311: Children of the Corn with Stephen Graham Jones

If you're a weirdo like us here at The Kingcast then you'll hold Casper Kelly's work up as an ideal beacon of the bizarre. From Too Many Cooks to his Cheddar Goblin commercial in Mandy, Kelly's been bouncing between pitch perfect nostalgia and crap-your-pants creepiness his whole career. He finally got to make a feature film called Buddy, which is essentially what if Barney was really a hellish purgatory for the characters trapped inside the tube. Yes, it's as sweet as it sounds. Bloody, profane, and fun as all hell. Kelly joins The Kingcast boys to talk about this film and to talk about the strange Stephen King influences that can be found therein. The Shining, Misery, and On Writing all had at least a backwards impact on how this crazy flick came together.And thanks to this episode's sponsor The Calamities, written by Chuck Wendig and published by Penguin/Randomhouse, available right now wherever books are sold.

Are The Boulet Brothers the hardest working drag queens in the world? There's an easy case to be made that they are. From hosting their long-running and Emmy nominated show The Boulet Brothers' Dragula, to guest-editing Heavy Metal, to producing and hosting their Creatures of the Night podcast, it's a wonder Dracmorda and Swanthula Boulet found the time to join Vespe and Breznican to talk over Mike Flanagan's adaptation of Stephen King's Shining sequel, Doctor Sleep.Join in on this rambunctious conversation in which we talk about how drop dead sexy Rose the Hat is, debate about which is better: the director's cut or theatrical, figure out if baseball kids kind of deserve to get murdered by psychic vampires, and definitively answer which Stephen King character is best represented in drag. 

This past weekend we lost genre great Chuck Russell, who directed the best Nightmare On Elm Street sequel, one of the best horror remakes (The Blob), and introduced the world to Cameron Diaz in The Mask. Last year we had the great pleasure of interviewing him on this show, so in honor of the man and his legacy we're rerunning that chat this week.Most of the conversation revolves around his remake of schlockfest Witchboard and his early career collaboration with one Mr. Frank Darabont. He had a front row seat to Darabont's pursuit of Stephen King's books, including The Shawshank Redemption.Rest In Peace to Chuck Russell!

One of the most common questions we receive here at The Kingcast is where to start. It's not an easy question to answer, especially given the mountain of work the author has put out and continues to add on to year by year.So Vespe and Breznican brought in acclaimed genre author Nat Cassidy (When The Wolf Comes Home, Nestlings, I Know A Place) to talk through different titles and determine what we think the best Starter King is.Is it a Short Story? Is it a famous book? How challenging is too challenging? And would we recommend the same Starter King to an adult as we would the parent of a tween curious about reading Stephen King? 

NYT Best Selling Author and Kingcast favorite guest Stephen Graham Jones (The Only Good Indians, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter) makes his triumphant return to the show to delve into the rural weirdness of Stephen King's Children of the Corn. Discussion flickers between the original King short story and the not-that-great 1984 film adaptation of the same name starring Linda Hamilton and Peter Horton. How many Corn Children could Stephen Graham Jones take out before they overwhelm him? Is there's a good movie that could be made out of this admittedly pulpy source material? What were the Corn Children up to during the events of The Stand? All those questions are answered plus you get another patented Stephen Graham Jones wild animal encounter story, this one involving a skunk.

Who better to pontificated about the similarities and differences between two of the most popular American authors of all time than Ray Bradbury's own chosen biographer and your dedicated Kingcast boys.New York Times best selling author, biographer, and journalist Sam Weller (The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury) makes his first appearance on The Kingcast to discuss his relationship with Bradbury, the interactions both he and Bradbury had with Stephen King (and Steven Spielberg for that matter), and why Bradbury never had a Frank Darabont or Rob Reiner that could truly translate his words into an all-timer film.Weller's latest book, Dark Black, and be picked up at the link below:https://hatandbeard.com/products/dark-black

One of our greatest working character actors joins up for his first appearance on The Kingcast. You know Stephen Root from just about everything, from Office Space to King of the Hill to No Country For Old Men to Man In The High Castle and the recent hit horror/comedy show Widow's Bay.Root shows up ready to rock as we look back over his career, from working with George A. Romero on Monkey Shines to the prescience of Mike Judge's Office Space and Idiocracy, and his love of Stephen King, which started with The Stand and culminated in one of his favorite works: 11/22/63. Did you also know that Root appeared in a King miniseries? We talk about all that and more in this very fun episode.Widow's Bay is can be binged on AppleTV. It rules, go watch it.

Obsession rules. It's the latest horror sensation to take over the box office and has the genre community abuzz with how good it is. So naturally we had to get two of the stars on the show to talk about their cool ass movie and their favorite Stephen King things.So, we're joined by Michael Johnston and Cooper Tomlinson and topics include their Stephen King origin stories, which King movie adaptations have influenced their work, and so much more. You will get talk about Stand By Me, The Shining, 11/22/63, Mike Flanagan, Pennywise, and even a little more Revival peer pressure from the Kingcast boys.Obsession is out now in a theater near you!

University of Maine Professor (and the Stephen E. King Chair in Literature, by the way) Caroline Bicks spent a year combing through King's original manuscripts at his own personal archive and that resulted in an essential book for King obsessives: Monsters In The Archives that gives us new insights into King's process and illuminates paths not taken on some of his most iconic stories, like The Shining, Pet Sematary, Carrie, Night Shift, and 'Salem's Lot.These bonus episodes are usually exclusive to The Kingcast Patreon, so if you want more of this make sure to sign up over at www.patreon.com/thekingcast.Also make sure to order your copy of Monsters in the Archives at your local bookstore or at www.carolinebicks.com. 

Screenwriter Jeremy Slater (Moon Knight, The Exorcist, Mortal Kombat II) returns to The Kingcast to talk about... not Stephen King. Well, not directly, anyway. The topic up for discussion is Joe Hill's 2025 epic horror tome King Sorrow which contains many familial references and those don't just include his famous father. The story centers a group of college friends who uncover the ability to summon a dark force to combat their enemies, but like most dark forces this protection comes at a price.Hill tells this story over multiple decades and litters the narrative with nods to many King titles, from The Dead Zone to The Dark Tower.We discuss the book without spoilers for the first half of the conversation and dig into some of the more spoilery stuff in the back. Don't worry, make it very clear when we're transitioning to spoiler territory.Make sure to catch Mortal Kombat II written by our guest Jeremy Slater in theaters this weekend!