It’s finally Holly week! Approximately a year-and-a-half after it was first announced, the latest novel from Stephen King is now available for Constant Readers everywhere to devour. But that’s far from all that’s going on with the author in the last few days. King has been doing the press rounds promoting the new book, and he has been telling some fun stories and sharing interesting opinions – plus, this fall is filling up with exciting 4K UHD releases for those of you aiming to build the Ultimate Stephen King collection.
This week’s new edition of The King Beat is about all of that and more so let’s dig in – starting with an adorable story that King recently shared about his wife, Tabitha King, and his extremely cheap wedding band.
Stephen King Makes Good Morning America’s Audience Go ‘Awww’ With A Sweet Story About Tabitha King
Stephen King is best known for his contributions to the horror genre, but any fan will tell you that his work is about so much more than monsters and mayhem. His paramount interest has always been about story and characters more than scares, and while his sensibilities regularly take his stories and characters to dark places, his bibliography also has tales of hope and love. The author demonstrated that depth this week as a guest on Good Morning America.
Stephen and Tabitha King have been married now for more than half-a-century, and the former has never been shy about sharing his appreciation for her contributions to both his life and his work. During an interview with Michael Strahan this past Tuesday, Stephen spoke about his time with Tabitha, reflecting on their relationship in the early 1970s and how Carrie, his first published novel, changed everything. Said the author,
We were living in an apartment with two kids, and I was selling stories to some of the men's magazines, and we were just barely making out. I was teaching school, and in the summer time, in order to make ends meet, I was working in a laundry. And Carrie sold for like $400,000 to paperback, and I was so excited. It was Sunday when I got this news, and the only thing open was a drug store. So I went out and bought my wife a hair dryer. It’s all I could think of!
Carrie, as fans of the book know, wouldn’t actually exist without Tabitha King. After starting an early version of the story, her husband made the impulsive decision to abandon it and trash it, but she rescued it and told him that he should stick with it:
I thought it was too long to be short, and too short to be long, and I just kind of threw it away. It went into the wastebasket. She fished it out and read the pages and said, ‘You really ought to go on with this.’ And I said, ‘It’s about girls and there’s a locker room, and there’s all this stuff about young ladies.’ And she said, ‘I will help you.’ And she did!
It was years before Carrie, however, that Stephen King asked his wife to marry him, and because of their dire financial situation, they couldn’t afford expensive jewelry as an expression of their love. They ended up buying extremely cheap wedding bands, and it’s the one that King wears on his finger to this day. He said on GMA,
This one right here – $7.50. I went back on the bus with my wife. The car was broken down and I went, ‘Gee, I hope these rings don’t turn our fingers green.’ And she said, ‘I hope we’re married long enough to find out.’
Doesn’t that just melt your heart?
Stephen King previously wrote about his engagement to his wife in an essay titled “The Ring” that was published in a 2014 issue of Tin House Magazine (you can pick up a copy from Amazon and read it for yourself). He shares in the piece that Tabitha’s ring ended up getting lost to the bowels of the kitchen sink when she was washing dishes one night – but he cherishes the one remaining wedding band as a source of perspective: “It’s a way of remembering that what a thing costs isn’t necessarily what a thing is worth.”
Silver Bullet And Tales From The Darkside: The Movie Are The Latest Stephen King Movies To Get A 4K Release, And Preorders Are Now Live
If you’re like me and both a Constant Reader and a fan of physical media, fall 2023 has oh so many goodies coming your way. Following its digital release last week, The Boogeyman will be heading to Blu-ray on October 10, and it was announced earlier this summer that both Cujo and The Mist will be getting 4K UHD releases in the next few months. And as though all of that weren’t enough, the last couple of days have brought the news that both Silver Bullet and Tales From The Darkside: The Movie will be getting 4K upgrades from Scream Factory.
The boutique label produced special Blu-ray Collector’s Editions of both films in the last few years – featuring both old and original special features – though the company has not yet announced what will be a part of the packages beyond the movies in HD and UHD. Pre-orders are currently open on the official website, and if you order in time, you will not only get a guaranteed slipcovers, but also 18"x24" posters featuring original theatrical artwork.
Silver Bullet is an adaptation of the novella Cycle Of The Werewolf that Stephen King wrote the screenplay for himself, and it’s an underrated part of the canon with terrific pure-‘80s energy. And while Tales From The Darkside: The Movie is an anthology film that only features one segment based on a King story (“The Cat From Hell”), it’s the best of the bunch and delivers an amazing ending. I’m excited to see both get such special releases and to watch my copies when they are shipped in late November (the Silver Bullet 4K UHD is coming November 21, and the Tales From The Darkside: The Movie 4K UHD will be out one week later on November 28).
Getting these films on 4K UHD is terrific news by itself, but it also leads me to wonder what might be possible in the future. Scream Factory has a considerable history when it comes to special home video releases for Stephen King adaptations, and that history raises curiosity about other titles. They’ve already upgraded their previous editions of Carrie and Creepshow – perhaps it won’t be long until they announced 4K versions of The Dead Zone, Firestarter and Sleepwalkers? If any of those sets are announced, you can be sure that the news will be featured in future editions of The King Beat.
Cannibals Are Currently Big In Pop Culture, And Stephen King Has Thoughts About Why
Yellowjackets. Bones And All. Fresh. Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. If you haven’t been paying attention, cannibalism has been popping up quite a bit in pop culture as of late – and while it’s not as all-consuming as the Twilight-initiated vampire fad from a decade ago, it’s not ignorable at this point. Without getting too deep into spoilers, Stephen King’s Holly is the latest title to fit into the trend, and he expressed his thoughts about it in an interview with Rolling Stone that was published this week.
So what is it about cannibalism that is really clicking in storytelling right now? According to King, it’s as simple as the idea of consuming human flesh being something that just remains extremely out of bounds for modern society. Crediting his Creepshow collaborator for seeing it as ripe material decades ago, the author explained,
I think that it’s one of the final taboos. One of the interesting things about all of those creatures that have been spawned by George Romero, the zombies, the flesh-eating zombies, we say to ourselves, ‘Oh, my God, that is the worst thing that I can possibly think of.’
Cannibalism is an act viewed as abhorrent by traditional sensibilities – and it’s interesting that it’s often associated with desperation (i.e. the notorious case of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571) or savagery. I suppose it could be said that our world is giving off those vibes right now, and creatives are responding to it.
Recommendation Of The Week: “Survivor Type”
I presume that Constant Readers everywhere are now diving into Holly, but because I’m trying to limit this section of the column to shorts and novellas (a.k.a. stories you can read in a week or less), my recommendation is “Survivor Type” – a King tale featuring what could be called an atypical version of cannibalism.
First published in the 1982 multi-author collection Terrors and later included as part of King’s 1985 omnibus Skeleton Crew, “Survivor Type” tells the story of Richard Pine – a former surgeon who gets stranded alone on a small island after being involved in a shipwreck. He is initially able to keep himself alive by eating seagulls and kelp, but he is slowly driven insane by hunger and isolation. When he suffers a fractured ankle and sees his mobility limited, hard choices must be made and over time, he figures out just how far he will go to stay alive.
It’s a quick and nightmarish read, and once you’ve finished it, you can check out the adaptation featured as part of Shudder’s A Creepshow Animated Special from 2020 (featuring the voice of Stand By Me’s Kiefer Sutherland).
That does it for this week’s The King Beat, but head back here to CinemaBlend next Thursday for more, and check out my Adapting Stephen King series to learn about the full history of King’s stories being reworked for film and television.
