Why would a clown eat you alive? How can a hotel be evil? And what's so bad about
a "Space Cowboy?" Stephen King has the answers — keep watching for his scariest villains ever.
Pennywise the Clown may be the scariest of all of Stephen King's villains, and with good reason:
this ancient shape-shifter comes from beyond our universe and can take on the
form of whatever terrifies us most. A scared human is supposedly a more delectable one,
so it's only natural that a clown would be the favored appearance for
a hungry creature with its sights set on a town filled with children.
Beyond its shape-shifting ability, Pennywise maintains its fresh supply
of victims by psychically manipulating the citizens of Derry. Nobody really
seems to notice or care too much about the disappearances of countless children and
adults over the hundreds of years following Pennywise's arrival on Earth. It's not until
the Loser's Club bands together that the creature truly meets its match.
Pennywise is portrayed by Tim Curry in the 1990 TV miniseries and Bill Skarsgård in the
more recent adaptations of the novel. His reign of terror looks poised to continue,
too, with reports of a prequel series in the works for HBO Max.
"Here's Johnny!"
While Jack Torrance is the primary antagonist of The Shining, it's the Overlook Hotel that
provoked his gradual descent into madness. The site of countless murders and atrocities,
the hotel manipulates its guests and manifests horrors for its own gruesome means.
As famously depicted in Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film adaptation,
the Overlook takes advantage of Jack Torrance's alcoholism and abuse and
turns him into an axe-wielding avatar for its murderous desires. It also manifests the ghosts
of its former guests and overseers, such as the infamous Grady twins and the woman in room 237.
The Overlook Hotel returned in Mike Flanagan's 2019 adaptation of King's sequel Doctor Sleep,
in which an adult Danny Torrance returns to the
cursed lodgings in order to stop a group of psychic child-killers.
Interestingly, this is also the only Stephen King villain that you can meet in real life.
If you're feeling brave, you can book a weekend at the Stanley Hotel in Colorado,
which served as the inspiration for the Overlook and was even used as a filming
location for Mick Garris' 1997 Shining miniseries.
Few on-screen King villains are as iconic as the blood-sucking Kurt Barlow in Tobe Hooper's 1979
miniseries adaptation of Salem's Lot. Between his classic Nosferatu-style appearance and
the way in which his supernatural influence eats away the small town of Jerusalem's Lot,
Barlow is deservedly one of the most feared depictions of the vampire in cinematic history.
While Hooper's version of Barlow is far more outwardly monstrous than in the original novel,
it certainly worked in the film's favor. The shockingly yellow eyes,
the scarred and discolored skin, the long and misshapen fangs:
Barlow's haunting appearance is devoid of any humanity he may have once had. The handsome,
charming gentleman vampire stepped aside for this manifestation of parasitic evil
in the '79 miniseries, and the story is all the better for it.
Kathy Bates' obsessive super-fan from Misery may not be a demon or an alien,
but her outwardly wholesome appearance is all the more disturbing in contrast with
the torment she inflicts on author Paul Sheldon.
Annie Wilkes can't believe her luck when she discovers the man she's rescued from a
car wreck is her favorite author. Unfortunately for Sheldon, she has a serious bone to pick over
his decision to kill off the protagonist of his famous series of romance novels.
Trapped by his severe injuries and Wilkes' unstable threats of violence,
Sheldon is forced to write a more satisfying continuation of the Misery Chastain novels.
It's no surprise that Kathy Bates won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance as
Annie Wilkes in Rob Reiner's 1990 film adaptation. She expertly transitions from quirky to
terrifying on a dime, delivering one of the most memorable on-screen King villains of all time.
"Now don't be afraid. I love you."
Lizzie Caplan also delivered an interesting take
on a younger Wilkes in the second season of Hulu's now-canceled series Castle Rock.
Sadistic, unpredictable, and entirely convinced that her actions are rational — in a modern world
of stan culture and obsessive fandoms, Annie Wilkes seems scarier than ever.
