Skeleton Crew is a short story collection by American writer Stephen King, published by Putnam in June 1985. A limited edition of a thousand copies was published by Scream/Press in October 1985 (ISBN 978-0910489126), illustrated by J. K. Potter, containing an additional short story, "The Revelations of 'Becka Paulson", which had originally appeared in Rolling Stone magazine, and was later incorporated into King's 1987 novel The Tommyknockers. The original title of this book was Night Moves.
"The Monkey's Paw" is a horror short story by English author W. W. Jacobs. It first appeared in Harper's Monthly in September, 1902, and was reprinted in his third collection of short stories, The Lady of the Barge, later that year. In the story, three wishes are granted to the owner of The Monkey's Paw, but the wishes come with an enormous price for interfering with fate.
John Henry Noyes Collier was a British-born writer and screenwriter best known for his short stories, many of which appeared in The New Yorker from the 1930s to the '50s. Most were collected in The John Collier Reader ; earlier collections include a 1951 volume, Fancies and Goodnights, which won the International Fantasy Award and remains in print. Individual stories are frequently anthologized in fantasy collections. John Collier's writing has been praised by authors such as Anthony Burgess, Ray Bradbury, Roald Dahl, Neil Gaiman, Michael Chabon, Wyndham Lewis, and Paul Theroux. He appears to have given few interviews in his life; those include conversations with biographer Betty Richardson, Tom Milne, and Max Wilk.
'Salem's Lot is a 1975 horror novel by American author Stephen King. It was his second published novel. The story involves a writer named Ben Mears who returns to the town of Jerusalem's Lot in Maine, where he lived from the age of five through nine, only to discover that the residents are becoming vampires. The town is revisited in the short stories "Jerusalem's Lot" and "One for the Road", both from King's story collection Night Shift (1978). The novel was nominated for the World Fantasy Award in 1976 and the Locus Award for the All-Time Best Fantasy Novel in 1987.
Needful Things is a 1991 horror novel by American author Stephen King. It is the first novel King wrote after his rehabilitation from drug and alcohol addiction. It was made into a film of the same name in 1993 which was directed by Fraser C. Heston. The story focuses on a shop that sells collectibles and antiques, managed by Leland Gaunt, a new arrival to the town of Castle Rock, Maine, the setting of many King stories. Gaunt often asks customers to perform a prank or mysterious deed in exchange for the item they are drawn to. As time goes by, the many deeds and pranks lead to increasing aggression among the townspeople, as well as chaos and death. A protagonist of the book is Alan Pangborn, previously seen in Stephen King's novel The Dark Half.
Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders is a 1996 American fantasy horror film written and directed by Kenneth J. Berton.
William Maurice Denham OBE was an English character actor who appeared in over 100 films and television programmes in his long career.
Joel Edgerton is an Australian actor and filmmaker. He is known for his portrayal of Will McGill on the first two seasons of the Australian drama series The Secret Life of Us (2001–02), and for playing Owen Lars in the Star Wars films Attack of the Clones (2002) and Revenge of the Sith (2005), a role he reprised in the Disney+ series Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022). For his portrayal of Richard Loving in the 2016 historical drama Loving, he received a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture.
"The Bottle Imp" is an 1891 short story by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson usually found in the short story collection Island Nights' Entertainments. It was first published in the New York Herald and Black and White magazine. In it, the protagonist buys a bottle with an imp inside that grants wishes. However, the bottle is cursed; if the holder dies bearing it, his or her soul is forfeit to hell.
"I Know What You Need" is a fantasy/horror short story by American writer Stephen King, first published in the September 1976 issue of Cosmopolitan, and later collected in King's 1978 collection Night Shift.
The Secretary of Dreams is a series of graphic short story collections authored by Stephen King and illustrated by Glenn Chadbourne. Cemetery Dance Publications released the first volume in December 2006.
The Dollar Baby was an arrangement in which American author Stephen King would grant permission to students and aspiring filmmakers or theater producers to adapt one of his short stories for $1. King retains the rights to his work, but as he began to experience commercial success, he decided to use the Dollar Baby to help the next generation of creatives. The term may be used to refer to both the adaptation itself and the person adapting it; for example, "The Sun Dog" was made as a Dollar Baby and filmmaker Matt Flesher became a Dollar Baby upon adapting it.
A cymbal-banging monkey toy is a mechanical depiction of a monkey holding a cymbal in each hand. When activated it repeatedly bangs its cymbals together and, in some cases, bobs its head, chatters, screeches, grins, and more. There are both traditional wind-up versions and updated battery-operated cymbal-banging monkeys. The cymbal-banging monkey toy is an example of singerie and kitsch.
"The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" is a novella-fairy tale written in 1816 by Prussian author E. T. A. Hoffmann, in which young Marie Stahlbaum's favorite Christmas toy, the Nutcracker, comes alive and, after defeating the evil Mouse King in battle, whisks her away to a magical kingdom populated by dolls. The story was originally published in Berlin in German as part of the collection Kinder-Märchen, Children's Stories, by In der Realschulbuchhandlung. In 1892, the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and choreographers Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov turned Alexandre Dumas' adaptation of the story into the ballet The Nutcracker.
Havoc in Heaven, also translated as Uproar in Heaven, is a 1961 Chinese donghua feature film directed by Wan Laiming and produced by all four of the Wan brothers. The film was created at the height of the Chinese animation industry in the 1960s, and received numerous awards, earning the brothers domestic and international recognition. The story is an adaptation of the earlier episodes of the 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West.
The Devil's Gift is a 1984 horror film directed by Kenneth J. Berton. The film's plot is similar to that of the Stephen King short story "The Monkey".
The Conjuring Universe is an American horror franchise and shared universe centered on a series of supernatural horror films. The franchise is produced by New Line Cinema, Atomic Monster, and the Safran Company, and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. The films present a dramatization of the supposed real-life adventures of Ed and Lorraine Warren, paranormal investigators and authors associated with prominent yet controversial cases of haunting. The main series follows their attempts to assist people who find themselves harassed by spirits, while the spin-off films focus on the origins of some of the entities the Warrens have encountered.
Folk horror is a subgenre of horror film and horror fiction that uses elements of folklore to invoke fear and foreboding. Typical elements include a rural setting, isolation, and themes of superstition, folk religion, paganism, sacrifice and the dark aspects of nature. Although related to supernatural horror film, folk horror usually focuses on the beliefs and actions of people rather than the supernatural, and often deals with naïve outsiders coming up against these. The British films Blood on Satan's Claw (1971), The Wicker Man (1973) and Witchfinder General (1968) are regarded as pioneers of the genre, while The Witch (2015) and Midsommar (2019) sparked renewed interest in folk horror. Southeast Asian cinema also commonly features folk horror.
The Monkey is an upcoming American supernatural horror film written and directed by Osgood Perkins. An adaptation of the 1980 short story by Stephen King, it stars Theo James, Tatiana Maslany, Elijah Wood, Christian Convery, Colin O'Brien, Rohan Campbell, and Sarah Levy. It is scheduled to be released by Neon in the United States on February 21, 2025.
