Fearsome Five: Five Richard Matheson Stories You've Heard Of Without Knowing About Richard Matheson

Richard Matheson has a unique place in horror and science fiction. He has influenced a generation of authors and his works are still being published and referenced today. From Stephen King to the Simpsons, Matheson has influenced pop culture and still continues to do so. His influence is so well-recognized by his fellow authors that many have taken a crack at the worlds and stories he's created through this collection. But non-writers might not know his name, even if you have enjoyed his stories. If you’ve watched movies or television in the last 50 years, you may have seen something inspired by Richard Matheson. Here are five examples.

5) “Button, Button”: Many might remember the oddly tepid remake featuring Cameron Diaz and James Marsten that tried to make what worked as a Twilight Zone episode into a full movie, but the genius of this story is its simplicity: Mr. Stewart arrived one day to offer financially-strapped Norma a box with a button inside, tells her if she presses the button, she gets a lot of money, but someone she doesn’t know dies. The original story’s twist is quite different than the version in the Twilight Zone, but they both show how quickly we can sacrifice anyone if they are not a direct part of our lives.

4) What Dreams May Come: The movie starring Robin Williams as recently deceased Chris Neilsen whose exploration of the afterlife might have been a showcase for Williams’s dramatic chops as well as what CGI was capable of then, but Matheson’s novel also builds an entire afterlife, both heaven and hell, an extension of his own beliefs about the supernatural. The novel’s heart is the quest Williams’s husband undertakes to rescue his wife Annie who recently committed suicide from a hell of her own making. Come for Matheson’s world-building and thorough discussion of the afterlife (an extension of his own interests in the paranormal) but stay for the romantic story at the heart of this film and its message that love can outlast the flesh that houses it.

3) “Duel”: Movie trivia buffs might remember this feature-length film as the first one by now iconic director Steven Spielberg, but at the heart of the short story that inspired it is a very simple conflict eloquently explained in the one-word title. A traveling salesman somehow offends a truck driver and the truck driver develops a homicidal case of road rage. The massive tanker truck is not just the driver’s weapon but an extension of him, depicted by Matheson as something with evil intent, while the salesman must not only contend with that, but also the heat and his own less-than-stellar vehicle as he tries to survive. Stephen King and Joe Hill even did a father-son collaborative retelling of this story called “Full Throttle” for the collection He Is Legend and for Hill’s short story collection Full Throttle.

2) “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”: William Shatner did it. John Lithgow did it. Yes, The Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror did it. Even Jordan Peele’s new Twilight Zone reboot tackled this story, giving it a post 9/11 spin that also reflects our current political climate. One of the reasons that this story gets revisited again and again is how well Matheson ratchets up the tension, Robert Wilson first appears as a man who is simply nervous about flying but then sees a gremlin on the wing of the airplane ripping it apart. Many of us have probably felt a bit of anxiety flying and seeing the runway and the ground move farther and farther away, realizing that if something goes catastrophically wrong, the ground would rush up quick to meet you. The fact that no one, no the stewardess or pilot or anyone, believes this wild story and unwilling to help turns the screws on Robert Wilson even more.

1) “I Am Legend”: Some of you may remember Charlton Heston’s The Omega Man (also parodied on the Treehouse of Horror as “The Homega Man”). Others might be more familiar with Will Smith’s remake, particularly the alternate ending of film which, out of all the adaptations, stuck the closest to its source material. Robert Neville, the last human being on Earth, has dedicated his life to hunting down the vampires that have overrun the planet. Matheson develops Neville's character by showing his life choices before the vampires came and how he fills his days hunting the undead, but the true genius of this story is the twist at the end, where Neville and the audience realizes just how subjective the word “monster” can be.

Have You Read This? A Long December by Richard Chizmar

Short stories and horror seem to go together as easily as chocolate and marshmallows. Horror stories, as a reading experience, can be a tightening of screws, a steady walk down a dark hallway to a door that may or may not have something behind it, an experience of terror that’s over before your lasagna is done cooking or your child’s leaving school and heading for your car parked in the pick-up line. Especially in a world where multitasking can seem like the norm, a quick draught of terror is the perfect pick-me-up. However, the short story isn’t the McDonald’s hamburger of horror. It takes skill to create a complete narrative, create a character the audience can empathize with, and have it end in a way that satisfies in only a few pages. There are a few masters of the horror short story (King, Matheson, and Poe, to name a few), but one other name to add is Richard Chizmar, editor of the horror literature journal Cemetery Dance, who demonstrates his skill with the form in his short story collection A Long December.