The Night Flier is one of King's more obscure stories, and it's more on the goofy side than
it is outright bone-chilling. But Mark Pavia's 1997 film adaptation went all-in on the special
effects for its aviation-enthusiast vampire villain, resulting in one of the
most impressively gruesome and unsettling monsters depicted in a King adaptation.
Dwight Renfield is the pseudonym of a pilot who is rumored to be responsible for a rash
of bizarre killings at local airports and airfields. Miguel Ferrer's sleazy reporter
Richard Dees is assigned to the case, and although he's initially skeptical of the
story, it quickly becomes clear that there's plenty of meat on this urban legend's bones.
Although he does have a normal human form, Renfield's ultimate appearance is a truly
horrific beast with a flat snout, grotesquely wrinkled flesh, and enormous fangs on the top
and bottom of his jaws to feed on the blood of his victims. Basically: he's not a looker.
Apt Pupil seems to have fallen by the wayside since its release in 1998. In this movie, though,
Ian McKellen gives a superb performance as Kurt Dussander, an elderly German war criminal in
hiding whose true nature is awoken by a teenage neighbor. And the character is especially
disturbing in an age of heightened political extremism and impressionable, embittered youth.
Apt Pupil was one of several short stories from King's Different Seasons collection
to be adapted as a feature film. In this particular story, Dussander is revealed to
have served in Hitler's SS during World War II, taking part in the Holocaust before fleeing for
South America and later the United States. Taking the false identity of Arthur Denker,
Dussander has managed to avoid detection until his past is discovered by a local teenager, Todd
Bowden, who blackmails him in return for tales of the atrocities he committed during the war.
What's truly disturbing about Dussander isn't just his past,
but how easily he slips back into acts of cruelty and violence — and how his influence quickly
emboldens Bowden's latent dark side. There's little fantasy behind the evil in Apt Pupil,
as the horrors of yesteryear don't always diminish with the passage of time. In the
case of Todd Bowden, all it takes is a little push in the wrong direction.
For the protagonists of The Mist, having to run and hide from ultra-dimensional
creatures is terrifying enough. But the terror spills over entirely when Marcia Gay Harden's
Mrs. Carmody begins to whip the survivors into a religious frenzy. In particular, the
superb 2007 film adaptation provides a terrifying portrayal of this deeply disturbing King villain.
Mrs. Carmody is driven by a passionate and committed religious interpretation
of the world around her. When a scientific experiment goes wrong at a local military base,
a strange mist is unleashed upon the town below, manifesting all kinds
of strange creatures. Shoppers at a local supermarket are trapped inside the building,
and as paranoia and fear set in, Mrs. Carmody begins to convince others that the mist is
God's punishment for the sins of our world — and her followers must help to dish it out.
Marcia Gay Harden's performance as Carmody is phenomenal;
a relentless whirlwind of dogmatic preaching and manipulation of vulnerable survivors. It's
equal parts enraging and terrifying to see the protagonists torn between
the horror of the mist's monsters and the evil of their fellow townspeople.
"Feed him to the beast! Let the abomination smell his blood!"
Doug Hutchison excelled as cruel and sadistic prison guard Percy Wetmore
in the feature film adaptation of King's novel The Green Mile. The story concerns
the miraculous abilities of a death-row inmate at Cold Mountain Penitentiary in the 1930s.
Hutchison portrays corrections officer Percy Wetmore, a sadistic and cold overseer of the
titular "Green Mile" cell block. He takes great pleasure in tormenting the inmates,
finding every possible way to inflict pain and suffering on them without losing his job. Even
worse, Wetmore's behavior is backed by his familial connections, which not only landed
him the gig but keep him in the good graces of Cold Mountain's higher-ups. Even though
eventually receives his just desserts, Wetmore's crimes and abuses are seriously tough to watch.
There are plenty of horrifying moments in Mike Flanagan's 2017 adaptation of Gerald's Game,
but the reveal of the Space Cowboy truly takes the cake.
