The Reader's Shelf: Classic Horror from Screen to Page
By Sara Lachman, MLIS; edited by Neal Wyatt Oct 21, 2010Masters of terror, Stanley Kubrick and Alfred Hitchcock could not have created their troubling films without the skill of chilling wordsmiths who supplied the original story. While there are many classic horror movies, the nature of film is such that the camera tells the viewer what to see and feel. Books, on the other hand, allow readers to create their own delicious terror out of the eerie words and images the author implants in their heads. Whether taking us on a tour of a creaky old house or inside the mind of a madman, these books—all of which inspired horror film gems—are perfect for the frightful Halloween season.
The basis for Roman Polanski's award-winning 1968 film and one of the first contemporary horror novels to become a best seller, Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby (Pegasus. 2010. ISBN 9781605981109. pap. $14.95) throws an average couple into a world of witchcraft and obsession. The New York apartment Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse just moved into is in a classic Gothic building called the Bramford, which is rumored to have a disturbing history. When the couple meet their eccentric elderly neighbors, they are initially amused by their peculiarities, but Guy begins spending a lot of time with them. After becoming pregnant, Rosemary gets the sense of foreboding that someone is plotting against her and her unborn child. Levin generates a mood of escalating paranoia, and the reader will wonder with Rosemary, "Am I going crazy?"
Stephen King is a quintessential book-to-movie writer, and both The Shining (Pocket: S. & S. 2002. ISBN 9780743437493. pap. $16) and Stanley Kubrick's 1980 adaptation are at the top of their game. First published in 1977 and set in the brooding Overlook Hotel, it tells the story of former schoolteacher Jack Torrance. After being fired for drinking on the job and injuring a student, Jack, his wife Wendy, and his clairvoyant son, Danny, become the resort's winter caretakers. It soon becomes apparent that something terrible happened here in the past, and the Torrance family may be the hotel's next victims. A frightening exploration of the dynamics of a family trapped against an insidious force.
A weird kid, 12-year-old Oskar often pretends to stab his classmates in the suburban Stockholm snow. Eli is even odder. She wears a nightgown outside in the freezing night and never seems to eat. When the two outcasts form an unlikely friendship, Oskar quickly learns that Eli may not even be human. John Ajvide Lindqvist's moody Let the Right One In (Griffin: St. Martin's. 2008. ISBN 9780312355296. pap. $15.95) is a disturbing moonlit tale about what one young boy is willing to do to find true companionship. In 2008, Tomas Alfredson directed the award-winning film; the U.S. remake is just out as Let Me In.
Snagging a six-bedroom Dutch Colonial with a pool and a boathouse for only $80,000 seems like an amazing deal to George and Kathleen Lutz. There's only one catch-13 months earlier Ronald deFeo Jr. killed six family members within the very walls the Lutzes and their three children now inhabit. Twenty-eight days after moving in, the terrorized Lutzes flee their new home. Written in 1977 by Jay Anson and inspiring a series of films between 1979 and 2005, The Amityville Horror (Pocket Star: S. & S. 2006. ISBN 9781416507697. pap. $6.99) is a supposedly true story.
When a hedonist named Frank tracks down the Lemarchand box, said to open the doors to unlimited pleasure, he releases a race of masochistic demons. Unfortunately for Frank, the Cenobites can't tell the difference between pleasure and pain, and he is dragged into their realm to experience an eternity of torture. Discovering that she can bring him back to life, Frank's sister-in-law spirals into a life of seduction and murder. Clive Barker's gore-splattered The Hellbound Heart (Harper: HarperCollins. 2007. ISBN 9780061452888. pap. $11.99) is twisted, brutal, and terrifying. Barker wrote and directed the better-known film version, 1987's Hellraiser.
The 1951 B movie classic The Thing from Another World and John Carpenter's 1982 masterpiece The Thing were both inspired by John W. Campbell's 1938 story Who Goes There? (Rocket Ride Bks. 2009. ISBN 9780982332207. pap. $15.95). At an isolated research station in Antarctica, scientists discover an alien spaceship buried beneath the ice and thaw out the pilot. They soon discover that the revived alien has the ability to imitate the appearance of any life form. The witch hunt that ensues is a timeless exploration of self-preservation and mass paranoia. A classic of sf horror, Campbell's novella is florid in style and claustrophobic in tone and perfectly captures a sense of secluded dread.
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Neal Wyatt compiles LJ's online feature Wyatt's World and is the author of The Readers' Advisory Guide to Nonfiction (ALA Editions, 2007). She is a collection development and readers' advisory librarian from Virginia. Those interested in contributing to The Reader's Shelf should contact her directly at Readers_Shelf@comcast.net
This column was contributed by Sara Lachman. She recently received her MLIS from the University of Washington and hopes to be a Youth Services Librarian in a public library in the very near future</
