too realistic for my liking. While King doesn’t dabble too much into politics, in this story, Johnny Smith is a guy who gets psychic powers after being in a coma for 5 years. All he has to do is touch you, and he gets the gist of your ambitions.
When he touches the hand of a congressman, he sees a future nuclear holocaust so he tries to take him down, but ultimately fails. Or does he? Either way, a monster is vanquished.
Big Jim Rennie
Under the Dome
In the same vein as a power hungry politician, is this guy. Really the owner of a Used Car dealership and a town alderman, he really fucks things up in the town when the dome comes down. His characterization on the TV show wasn’t too bad, but in the monster of a novel, he’s a complete asshole.
Again, he’s more scary than a demon clown, because people like this are out there, right now, making bad decisions. That’s terrifying.
Henry Bowers
IT
You don’t need to be a supernatural entity to be one of the scariest people in the Stephen King universe – Carrie’s mom and Greg Stillson prove that. In this case, there’s someone equally if not far worse than Pennywise the Dancing Clown in IT, and it’s in the form of a bully. Bowers is a racist, sexist and sadistic kid who probably does far more damage to the Losers Club than the clown. In the course of the novel and film, he ends up carving his name into someone’s stomach, sexually harassing a 12 year old, breaking a kids arm, killing a dog and ultimately going insane.
It’s easy dismiss an evil clown, but this guy lives in your neighbourhood.
Mrs. Massey
The Shining
While I’ve already touched on the hotel as a whole, there’s one character inside it that is worse than them all; Mrs. Lorraine Massey. She’s the sexy bathtub lady, that turns into a decaying, bloated corpse.
She’s the most recognized ghost from the Overlook hotel for a reason, hiding in room 217 (or 237 in the film). All she wants is pain and misery and she’s the one who entices Danny into the room and tries to choke him, then tries to seduce Jack.
The Crimson King
The Dark Tower Series
If there’s a devil in the Stephen King books, it’s this guy. He’s pretty much evil personified. The’s the big bad in the Dark Tower series, hoping to bring down the tower and destroy everything so he can rule the chaos. According to the book, he brings darkness and craziness everywhere he goes and is just about the worst thing in the universe. He’s always been around and it’s suggested that he’s just as old, if not older than the demon creature we understand to be Pennywise.
George Stark
The Dark Half
This guy makes the list, simply because of the fact that George Stark is Stephen King. This was the first book that he released after it was discovered that he was writing other novels under the pseudonym, Richard Bachman. So in the story of the Dark Half, we have the author Thad Beaumont, who’s been writing a series of books under his own name, and some gritty, violent novels under the name George Stark. When that becomes public knowledge, he stages a public funeral for the ‘fictional’ Stark. Except Stark comes alive.
He begins to murder everyone involved in his ‘death’ and eventually Thad discovers that he had a parasitic twin in the womb, whom he absorbed, and somehow has come back to life as Stark.
When you boil it down, the story is about your dark side taking over and ruining your life, and when that enemy is actually you, what could be scarier?
Cujo
Cujo
What makes this character so scary is that dogs are meant to be our best friends and loyal until the end, and when that’s turned on its head, we get scared. When Cujo gets bit by a rabid bat and the once-loving dog becomes your worst enemy, you get a little frightened.
Since most of the film is abut a mom and son trapped in a ’77 Ford Pinto, you can layer on some claustrophobia on top of the fear that one day your dog’s gonna try to take you out.
Gage Creed
Pet Sematary
To be honest, the worst part of this film isn’t the fact that there’s a cemetery that turns people into zombies, but the fact that there’s a brutal death of a child and what it drives a grieving father to do.
Seriously, I don’t think anything is creepier and more terrifying than a homicidal zombie baby; I hate those more than clowns. In true King fashion, however, Gage goes crazy and starts killing everyone.
I really hate this kid.
Randall Flagg
The Stand + Others
If the Crimson King is Stephen King’s devil, then Randall Flagg is is top lieutenant. He’s an evil being that shows up in 9 of King’s works, under different names, but is the primary antagonist in The Stand and in The Dark Tower series, going under the name Walter O’Dim. He’s pretty much the harbinger of death, destruction and chaos, but in the form of a congenial cowboy.
What makes him far worse than Pennywise, is that the clown is only in one book, while Randall Flagg shows up everywhere. When you least expect it, there’s a man in a jean jacket, with the initials R.F. just floating around the periphery, right before things turn to shit. It’s that persistence that’s pretty, damn creepy.
Still, clowns though…
H/T The Things
