Stephen King isn’t only the dude who makes us lie awake at night with demonic hotels and homicidal clowns, he’s also one of pop culture’s most powerful storytellers. But what if the master of horror sits down in the theater rather than at the typewriter? Last year, King revealed his all-time greatest 10 favorite movies, and his picks are as diverse and surprising as the books that brought him to prominence.
If you’re hoping for a gore-splattered roll call of slasher flicks and ghost tales, forget it. King deliberately omitted films that are directly based on his own works, so you won’t see The Shawshank Redemption, Stand by Me, Misery, or The Green Mile among them, despite him admitting they’d all be in with ease. Rather, he wrote about the movies that made him a movie enthusiast in and of themselves, most of them classics of the golden age of 1970s film, when he was absorbing film as hungrily as readers were consuming his early books. Here’s King’s top 10, in reverse count:
10. Groundhog Day (1993)
Despite possibly sounding like an unusual selection at first glance, Groundhog Day is the sole straight comedy to appear on King’s list. Featuring Bill Murray playing sardonic to perfection, the movie’s premise of repeating the same day over and over has resonated much deeper than mere chuckles. King is intrigued by stories where repetition and entrapment push characters to confront themselves, and that’s exactly what this film does. Underneath the quirky humor is something much darker: a reflection on despair, the potential for change, and the horror of being in a loop with no escape. It’s not difficult to understand why this movie seems, in King’s terms, much more “King-like” than at first glance.
9. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind is the lone unequivocal science fiction offering in the roster, but it has no trouble justifying its inclusion. What resonates with King is not only the spectacle of alien encounter but the manner in which the story combines awe with apprehension. The film strikes a balance between a sense of wonder, the sort of wonder that reminds you of being a child, and the creeping horror of the unknown, and it is this combination that King has mastered throughout his own oeuvre. It’s not so much about little green men, but obsession, the frailty of human nature, and the price of chasing something beyond understanding. For King, that mix is unforgettable.
8. Jaws (1975)
Another Spielberg classic, Jaws, is bare bones and ruthless in its methodology, which is precisely why King loves it so much. He has complimented the film’s “beautiful simplicity,” suggesting that true suspense does not require bells and whistles; it requires good storytelling and wicked pacing. The shark itself is terrifying, but true brilliance is in how the film develops tension through anticipation, silence, and what we don’t see. King’s own work tends to rely on this same philosophy: horror works best when it builds up gradually and inexorably, rather than screaming in your ear.
7. Mean Streets (1973)
Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets may not be the first choice in mind when considering Stephen King, but upon closer inspection, it checks out. The movie goes into the underworld of small-time hustlers and petty criminals and reveals the grinding desperation that characterizes their existence. King has long been interested in tales of individuals trapped at the bottom, hanging on by a thread in circumstances that debase their souls. Scorsese’s stark, unglamorized vision and determination to avoid glamorizing his subjects reflect King’s own fascination with the darkness seething immediately below ordinary life. It’s not traditional horror, but it’s the sort of human horror that King is all too familiar with.
6. Sorcerer (1977)
William Friedkin’s Sorcerer, a gripping remake of The Wages of Fear, is one of the greatest surprises on King’s list. Critics widely ignored this one upon release, but King has long been a defender of the underappreciated. Starring Roy Scheider, this is a nail-biting thrill ride of men riding wobbly trucks loaded with dynamite over brutal terrain. For King, the attraction is clear: the tension is unrelenting, the stakes are primal, and the atmosphere is crushing. He even prefers the American version over the original French one, citing how its documentary-style realism and air of inevitability breathe life into the narrative in a far-from-forgotten way.
5. The Godfather Part II (1974)
No surprise to find Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather: Part II on this list. Universally acclaimed as one of the greatest sequels of all time, the movie broadens the Corleone family saga into a sprawling, operatic epic. King, whose own novels tend to spin big, interconnected tales, is of course attuned to its multi-layered storytelling. The movie doesn’t move hastily; rather, it develops slowly, engrossing audiences in issues of loyalty, corruption, and the suffocating nature of power. Its scope and moral ambiguity appeal to King’s sensibilities, rendering it a natural choice for a writer who feeds on sweeping vistas.
4. The Getaway (1972)
Sam Peckinpah’s The Getaway, adapted from the Jim Thompson novel, is a spare and unflinching crime thriller. King’s affection for it stretches back to his highly publicized adoration
of Thompson’s novels, which are unflinchingly bleak and populated with morally ambiguous characters. In The Getaway, a fugitive couple is used as a test case for the ways that love and allegiance will withstand maximum stress, and King clearly enjoys the no-nonsense, black-and-white morality at work. It’s an outlaw story of betrayal and survival. King has frequently covered in his own work, but often adds a supernatural twist.
3. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
John Huston’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is a tale of greed eating away at men from within, and it’s little wonder King thinks so highly of it. Humphrey Bogart is the leader of a group of gold prospectors whose search descends into paranoia, suspicion, and ultimate destruction. It’s a story that has the feel of one of King’s: everyday people brought down by their own human frailties, alone in desolate territories that appear to reflect the breakdown of their minds. It’s not difficult to follow this film’s influence in King’s writing, where obsession and mistrust tend to turn characters against each other with catastrophic consequences.
2. Double Indemnity (1944)
Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity is a classic noir movie, and its inclusion here is a testament to King’s love of the genre. The film’s tight plotting and morally corrupt characters echo themes King often explores: temptation, deceit, and the lengths people will go to when driven by greed or lust. The film is drenched in shadows, both literal and psychological, and that darkness speaks directly to King’s own fascination with the fragile line between order and chaos. In so many ways, the film seems to be timeless, and that is why it remains so powerful with audiences, and apparently with King as well.
1. Casablanca (1942)
At the top of King’s list is the classic Casablanca, and no wonder. At first glance, it’s
a romance against the backdrop of World War II chaos, but beneath the romantic intrigue is a story of sacrifice, moral dilemmas, and the price of doing what is right. For King, whose own novels frequently investigate characters torn between tough choices, the themes of this film always feel universal and ageless. Couple it with its endlessly quotable script and its irreplaceable characters, and it’s easy to see why Casablanca is his favorite. It’s not merely a romance movie; it’s one about being human, about courage, and about the bittersweetness of doing the right thing.
Considering the list as a whole, some things stand out. All but three of the movies are from the 1970s, the decade in which American film was most daring, and in which King himself was establishing his own storytelling voice. The films cover a wide range of genres, from crime and noir to comedy and romance, with only one horror-thriller (Jaws) among them. And conspicuously absent is The Shining, famously condemned by King as a chilly, faulty interpretation of his book.
So what do King’s picks reveal? He gravitates toward stories where ordinary people face extraordinary pressures, where suspense grows out of character and circumstance rather than cheap scares, and where the darker corners of human nature are never far away. Put them together, and you’ve got not just a movie list, but a blueprint for the kinds of stories that have kept readers hooked on Stephen King for nearly half a century.