The cinematic and TV career of Richard Matheson—one of the most important scribes in the history of the genre—gets his due in Matthew R. Bradley’s comprehensive RICHARD MATHESON ON SCREEN: A HISTORY OF THE FILMED WORKS (McFarland; $45; on sale now). The tome examines the horror/sci-fi trailblazer who imagined a world overrun by vampires (the novel I AM LEGEND, filmed three times and the impetus for the modern zombie film); allowed Kevin Bacon to see dead people in STIR OF ECHOES; for TV, terrorized Karen Black with a Zuni fetish doll in TRILOGY OF TERROR, William Shatner with a gremlin on THE TWILIGHT ZONE and Dennis Weaver with a malevolent truck in DUEL, directed by a novice named Steven Spielberg; and scripted the initial 1960s Poe cycle for director Roger Corman and AIP, to name a few. Besides the 40-plus films and 50-plus TV shows either scripted by Matheson or adapted from his fiction, the celebrated author achieved full cultural acceptance when THE SIMPSONS spoofed his work on four separate episodes. Chronicler Bradley, who has written extensively about Matheson before in articles and books, spent the last 13 years putting the interview-heavy RICHARD MATHESON ON SCREEN together, and Matheson himself penned the foreword.
Posted by Tony Timpone
Oct 26, 2010