TRAILER TRASH! Richard Matheson Edition!

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The Horror of the Printed Page

[Tonight I bring you a special contribution from award-winning book blogger Katiebabs of Babbling About Books, and More. So let's shut off the DVD players for a minute and think about the books that really scare us, shall we?]

The horror! The horror! Quick, can anyone tell me where that line is from? And no, I’m not talking about one of the most famous movie lines muttered from Marlon Brando in the Francis Ford Coppola classic, Apocalypse Now.

It may seem unfortunate that most of the screams and thrills people find are in movies. I’m a true horror movie buff and I love having the ever loving shit scared out of me as I watch some poor sap die a horrible death from some maniac or supernatural monster. But it may come as a surprise that you can feel these same emotions in books. One of my favorite genres is horror. There has been many times where I have been sitting in my bedroom late at night all alone and scare myself to death by what I am reading.

There are hundreds of books I could recommend that can send chills up and down your spine but since I have limited space, I will give you some of my all time favorite tales of terror. You may find yourself surprised that these books will give you nightmares.

Many of the horror stories I have love are short tales of murder, mayhem and death. One of my all time favorite horror authors is Edgar Allen Poe. My appreciation for Poe began when I watched Vincent Price starring in many screen adaptations of Poe’s work. Two Poe stories that always give me the willies are The Tell-Tale Heart and The Masque of the Red Death. The Tell-Tale Heart is a chilling telling by the narrator as he tells about a murder he committed and how he got rid of the body. The police come to him to ask him questions about the missing person. They have no clue that he is the killer, and he is about to get away with the murder. But as the police interview him, he begins to hear a noise, a sound that won’t go away. The sound becomes louder to his ears, till he is near insanity, wanting it to stop:

"Villains!" I shrieked, "dissemble no more! I admit the deed! --tear up the planks! here, here! --It is the beating of his hideous heart!"

The Masque of the Red Death takes place during a masquerade ball where the guests are murdered by some unknown killer. The question is, who is this killer and why is he targeting these people? The ways they die are very gruesome. But no one is safe because the Red Death is actually a terrible plague that has swept across the land.

Don’t Look Now by Daphne de Maurier is another short story that was made into a cult classic movie in 1973 with Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie. A married couple are on vacation, trying to get pass their grief over the death of their little girl who drowned. The husband begins to see a little blonde girl in a red coat everywhere. He starts to believe she is his daughter because his daughter had drowned in the same type of coat this strange little girl is wearing. When he finally catches up to the little girl, the twist will shock the ever loving crap out of you. The ending to the story gave me nightmares for weeks. And if you decide to see the movie, don’t be surprised if the last two minutes makes you piss your pants from fright.

The one type of creature, that makes me want to hide in a closet and pray for a quick death if they find me are zombies. I blame George Romero for that lifelong fear. But without Richard Matheson there would be no Night of the Living Dead. Matheson wrote a story in 1954 that has influenced many horror authors and Hollywood filmmakers. I Am Legend helped develop the vampire and zombie genre by building upon the idea of an apocalypse of disease that will destroy the world. This story is the reason Stephen King wanted to write horror and responsible for flesh eating zombies becoming such a cultural phenomenon in movies and literature. It is about the one soul survivor left on Earth after a virus has turned humans into undead mindless zombies. The reader goes through the experience alongside Robert as he tries not to go crazy because every night he is stalked by these creatures. Imagine if you were the last person on Earth with no where to turn to for help, only you own thoughts to keep you company as you try to stay alive or become food.

Speaking of Stephen King, he is my idol, my reason for reading and wanting to write like he does. He has shaped the horror, science fiction and fantasy genre alike. It is so hard to choose his best work. The three that come to mind are The Stand, It and The Shining. With The Shining, King is able to tap into a person’s inner demons and the eventual break down of a person’s mind because of those demons. Part psychological thriller, part ghost story, this is one of the finest books I have ever read. It gave me an intense dislike of clowns and the underground sewage system, and The Stand is my number one favorite book of all time. The Stand taps into the desolation and fear in people of what is right and wrong and how one would survive if an epidemic such as a virus wiping out the world did occur.

Many of the books I have listed are classics. There is one final book I would like to mention that was just released this year and you may come as a surprise because it is a Young Adult book written for the teen audience. The Forest of Hand and Teeth by Carrie Ryan is such a book that in my past twenty odd years of reading scared me to the point I was looking over my shoulder as I read, expecting the monsters from the book to be standing there. The Forest of Hands and Teeth is a cross between M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village and George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. This book has tapped deep into my fears and psyche. Imagine the world filled with zombies who want to eat you. You have no where to turn, for they are all around you, crying in hunger, waiting for the right moment to attack. Imagine the only thing that keeps you from being infected by them and becoming one of them or becoming zombie food is a fence that keeps them out. What if that fence was breached and they were able to come through? This is a book not for the faint of heart. There is death and destruction, filled with violence and fear. The fear is not surviving from the monsters whose only goal is to consume the living. But is this truly surviving? (For more on The Forest of Hands and Teeth, you can read my review here: http://kbgbabbles.blogspot.com/2009/03/forest-of-hands-and-teeth-book-review.html)

I thank B-Sol for giving me this opportunity to talk about my favorite horror reads. What are some of your favorite horror books or authors you can recommend to fellow horror fans?

