Original 'Pet Sematary' director Mary Lambert on her horror classic, Madonna and Stephen King

In 1989 director Mary Lambert brought Stephen King's celebrated best-seller "Pet Sematary" to the big screen, spinning its tragic tale of grief gone wrong into a box-office hit that cemented a terrifying toddler, a cat named Church and lines like "Sometimes dead is better" into the annals of horror history.

Lambert launched her career directing music videos for the likes of the Go-Gos, the Eurythmics, Sting and Janet Jackson. She made her feature film debut with the 1987 experimental art-house flick "Siesta," starring Ellen Barkin as a daredevil skydiver interrogating her own life and relationships.

The Arkansas-raised Lambert, who studied painting at Rhode Island School of Design, developed a visual style highlighted by evocative imagery and saw some of her most fruitful early collaborations with Madonna ("Borderline," "Like a Virgin," "La Isla Bonita"), whose provocative "Like a Prayer" music video sprang out of ideas the two brainstormed while driving across Hollywood one night.

Those works helped her land her big studio break. In spring 1989, just over a month after premiering "Like a Virgin" to protests from the Catholic Church - and a call for boycott from the pope himself - Lambert made her studio debut directing "Pet Sematary." Starring Dale Midkiff as Louis Creed, Denise Crosby as Rachel Creed and Fred Gwynne as Jud Crandall, it notched