For every horror movie drawn from a screenwriter's imagination, there's an equal number that
has been adapted from works of literary fiction — and short stories in particular seem to
be particularly well-suited for a big-screen debut.
Here are the most frightening horror movies based on short stories.
One of the most ferocious horror films of the 1980s, Hellraiser was adapted by author-turned-director
Clive Barker from his own 1986 novella The Hellbound Heart.
Barker has said in interviews that the reason he wrote and directed Hellraiser was to exert
some creative control over adaptations of his work, having been displeased with the
feature film versions of Rawhead Rex, and what became of his own script for Underworld.
As a result, Hellraiser closely follows the plotline of Hellbound Heart, with only a handful
of changes: For example, in the novella, Kirsty is a friend of the ill-fated Rory, whose brother
Frank accidentally summons the Cenobites, while in the film, Kirsty is the daughter
of Rory, who's renamed Larry.
The name of the diabolical puzzle box that conjures up the Cenobites is also slightly
different: In the novella, it's the Lemarchand Configuration, which Barker dubs the Lament
Configuration in his script.
And speaking of the Cenobites, their S&M-inspired body modifications are, for the most part,
almost identical to their description in Barker's story — right down to the mass of pins in
the creature which, while nameless in the book and film, would eventually become known
as Pinhead.
H.P.
Lovecraft's hugely popular 1927 short story "The Color Out of Space" has been adapted
to film several times, most notably Die, Monster, Die! with Boris Karloff and 1987's The Curse.
The most recent and, by many accounts, best screen translation is 2019's Color Out of
Space, directed by South African filmmaker Richard Stanley.
Stanley's version sticks closely to Lovecraft's story, which is about a meteorite that crashes
on a New England farm — and unleashes bursts of unearthly color that cause horrific mutations
to the farm's flora, fauna, and family.
There are a few changes here and there; for example, Stanley's script adds some dark humor
and a dash of modern angst about climate to the story.
Most importantly, though, Color Out of Space nails one of Lovecraft's core concepts: that
unimaginable monstrosities lurk just beyond our realm of understanding, always waiting
for the right opportunity to unleash their horrors on the world.
All three film versions of The Thing owe their existence to John W. Campbell's novella Who
Goes There?
First published in 1938 in the magazine Astounding Science Fiction, the novella depicts the battle
between a research team in Antarctica and the shape-shifting occupant of a nearby alien
spacecraft.
Of the three film adaptations, it's John Carpenter's classic 1982 movie The Thing that most resembles
the plot of Campbell's novella, from which it borrows character names, the iconic blood
test sequence, and the alien's transformative abilities.
Notably, however, the story of The Thing didn't actually end with Who Goes There?
In 2018, a box of Campbell's manuscripts were discovered, which revealed that the novella
was merely the shortened version of a longer novel, titled Frozen Hell.
Curiously, Frozen Hell appears to be an earlier version of the tale that would become Who
Goes There?
Campbell had seemingly hoped to write the story as a full novel, but when he failed
to sell it, he re-edited it into a shorter form and sold it to Astounding Science Fiction.
The new, updated story was finally published in 2019, and a year later, Blumhouse Productions
announced that a film version of the expanded story is in the works.
“Why don’t we just wait here for a little while… see what happens.”
Three stories by British author Daphne du Maurier were adapted into film by Alfred Hitchcock
– the novels Rebecca and Jamaica Inn, and the 1952 short story "The Birds," which hit
the silver screen in 1963.
Du Maurier was inspired after seeing a farmer attacked by birds while plowing a field and
retained that image for her story, which pits a Cornish farmer against a growing army of
enraged birds.
Screenwriter Evan Hunter expanded upon du Maurier's story by moving the action to the
Bay Area, adding numerous characters, and striking a slightly more humorous tone for
the movie's early scenes.
What both projects share, however, is a lack of concrete reason for the birds to actually
revolt: Du Maurier's story suggests that the birds are set off by changing weather patterns,
while Hitchcock alluded in interviews that the attack was nature's revenge on man.
Neither is ever confirmed, however, which only makes the phenomena in both film and
story all the more chilling.
One of the greatest screams in '50s science fiction horror comes in 1958's The Fly, in
which a brilliant scientist has his genes crossed with a housefly's.
Author James Clavell wrote the script for Kurt Neumann's film, but the idea itself came
from the short story of the same name by French-British writer George Langelaan.
The story, which appeared in a 1957 issue of Playboy magazine, was adapted to film with
very few changes.
The primary differences included the fact that Langelaan's story takes place in France,
while Neumann's film is set in Canada.
Clavell also spared the protagonist's wife, played in the film by Patricia Owens, from
the more macabre fate suffered by the written version of the character.
Langelaan's story was also credited as the inspiration for two so-so sequels, Return
of the Fly in 1959 and Curse of the Fly in 1965, as well as for David Cronenberg's 1986
remake.
As it turned out, however, the latter movie was only very loosely based on Langelaan's
original story.
In fact, writer and co-director Cronenberg only really retained the concept of the fly
in the transporter device in order to tell his terrifying — and instantly iconic — tale
of body-horror.
An Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film in 1966, the 1965 Japanese supernatural
anthology film Kwaidan draws inspiration from the work of Lafcadio Hearn.
Hearn was a Greek-Irish writer who wrote extensively about Japanese myth in the late 19th and early
20th centuries, and his stories introduced Western readers to the vast array of ghosts
and creatures that populated Japanese folklore.