Katiebabs from Babbling About Books and More! http://kbgbabbles.blogspot.com/ Twitter: @Katiebabs

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Will Smith on Future of I Am Legend Franchise

There's been a lot of speculation and rumors flying around lately as to whether there will be a follow-up to Will Smith's smash hit I Am Legend. Most recently, an unconfirmed rumor had it that a direct sequel was in the works. However, Smith himself recently spoke out at a press conference for his new movie Seven Pounds, and here's what he had to say on the matter:

"We have a fantastic prequel idea…we’re still trying to work through a couple of bumps in the story. It’s essentially the fall of the last city – the last stand of Manhattan. The movie would be…within the body of the movie D.C. and then Manhattan would fall as the last city. It’s a really cool idea trying to figure it out…there’s a reason why we have to take a small band and we have to get into D.C. So we have to make our way from New York to D.C. and then back to New York."

So it looks like it will, in fact, be a prequel, which, I have to admit, makes a lot more sense, and has a little more appeal to it. While I wasn't the biggest fan of the first one (I much prefer the Vincent Price version), I'm a bit intrigued at exploring territory that was previously only hinted at in Richard Matheson's novel and previous film incarnations.

* * * * * * * * * *

I'd also like to report that my interview with Victor Miller, screenwriter of the original Friday the 13th, went extremely well yesterday, and you can look forward to it in the very near future (most likely in blogcast form). Miller talks about everything from admittedly ripping off Halloween, the origin of the name Jason Voorhees, and Friday the 13th's indebtedness to Psycho, to his refusal to watch any of the sequels, his falling out with Sean Cunningham, and his thoughts on the upcoming remake. Very interesting stuff. Stay tuned.

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My "I Am Legend" Experiment

I must confess that I have never read Richard Matheson's I Am Legend (an oversight I hope soon to correct). In fact, I had never even seen any of its cinematic incarnations until a few months ago. Once the newest Will Smith version hit theaters, I took it upon myself to watch the previous two adaptations before venturing out to see the latest.

And so, thanks to Netflix, I was able to see The Last Man on Earth (1964) with Vincent Price, and The Omega Man (1973) with Charlton Heston. Of course, I wasn't the only one with this bright idea, and a months-long delay in acquiring the latter film caused me to forgo the Will Smith vehicle during its theatrical run. Instead, I waited until it hit DVD and immediately plopped it at the top of my queue.

The idea, naturally, was to compare and contrast all three versions. And now that I've seen all three I can do that. So where do they rank?

All in all, I'd have to say that I definitely enjoyed The Last Man on Earth the most, and The Omega Man the least. I Am Legend falls somewhere in the middle.

Maybe it's because Last Man worked the best for me as a pure horror movie. Granted, it couldn't be made today, as in a post-Night of the Living Dead world it would seem far too derivative. But there was something about Vincent Price's classic performance, as well as the zombie-like creatures, that made that picture a very chilling experience. The sequence in which Price watches his daughter and wife slowly succumb to the disease is heartwrenching, and the scene in which he buries his wife, only to have her return home from the grave is downright bloodcurdling. Compare that to the much weaker flashback sequence in which Will Smith's family is summarily wiped out.

As for Omega Man, I just couldn't get into it. I know the film has a much greater cult status, but it didn't compare favorably to me at all. For one, the decision to turn it into an action movie took away a lot of the impact. The creatures are the most human-like of all three versions, speaking, thinking, and even eating regular food. This was a major disappointment. And while the camp value does give the film a certain "guilty pleasure" quality, it doesn't hold up well.

Smith's version is a cut above Heston's, returning some of the emotional impact of Last Man on Earth, as well as some of the horror elements. I may be wrong, but I got the impression that the creatures were depicted the most faithfully to Matheson's novel in this latest version as well. That said, the CGI work was terrible, and took me right out of it. Human facial expressions and movement remains the Achilles heel of CGI--and besides, there was no reason they couldn't have been depicted with mostly practical effects.

Unfortunately, Will Smith is the least memorable of all three leading men, lacking both the chops and the gravitas. Particularly, it speaks volumes to how much our culture has devolved when in The Omega Man we have a Neville who collects rare art masterpieces, plays chess with a bust of Ceasar and quotes T.S. Eliot; and in I Am Legend we have a Neville who hits the video store every day, thinks Bob Marley is the height of Western music, and quotes Shrek.

Still, Smith did a much better job than I expected, and the film was better than I expected it to be. But don't get me started on the pat Hollywood ending. Perhaps I'd have a higher opinion of it all if it had been the first adaptation made.

In closing, it's about time I read I Am Legend. For any book to inspire such a varied series of adaptations is quite a feat, and speaks to a healthy dose of textual richness that is no doubt present in the source material.

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