Most Stephen King fans love the fact that the author can keep us up for nights on end after a macabre tale, whether it's 1,000 pages long or a short but scary story among a collection of others. Most of his monsters, ranging from the supernatural to the possessed common household object to everyday human beings, terrify us because they're often based in real life, or in common nightmares.
Sometimes King's monsters don't scare, though, and actually make us laugh instead. These silly monsters are sometimes obviously meant to stimulate a chuckle, as King's known to write some funny material, too, but some of them were definitely meant to scare us instead and failed in that department.
10 Silliest: Mr. Gray
When Stephen King penned Dreamcatcher, he had so many wonderful elements and so many good intentions. The story just didn't pan out, especially in regards to its main baddie, Mr. Gray, who is goofy at best. The alien spores don't make up for the alien's underwhelming appearance, either. Duddits is a lovely tragic hero, as are some of the buddies King centers the story around, but without a really scary villain, it doesn't work.
King himself, who was recovering from a terrible car accident and under the influence of Oxycontin while writing it, doesn't even like it. While we're glad the story helped him recover, we do wish for a more formidable monster.
9 Scariest: Pennywise
As a clown, Pennywise may or may not scare the pants off you. Both Tim Curry and Bill Skarsgård, who both were really born to play King villains, brought him to life in different scary ways, but in the book it's the way Pennywise can manifest as your own personal brand of Hell that really keeps you awake for nights on end after finishing it. Fans have compared him to a boggart, and while his brand of evil goes much deeper and older than that, it's a good comparison, since he brings your worst fears to life.
Who's going to forget the scene from It Chapter 2 when Eddie enters the pharmacy basement?
8 Silliest: Charlie Decker
King's worst villain ever, Charlie Decker, the antihero (if you can call him that) of Getting It On, is pretty much every incel's worst fantasy come true. He's an apathetic jerk who doesn't care about human life in the least, murdering his teacher only to hold his entire classroom hostage, and for what? It would seem as if Decker himself doesn't even know why, and enough school shooters have cited this ridiculous character as the inspiration behind their own deeds to the point where King even removed it from the shelves.
Decker is silly because he represents the worst of humanity and isn't even a creative monster. On the other hand, he's still terrifying since we have too many real monsters alive just like him.
7 Scariest: Gage Creed
Most of us can agree that a possessed kid is the scariest thing in a movie. Patton Oswalt even explores how an innocent, non-possessed kid can terrify you in his special, Annihilation. So a zombie baby that's been brought back to life only to take out the adults is just about the scariest thing you can imagine, especially when he goes after his own mother.
Pet Semetary is a great example of doing the wrong things for the right reasons, and how badly terrible decisions can snowball into chaos. As many zombie movies that have been and will continue to be made, Gage Creed is still the scariest kid to come back from the dead. Church is pretty scary, too.
6 Silliest: The Moving Finger
In Stephen King's Nightmares and Dreamscapes, the main antagonist is... a moving finger that sticks out of a sink drain. On one hand, this would terrify anyone if it really happened; who in their right mind would laugh at a finger wagging hello in the middle of the bathroom, particularly if there wasn't a plumber attached to it somehow?
On the other hand, the idea of a moving finger as an antagonist is utterly hilarious, and the story simultaneously scares us while it makes us snort. The various Jeopardy! inclusions and Howard's quip to the cops when they arrive as he's attacking his own bathroom are pretty hilarious, too.
5 Scariest: "Mother"
Stephen King doesn't mince words or feel like he has to give his Constant Readers a happy ending. Ever. Case in point? 2014's Revival, which not only explored tragedy and loss, but the obsession that a man might have in bringing his wife back to life, which King has written about before. In this case, it's not the dead who scares, but the afterlife witnessed through the "revival."
"Mother," a Lovecraftian being, leads many other creatures like her in the human afterlife, using dead humans as slaves. When she's revealed through a "miracle cure," she is temporarily stopped from entering the world, but the characters are left with the bleak knowledge of what the afterlike is like--as are we.
4 Silliest: The Buick Roadmaster
Several of King's monsters have been defeated way too easily. Don't even get Dark Tower fans started on the Crimson King. The Buick Roadmaster in From a Buick 8? Kept in check... by a garage. That's it.
The car's never even given parameters in which to be defeated, which is especially vexing given the many incredible stories King has written about cars, from Christine to "Dolan's Cadillac" to "Mile 81." It might be a doorway to another dimension? It might be worth blowing up? In the end, the hero decides to do nothing and leave it where it is, making the novel a big letdown.
3 Scariest: The Overlook Hotel
No matter if you love King's version of The Shining or Kubrick's, since they vastly differ, the villain of the story isn't Jack Torrence or the many ghoulies and ghosties haunting him and his family in the hotel, but the hotel itself. It's the ultimate haunted house story long before American Horror Story did a season in a hotel and even before King himself did Rose Red.
The Overlook is a murderous beast from which there's almost no escape. It's physically and mentally threatening, particularly to a family that's already vulnerable, and it's one of King's scariest creations to date.
2 Silliest: All Machines, Ever
Stephen King's film Maximum Overdrive is one of his most cringe-worthy creations. The goofy horror film is beloved by some fans, but many can't help but hate the day the machines of the world revolted against the human race and full carnage was the result. The 1986 film is so terrible it scored a 15% approval rating at Rotten Tomatoes.
The movie has some fun classic King elements, particularly the small group of people taking a last stand at a rest stop, but there are too many unanswered questions, a muddy resolution and everything from lawnmowers to ATM machines not only posing threats, but somehow communicating because... radiation?
1 Scariest: Carrie White
The first of King's "monsters," White is a teenage girl, and what's scarier than that? All joking aside, Carrie demonstrated not only what it means to be an underestimated teen girl with abilities beyond her own control, but the consequences of bullying a vulnerable, easy target. In this book, Carrie's the victim for most of the story, and everyone else in it, from her terrifying mother to the bullies at school, are the real monsters. Carrie becomes one simply out of revenge.
Mother or classmate, either way, bullies pay in King's first novel, and the scare factor isn't all the blood, but how easily Carrie annihilated an entire school that hurt her. She's everything Charlie Decker isn't.
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