I loved Stand by Me as a kid. Watched it so many times when I was 12-13 years old.
Stand by Me is one of four novellas by Stephen King all packaged together as Different Seasons. The novella is titled The Body. That book also includes what became Shawshank Redemption (short story in the book is called Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption).
Both excellent reads. But, what I think is King’s best story of the four was turned into a pretty bad movie called Apt Pupil (same title as in the book). It’s about a kid that finds out an old guy living in his CA town is a former nazi war criminal. The kid blackmails the old guy because he wants to hear firsthand all the grisly details of the nazi death camp the old guy ran in Germany during WWII. Seeing the kid transform into a monster in the story is just so well done and disturbing on many levels.
Many of Kings older stories would no longer be written by him today. One of his first short stories called Rage was so close to what happened at Columbine that he stopped new printings of the book. I think many of his older books are more examinations of the monsters inside people, and he’s gotten away from that writing for the most part.