Previously-
Okay! Billdude mentioned Matheson in the comments, and I know how prolific Matheson is, and how much of his stuff I've already reviewed here.
So, I figured I'd pull it all together like the other TILs.
So!! TIL, he wrote "The Dreamer of Oz: The L. Frank Baum Story" starring...John Ritter!!!
And, now the rest...
He wrote "I Am Legend" which has been adapted into "The Last Man On Earth" "The Omega Man" and the Will Smith "I Am Legend".
Basically, he birthed the whole zombie genre. For better or worse.
Hey! TIL, Will Smith is in "Six Degrees Of Separation" with Bruce Davison!
Matheson wrote the novelization of the pilot for "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" and the pilot sequel "Kolchak: The Night Strangler".
I tossed Kolchak in amongst the comic book crossover-verse here.
Reruns of Kolchak have finally been playing on cable, and I fucking love it.
It allegedly inspired X-Files, and I gotta say, Kolchak is better.
IMHO.
Kolchak is played by Darren McGavin who was the dad in "A Christmas Story" which connects him to Bob Clark!!
I got all three of 'em in there!
Matheson wrote a bunch of Twilight Zones; amongst them "Little Girl Lost" which was the uncredited inspiration for "Poltergeist".
And "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" which got re-made as a segment in "Twilight Zone The Movie".
And "Steel" which got loosely adapted into "Real Steel" which I did cover, but took down.
He did the Classic Trek episode "The Enemy Within".
He did the novel of "The Incredible Shrinking Man".
There's no way Stan Lee didn't rip this for Ant-Man.
And he did the Vincent Price flicks.,..
He wrote "Dan Curtis's Dracula".
He had a lot of collaboration with Dan Curtis, but I didn't cover much of it, and I can only cover reruns here. Labor saving rule more than anything.
He wrote "Bid Time Return" which got adapted as "Somewhere In Time" which is my favorite non-Superman Christopher Reeve movie.
Yeah, it's soppy romance, sue me.
No, sue Matheson. The man could do anything.
Anyway, time travel, romance, I'm thinking this is the granddaddy of "Outlander".
He did the novel of "Duel" which got made into Steven Spielberg's first movie.
And....that's it.
For stuff I covered.
But yeah, if you're a SF/horror geek, you can't not bump into Richard Matheson.
2 comments:
I remember thinking Matheson's book of "I Am Legend" was probably better than any of the movies (I saw the Heston one and the Will Smith one) but I also wondered if I sort of missed something with it.
Later, I read an anthology of his short stories. He seemed to have a recurring theme of self-loathing people destroying themselves with negative thinking or something like that? Do I have that right? I remember liking the stories okay.
I only liked the last 10 minutes of the Vincent Price "Pit And The Pendulum." BTW, I'm going to watch the Stuart Gordon film here shortly.
Did you see "Joker: Folie A Deux"? I guess the bad reviews really did keep people away--this thing tanked HARD. Do you think a cult will spring up around it, or has this thing effectively killed the Joker for awhile?
I dunno. Haven't read enough Matheson in text. It was 10 years ago I read "I am Legend". Haven't seen Joker 2. It's on my Christmas list. It can't possibly be worse than Elektra, or Madame Web. But, it could surprise me.
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