Depicted on-screen by Carel Struycken,
Raymond Andrew Joubert is a serial killer whose numerous crimes tick just about every depraved
box there is. But his most frightening act is simply his presence throughout
Julie Burlingame's struggle to escape a pair of handcuffs after a sex game gone wrong.
While he's capable of practically every heinous crime imaginable,
in Gerald's Game the Space Cowboy prefers to watch Julie's torment from the shadows.
As Julie's predicament becomes more and more desperate, the lines of reality begin to blur,
and the entity of the Space Cowboy becomes all the more haunting. It's a
great example of King's ability to combine our fears of the real and the imagined.
Pennywise is undoubtedly the true villain of It,
but the shape-shifting creature gets along with a little help from a very bad friend.
Local bully Henry Bowers is both the product and executor of human evil in Derry. An abusive
upbringing led Bowers to become sadistic in his teen years, leading his own gang and tormenting
the town's youth. This makes Bowers a ripe vessel for Pennywise's campaign of evil against the
Loser's Club and the town, manipulating him to act out his darkest tendencies.
What makes Henry Bowers so scary is not just the fact that he's reminiscent of every small
town's notorious troublemaker, but that he's so tragically a perfect target for Pennywise's
influence. What could have been a promising young man was practically doomed by his father's abuse,
long before Pennywise even set his sights on Bowers. No matter which version of It you prefer,
it's fascinating and terrifying to see the different ways in
which this depiction of generational trauma and violence can be explored.
An all-powerful, many-faced servant of the Crimson King from the Dark Tower series, Randall Flagg is
directly and indirectly responsible for many of the terrifying events throughout King's fiction.
And while he might not look so physically imposing in Mick Garris' 1994 TV adaptation
of The Stand or the more recent CBS miniseries, that's kind of the point. Flagg is charismatic,
mysterious, and gains support through his ability to give people exactly what they desire.
He could be described as the King universe's equivalent of the Biblical Satan, but truthfully,
Flagg is far more complex than that. Flagg sows discord and chaos across time and space, taking
on many forms and names and corrupting everything he touches. His most recent appearances on screens
include the 2017 Dark Tower film, in which he was played by Matthew McConaughey, and the 2020
miniseries adaptation of The Stand, in which he was played by Alexander Skarsgård. And, of course,
there's no doubt that Flagg will eventually find his way to our screens again — one way or another.
Carrie was the first cinematic adaptation of King's work, and thanks to Brian De
Palma's superb direction and the cast's lead performances, it's still one of the best to date.
Carrie is the repressed daughter of Margaret White, a religious fanatic who has fallen apart
after her former husband's departure from the family. Carrie demonstrates an untapped
telekinetic ability, which begins to manifest itself in response to bullying by other girls
at school. White's fanaticism is only intensified when Carrie pushes back against her restrictions,
demonstrating her telekinetic abilities to prove she cannot be controlled.
"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."
Piper Laurie delivers a superb portrayal of Margaret, a character who appears merely
eccentric to the neighborhood but terrorizes her daughter behind closed doors. Her own
trauma is weaponized against Carrie, punishing her for any transgressions by locking her in
a closet to pray for forgiveness. Unlike Mrs. Carmody, White is rejected by almost
everybody except Carrie, who is torn between wanting her mother's love and being absolutely
terrified of the monster she has become. In light of her repressive upbringing,
Carrie's fiery vengeance during the film's climax is no surprise.
Sure, the threat of Cujo seems small-scale when compared to the likes of Stephen King's
other villains, but this is a good example of how King writes stories
that scare on more personal levels: the threat of the beloved family pet.
In the 1983 film adaptation of Cujo, Donna Trenton and her son Brett are terrorized by the formerly
adorable St. Bernard — who is understandably still the go-to reference for rabid dogs,
even after all these years. It's not exactly easy to pull off the special effects for a movie
dealing with a dog like Cujo, but director Lewis Teague did a fine job in capturing the horrifying
transformation of the titular hound. It's made very clear during the movie that, although he
is just a dog, Cujo poses a threat that most owners would struggle to fight back against.
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