~ by kevin maher ~

The culture-at-large is experiencing the latest Stephen King resurgence. Almost everyone, from your parents’ friends to your younger co-workers, is talking about the new adaptations of It, Mr. Mercedes and The Stand. Meanwhile hardcore fans are clogging social media with rankings of King’s best and worst adaptations (and they’re probably being too hard on Silver Bullet.)

Even at the water-cooler of The Pink Smoke headquarters we’re trading various fun-facts and close-readings of our favorite King movies, paying special attention to the recurring themes and obsessions that keep coming up in the author’s 40-plus years of work.

We’ve collected some of his most popular tropes into a Stephen King Bingo card. KINGO, if you will.

It’s just like regular BINGO. When you watch a Stephen King film adaptation, tv movie or mini-series, just check-off that trope as it appears.

For example: Mary Lambert’s 1989 film of Pet Sematary hits 10 tropes, with a straight line down the middle. That’s a KINGO!

Download the card and mark-up each of the tropes that appear in a given adaptation. Then tweet your completed card @thepinksmoke with the name of the adaptation and the hashtag #Kingo. (The center square is a free-space, for the upcoming KEVIN GEEKS OUT show about Stephen King. See below for details.)

Note: Because there’s only 25 squares on a card we didn’t include every recurring theme in Stephen King adaptations. We know, we know, we didn’t include alcoholism, shady government agencies, cats, memory library, Matt Frewer, aliens, a character seduced by evil, the list goes on and on…

KEVIN GEEKS OUT ABOUT STEPHEN KING is a two-hour video variety show celebrating the films adaptations of Mr. King. You can catch the show this September at Nitehawk Cinema in Brooklyn or this October at the Alamo Drafthouse in Yonkers. Kevin will be joined by some excellent guests, including The Pink Smoke’s John Cribbs!

Thanks to Tenebrous Kate for designing the Kingo card.