Surely Stephen King should take the blame for this turd?

Fine actors? Where? Not in this.

Tom S. is probably the best known and even he is an "also ran" -at best-.

Just because he did the teleplay doesn't mean that the final version of the script used is the one he wrote.

Stephen King is not a great screenwriter in my opinion. But theres reason for that. One of them being that he is not a very good dialogue writer. Much of his dialogue comes off as cheesy and phony, and I'm refering to his books! So obviously it transers to his screenwriter. He's great at capturing the characters sentiment. But the ways his characters speak is often times so unrealistic. I've noticed that screenwriters are usually better dialogue writers than authors are, in general though. This makes sense since so many screenplays are dialogue driven.

But yeah. King should stick to writing novels and let others adapt his work. I get he wants the final project to match his vision, so he's often as hands-on as possible, but more oftne then not, his vision doesn't transpate well to the screen. Cant fault him for that. He's an amazing author. And quite the genius. But books and film are two very different mediums.