Top 10: Book 2 Screen #1

Last Updated on July 27, 2021

Got an email from AITH fan Eric Hirschi with the suggestion for this week’s list. It’s a great one, because we’ve all had a favorite horror story make it to the big screen and end up being a gigantic turd. It’s painful, and every time a great novel, novella or short story gets picked up for adaptation to celluloid it’s exciting, but also a little terrifying.

Even though cinema can never capture the depth, scope, and unique richness of literary description, there are films that have summoned the spirit of their source material so well that the result ends up as a damn good time. Hell, sometimes the result is even a classic.

For obvious reasons I held Stephen King’s entries on the list to one, although I applied no such restriction on titles with “psycho” in them. If I’ve managed to egregiously offend your literary sensibilities, then spit some bullets on just what you think got missed!

WARNING – SOME GOOD REASONS TO READ A BOOK AHEAD!

10. THE BIRDS

Hitchcock took the birds run amok concept of Daphne du Maurier’s short story, but little else in bringing this classic to the screen. While the book is largely focused on a single farmer, the movie features a female protagonist, a host of supporting characters, and even an exploding gas station. All of which was pretty necessary, since no matter how cutting edge the filmmaking was, there’s only so much you can do to make birds scary.

9. ROSEMARY’S BABY

This is a great example of how some things that work on the page really don’t translate to film. Certainly the overall creepy sense of distrust that the movie captures through looks and environment is in some ways more viscerally satisfying than what’s in the book. On the other hand, the big reveal that Rosemary got knocked up by Satan is one of the more ridiculous scenes in horror movie history. Not JAWS IV ridiculous, but still.

8. BUBBA HO-TEP

Gotta love a Bruce Campbell starring cult classic born from a short story whose author didn’t even get his name on the cover of the original anthology it was published in. Oh, and writer Joe R. Lansdale ended up not liking what he’d written anyway. Which is too bad, because not only was the novella a great read from a sickly creative mind, but the film from Don Coscarelli captured the dark, quirky vibe perfectly.

7. THE SHINING

Here we’ve got the most famous Stephen King adaptation from the most admired director that has tackled any of his work. CARRIE is a better movie, but with a flick as iconic as THE SHINING it’s tough not to give it the nod. True the movie itself is little more than a by-the-numbers ghost story with multiple plot holes and an absence of the character depth developed in the novel. However, Jack Nicholson is a force unleashed in this, and it appears Kubrick knew what he was getting and what he was doing. He can be forgiven for only taking the framework of a beautiful house since he purposely brought in a hurricane to destroy it.

6. THE EXORCIST

Loosely based on an overheard “true” story, the movie manages to pace the book fairly well. Not all that surprising since author William Peter Blatty also penned the script. The downside is that a lot of the exposition in the film probably would have been cut by another adapter, so there are passages that drag a bit. But overall any fan of the book has to be thrilled with the cinematic result.

STAY TUNED FOR PART 2!