Four of those stories were adapted for Kwaidan, which was directed with stunning visual flair
by arthouse favorite Masaki Kobayashi .
Being over half a century old, the scares here are milder than what you might have come
to expect from J-horror movies.
However, both Hearn and Kwaidan found inspiration in a creature that will be very familiar to
fans of the genre.
Specifically, the vengeful onryō featured in two of Hearn's stories are similar to the
revenge-obsessed spirits depicted in The Ring, the One Missed Call series, and countless
other Japanese ghost movies.
Mario Bava's 1963 anthology film Black Sabbath attributes its three tales of supernatural
horror to stories by three different authors, whose last names should be familiar to avid
readers of 19th-century world fiction — de Maupassant, Chekhov, and Tolstoy.
But things aren't quite what they seem, here.
The Tolstoy credited with the source material for "The Wurdulak" isn't War and Peace author
Leo Tolstoy but his second cousin, Alexei Tolstoy, who was better known for his plays.
And it wasn't Anton Chekhov who penned the inspiration for "Drop of Water," but Ivan
Chekov — who isn't actually a real person at all, but something of a joke by Bava and
his co-writers.
As for Guy de Maupassant's involvement in "The Telephone," some historians suggest that
this is again a fabrication — though Bava historian Tim Lucas has suggested that the
episode bears a passing resemblance to de Maupassant's story "The Horla."
Notably, that latter story was itself made into a movie: Diary of a Madman, which starred
Vincent Price and was released the same year as Black Sabbath.
No matter who penned each story, Black Sabbath is one of Bava's most enjoyable and spine-chilling
works — thanks in no small part, of course, to the legendary Boris Karloff, who both narrates
the film and features in "The Wurdulak."
Richard Matheson's name comes up countless times in the history of horror, fantasy, and
science fiction in the 20th century.
He's linked to some of those genres' most influential and popular films and television
series, from The Twilight Zone and I Am Legend to Star Trek and Bid Time Return, the novel
that became Somewhere in Time.
Matheson is also responsible in part for helping to launch Steven Spielberg's film career with
the 1971 TV movie Duel.
Matheson adapted his own short story, published in Playboy in 1971, for the ABC Movie of the
Week.
The script, about a motorist pursued by a faceless and relentless trucker, caught the
attention of Spielberg, who earned huge ratings and widespread critical praise for his nail-biting
mix of suspense and motorized action.
In fact, Duel was so popular that it was released to theaters in international markets, which,
in turn, helped to pave the way for Spielberg's motion picture career.
He later paid tribute to the big break afforded by Duel by inserting the truck's monster-like
roar into the finale of Jaws, when the shark's body sinks into the ocean.
Horror fans, critics, and filmmakers alike have cited cult filmmaker Nicolas Roeg's 1973
feature Don't Look Now as one of the best and most influential supernatural thrillers
of the 1970s.
For the film, Allan Scott and Chris Bryant adapted the short story of the same name,
written in 1971 by Hitchcock favorite Daphne du Maurier.
Don't Look Now stars Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie as grieving parents who come
to believe that their late daughter may be trying to warn them about an impending threat.
"She's with you, my dear, and she's laughing!"
The script closely follows the source material's storyline, including its shocking final revelation
and conclusion.
Meanwhile, Roeg's unique editing and color schemes have influenced countless filmmakers
over the years.
Among the many filmmakers who have paid homage to Don't Look Now is Joel Schumacher, whose
1990 film Flatliners even features an overt reference to the deadly figure in red who
features in Roeg's film.
Stuart Gordon's Re-Animator features some of the most gruesome scenes in any horror
film of the 1980s.
You might be forgiven for thinking that Re-Animator's more outrageous moments were conceived by
Gordon himself, but the source material, H.P.
Lovecraft's "Herbert West – Reanimator," is actually even gorier than the movie.
Gordon's script streamlined Lovecraft's story too, which takes place over the course of
several years and even takes its anti-heroes to the battlefields of World War I in search
of bodies to re-animate.
And the sheer nastiness of "Herbert West" is more than a match for Gordon's supercharged
on-screen gore: West's re-animated subjects carry out multiple killing sprees and, at
one point, even turn cannibal.
Lovecraft's story also features an animated body without a head, which leads a zombie
army against the West in the blood-soaked final chapter.
If anything, it seems like Gordon actually had to reel in the violence for the movie
version of Re-Animator — which is pretty remarkable considering what did end up on
screen.
MGM's Freaks has shocked and amazed viewers since its debut in 1932.
The film, directed by Tod Browning, features actual sideshow performers in a macabre Gothic
story of love, betrayal, and revenge; one that has earned as much praise as it has condemnation.
Numerous writers, including uncredited future Oscar winner Charles MacArthur, worked on
the script, which was inspired by Tod Robbins' 1926 story "Spurs."
But Freaks isn't actually all that similar to "Spurs."
Anyone who reads the actual story will find that very little connects the two projects,
beyond the carnival setting and the ill-fated love triangle between three of its performers.
Horror fans may also be disappointed to find that the fate of the story's so-called "normal"
characters is somewhat less disturbing than what happens to trapeze artist Cleopatra and
strongman Hercules in Browning's film.
Haven't seen the movie either?
Well, let's just say… things don't turn out well.
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