No matter how many Stephen King movie adaptations will see the light of day — and God knows there have been plenty over the years, and they don’t seem to stop coming either — I doubt any will be as true to the author’s voice, sensibility, and style as Rob Reiner’s “Stand By Me” was in 1986. You simply can’t replicate how perfectly everything came together in that film (from the actors to the locations to the music) in a way that not only ended up capturing King’s novella impeccably but actually improved on it. I’d go as far as to say that the movie is better at telling that story.

The authentic milieu and atmosphere are a huge part of that, and it turns out, some scenes and plot events even became more realistic than anyone expected (or wanted). One of those, according to the oral history of the film (via Variety), was the leech/lake scene in the forest. As Corey Feldman (who played Teddy in the film) recalled it, the crew had built an artificial “lake” at the beginning of the shoot. “A hole encased in plastic and filled up with fresh water.” As Feldman said:

“… It’s all movie stuff, movie water and movie dirt. … The thing they failed to realize was they built this at the beginning of the shoot, and by the time we actually got to that scene, it was six weeks later, and they’d left it there uncovered. It was no longer man-made, as far as all the worms and the bugs and the leaves and the raccoons, they were all in there. Nature took its course. You’ve got a bunch of young boys running around in their underwear, reaching into their pants and pulling things off their testicles. I don’t know if they’d get away with that in cinema today.”

There can hardly be a bigger honor for a filmmaker than the utmost approval of the author whose story you adapted from paper to the silver screen. Director Rob Reiner was much aware of that, too, and he was understandably nervous when he showed the final version of “Stand By Me” to the master of horror before the movie’s release. He talked about it candidly in an old interview with Foundation Interviews (via YouTube):

“That was the greatest thrill for me of all. … We watched the film, and when it was over, he [Stephen King] said, ‘Let me just go away, I have to go and think for a bit.’ And I thought, ‘Oh, God, I hope he likes it.’ … Then he came back about 15 minutes later, and he said, ‘I just wanna tell you, this is the best movie that’s ever been made out of any of my works. … You really captured everything.'”

After this happened, King knew that he’d found a great partner in Reiner, and he exclusively offered him to direct the film adaptation of “Misery.” It’s no secret that Reiner accepted it and turned that movie into another classic, which low-key blew up the box office in 1990 with James Caan and Kathy Bates. But the collaboration between the two didn’t stop there. Through Castle Rock Entertainment (which Reiner was a co-founder of), he helped bring seven of King’s stories to the big screen, including two of the greatest ones, “The Shawshank Redemption” and “The Green Mile.” And as much as I love those two to death, I still agree with King that “Stand By Me” is the best screen adaptation of his works.