Been diggin up some Halloween movies/ Richard Matheson

[3LB]

nothin too scary, just some fun Halloween stuff, and damned if I didn't learn something. Some of my fave TV movies and screenplays are written by the same man, Richard Matheson.

novels adapted to movies:

The Incredible Shrinking Man
I Am Legend
What Dreams May Come
The Legend Of Hell House
Stir Of Echoes
Somewhere In Time

TV series:

Star Trek - The Enemy Within
Twilight Zone - many, including Terror At 20,000 Ft
Have Gun Will Travel
Combat
Dark Shadows

Screenplays for TV:

Duel
The Night Stalker
Trilogy of Terror

This is a short list of TV movies as he has many more to his credit, but these are the most notable. Yeah, there are some hit and misses in his career, both on screen and TV, namely his abismal adaptation of Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicals miniseries, his early '60s screenplays of Poe classics The Raven and The Pit And The Pendulum left a little bit to be desired, and his adaptation of Dracula with Jack Palance in the lead was weak, but that was prolly due to casting (Palance looked more like he was doing an impersonation of Burt Lancaster than Dracula).

Still, The Nightstalker is one of my all-time fave vampire flicks. I whip it out every Halloween (the DVD) and watch it. The Trillogy Of Terror is OK, if not a tad slow, and Karen Black has to be one of the most grating over-actresses ever, but the final story of the trillogy involves one of TV's greatest movie moments, the Zuni Fetish Doll, which was for its day, a total panic. Might seem a little comical now, but its still very well done. It freaked me out as a kid though.

[dean_martin]

Oh, man! I remember that little doll from Trilogy of Terror! That thing creeped me out. I don't remember the other two stories at all.

I've got a couple of classic haunted house films on the way: The Innocents and The Haunting. Both were remade recently, but I don't recall ever seeing the originals.

Ooh, I think I remember The Nightstalker too. Was that the one with Kolchak? Weren't there a couple of made-for-tv movies with that character? The vampire one was really good.