It's almost better to think of it as Stephen King as the more effective Freddy Kruger, rather than his characters. He's got a supernatural knack for pulling dread and terror out of banal circumstances, thus the effect is readers believing there is something just beyond their average, everyday field of vision.
For various reasons, though, the visual interpretations of his ideas are more miss than hit because visually it's nearly impossible to separate how silly some of it might look or seem. As we were ramping up for THE DARK TOWER, I wondered what they'd keep and what they'd jettison. For instance, I think people would buy a talking train, and a cybernetic giant bear, and a warlock, and order of cowboy knights, and teleportation, and the author writing himself into his own fiction -- but not all in the same story. It's a bit much to swallow. Visually-speaking.
But in the arena of the mind, Stephen King prevails.
It's attempts at appearing creepy or scary are just hilariously misfired.
