To be fair, 1408 wasn't completely played for scares. The scary stuff in 1408 was the emotional content. It made me think of the Raven (the poem not the movies),though didn't quite have the same impact.

I just want to see a REAL Desperation that has Mick Garris as far from it as possible. One of my favorite books from him and that mini-series was awful.

-D

But bring back Ron Perlman as the psycho/possessed cop - he was great!

Yeah, that was what was so heartbreaking...because he nailed that part.

the key is that great king movies are made by directors strong enough to ignore 80% of what king wrote

think about it - Shining - best King film of all and had very little to do with details of King's book
Same for Misery and Shawshank Redemption.

The big failures are the people who try to do King on the screen and end up with silliness. I liked the Mist but found the creepy creatures looked too much like a Tim Burton flick - should've avoided trying to look like King describes things.

Well, I guess the biggest problem is that King is not the kind of author whose work can be easily translated on screen... A considerable part of the impact of his writing (at least the way I see it, anyway) is due to the fact that he pays a lot of attention to what's going on inside his characters' minds... And, besides that, many of his texts are not only horror stories, but pretty accurate pictures of the "american way of life", you know... And such subtleties tend to get lost, specially when the horror movie business is in a state in which it goes, most of the time, for the shallow/easy stuff.

That said... Hell, what have they done to Desperation?!?!?!