Don’t upset the King
Stephen King is one of the most successful authors of all time, writing countless horror and thriller stories with many being transformed into films and series for the silver screen.
IT, The Shining, The Green Mile are just a fraction of the incredibly culturally important written work the author has produced.
However, there was one film adaptation, based on a short story, that King thought was so bad that he sued the studio and had his name disassociated from.
In 1975, King wrote a short story called The Lawnmower Man which was published in Cavalier magazine in 1975 which focused on a suburban dad, Harold Parkette, who hires a man to mow his overgrown lawn.
However, it wouldn’t be a Stephen King story if not all was as it seemed, as the man sent to cut Parkette’s lawn had a cheery, yet strange nature, claiming to work for the Greek god Pan and possessed an apparent magic lawnmower with a mind of its own.
Things descend into chaos as the lawnmower man begins to strip naked and eat grass clippings in full view of the neighbours, with Parkette deciding to call the police.
However, the fuzz arrive too late as Parkette becomes the lawnmower man’s latest sacrifice.
The story would eventually be adapted into a film by New Line Cinema in 1992, initially titled as Stephen King’s The Lawnmower Man.
Stephen King was not impressed by the movie, however, as the film resembled so little the original story that he sued the distributor in order to have his name removed from the title and marketing.
He won the case.
With the short story only containing 10 pages it was always a hard task for the production company to turn the tale into a feature-length film.
Due to this, the final film ended up resembling nothing from King’s original story with the only common denominator being a bloke who mows lawns.
Allied Vision, which owned the rights to the story merged it with their own existing screenplay, Cyber God, creating a strange final product.
The production of the film was pretty high-end too, with a cast featuring Pierce Brosnan and Jeff Fahey with graphics work done by Xaos, Inc. and Angel Studios who are now known as Rockstar San Diego, Inc. who helped create the Red Dead game series.
The film centres around Jobe Smith, an intellectually disabled man, who mows lawns for a living, which is where the similarities end with King’s story.
From here, Smith undergoes scientific testing to try to increase his intelligence, involving drug injections and hooking him up to a virtual reality setup.
Inevitably, Smith’s IQ rockets and he develops sci-fi abilities such as mind-reading and telekinesis, leading him eventually to enact revenge on those who have hurt him.
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This super intelligent being’s final desire is to transform himself into pure energy and merge with the internet.
Pretty advanced for its time!
Despite this, the film received an awful reception with one critic saying “Boy, they sure did scrape the bottom of the Stephen King barrel for this movie…
“The blatant effort to cash in on King’s name, perhaps pushed by the Oscar-winning success of Misery, has never been so evident before, and at this rate, we can surely expect the prime terror and gruesome shocks of Stephen King’s Grocery List.”
Meanwhile another critic described it as “so loosely based on a Stephen King short story as to constitute fraud, ‘The Lawnmower Man’ goes right to the bottom of a growing list of failed King adaptations.”
King went as far as to hire a private investigator to check video stores that were selling VHS tapes of the film still featuring his name a year after he had sued to get it removed.
They found 90% of tapes still labelled his name to the author’s frustration.
The outcome of the case was that King’s name had to be removed from the title, but the film could still say it was based on a Steven King story.
King was awarded $2.5m in damages and had his name eventually removed from all association with the film.
