The creepy stuff on TV is often visual or sound based. Jump scares and scary costumes. It makes me wonder how on earth one can sustain the same type of scare in a book. But then I pick up one of these and I remember. The internal images in my head is pretty messed up as well.
In that regard, let’s have a look at the books that inspired some pretty iconic movies. The links provided are from Audible, and are affiliated links. That means I make a commission from each of the purchases coming off the links. And with that disclaimer out of the way, let’s look at the books and movies.
Part One
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
This is sort of the most well known book as well as a very iconic movie. Those thinking the horror and gore will be like in the movie, will be very disappointed, but those that wish for a deeper dive down to the psychology and way of thinking of the characters are in for a treat.
Summary
In American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis imaginatively explores the incomprehensible depths of madness and captures the insanity of violence in our time or any other. Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, handsome, and well educated, Bateman earns his fortune on Wall Street by day while spending his nights in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Expressing his true self through torture and murder, Bateman prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront.
Read it here
Listen to it here
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
What I feel the difference between the two version is that the book is just so. Lonely. It truly taps into something that the movie never manages. Even though (unpopular opinion), the movie had its own merits aside from the book.
Summary
obert Neville may well be the last living man on Earth . . . but he is not alone.
An incurable plague has mutated every other man, woman, and child into bloodthirsty, nocturnal creatures who are determined to destroy him.
By day, he is a hunter, stalking the infected monstrosities through the abandoned ruins of civilization. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for dawn….
Read it here
Listen to it here
The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty
The novel was inspired by a 1949 case of demonic possession and exorcism that Blatty heard about while he was a student in the 1950’s at Georgetown University. The movie is often credited of its meticulous research to get an actual exorcism right presented. The book did the same, talking with priests, taking inspiration from actual cases and history to create a story around this factual practice.
Summary
The terror begins unobtrusively. Noises in the attic. In the child’s room, an odd smell, the displacement of furniture, an icy chill. At first, easy explanations are offered. Then frightening changes begin to appear in eleven-year-old Regan. Medical tests fail to shed any light on her symptoms, but it is as if a different personality has invaded her body.
Father Damien Karras, a Jesuit priest, is called in. Is it possible that a demonic presence has possessed the child? Exorcism seems to be the only answer…
Read it here
Listen to it here
The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin
Another entry of Ira Levin. He truly captured something about society best explained through horror books. Just like Rosemary’s Baby, the Stepford Wives challenges our perception of humanity and society.
Summary
The women of Stepford are not all that they seem…
All the beautiful people live in idyllic Stepford, Connecticut, an affluent, suburban Eden populated with successful, satisfied hubbies and beautiful, dutiful wives. For Joanna Eberhart, newly arrived with her husband and two children, it all seems too good to be true – from the sweet Welcome Wagon lady to all those cheerful, friendly faces in the supermarket checkout lines.
But just beneath the town’s flawless surface, something is sordid and wrong – something abominable with roots in the local Men’s Association. And it may already be too late for Joanna to save herself from being devoured by Stepford’s hideous perfection.
Read it here
Ritual by David Pinner
The wicker man is iconic. Both the original movie for the horror, and the remake for the memes. But the book is still this mysterious thing most people haven’t read. And we all should.
Summary
The protagonist of Ritual is an English police officer named David Hanlin. A puritanical Christian, Hanlin is requested to investigate what appears to be the ritualistic murder of a local child in an enclosed rural Cornish village. During his short stay, Hanlin deals with psychological trickery, sexual seduction, ancient religious practices and nightmarish sacrificial rituals.
Read it here
Listen to it here
And now, because I can’t help myself:
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