Many of the selections in this collection could be read on a lunch break, but they all show an economical style that still maintains tension. “The Lake Is Life” is a dark coming-of-age tale about a girl who discovers what she’s capable of during a summer with her grandmother. “The Silence of Sorrow” is both heartbreaking and horrifying about a man who discovers something awful about his son. “The Season of Giving” is a Christmas tale where the spirit of giving delivers some brutal revenge. The titular story explores the bonds and boundaries of friendship as a man discovers something very sinister about his neighbor, something that tests his loyalties and his resolve. Any one of these stories can be used to teach a master’s class in the art of the short story, period, not just horror.

One of the joys of being the Scary Librarian, and being in a library, is the possibility of discovering something not quite on the New York Times Bestseller List, or not quite being made into a movie. Richard Chizmar is as essential as Richard Matheson, or even Stephen King, in a library’s horror collection. If short stories and horror are chocolate and marshmallows, then Richard Chizmar is the graham crackers. And I could really go for some S’mores.

New Arrival: The Seven Deadliest

Sure, Dracula, the Wolf Man, and even Frankenstein’s monster, in some form or another, have appeared in multiple horror stories, from classics to modern tales. But there are older evil entities that some say plagued man since the beginning. I’m talking about the Seven Deadly Sins. Lust, Pride, Envy, Sloth, Gluttony, Greed, and Wrath have appeared in different forms, in stories from the Supernatural TV show to enemies of Shazam, but they have also existed as the driving force behind many of the evil acts done in horror stories. Characters act out of anger or wrath, betray their friends out of jealousy or envy, or destroy lives for their personal gain (greed). These sins are once again explored in the anthology The Seven Deadliest, where each sin getting its own showcase story. These stories are also penned by esteemed horror writers who, if not already in your library, should soon find homes on your shelves.

The stories within this collection are as varied as there exists multiple ways to succumb to each sin. Kasey Lansdale’s “Cap Diamant” is a monster-hunting romp that has a man attempting to vanquish a prideful demon without succumbing to that sin himself. Brian Kirk, author of Will Haunt You, presents a tale of jealousy born of affluence, showing how an act  that seems benign but begins with envy and how that act leads to destruction. Richard Thomas gives a dystopian discussion of lust in “Ring of Fire,” asking if we can truly rise above our darker natures. John F. D. Taff, in his magical realistic tale of gluttony “All You Care to Eat,” introduces you to a woman trying a new diet where she can eat anything she wants and a few things she shouldn’t.

The main quality of this collection that makes it stand out for me is the diversity and originality of the stories. A collection like this in the hands of hacks could have easily been guy eats his wife for gluttony, succubus for lust, and various attempts to grab the most low-hanging fruits. But these stories go for less-explored territory, exploring the connection of these sins to our own natures. Readers of Calvin and Hobbes might remember a strip where Calvin asks his tiger Hobbes about whether or not he believes in the devil. Hobbes, always more astute than Calvin, says “I’m not sure man needs the help.” The sins in these stories don’t really need a demon representative when humanity is more than capable of demonstrating each and every one.

Screen to Scream: Brightburn and Irredeemable

Fans of Spider-Man may remember the advice his Uncle Ben gave the hero that shaped his crime-fighting career: With great power comes great responsibility. However, that philosophy often runs headlong into the old adage “Power corrupts . . . .” From our current political climate to the headlines plastered with authority figures falling from grace, we are all too familiar with the effects of power without responsibility. It’s then surprising that the genre superhero horror Brightburn or a similar idea took this long to see daylight. Many films like Hellboy and Swamp Thing have combined superheroics with the supernatural, but the film does explore a very frightening idea inherent in people with amazing powers who are suddenly tired of us.

Elseworld stories, featuring alternate takes on DC superheroes, has explored what would happen to Superman if he were raised somewhere else (communist Russia, for example). Brightburn, though, gets everything about the Superman mythos (the crash landing in Kansas, the discovery by parents willing to raise the discovered child as their own) and takes it to a much darker place. In the beginning of the movie, Brandon Breyer, the strange visitor from another planet, seems like a sweet-if-awkward boy turning 12. Not only is he going through puberty, but the ship that delivered him here, the ship he previously knew nothing about, is speaking to him in an alien language, basically telling him to conquer our world. Soon, what could once be attributed to teenage hormones devolves into full-blown sociopathic behavior as Brandon realizes there is nothing anyone could do to stop him from living out his brutal, blood-soaked fantasies. It’s a frightening idea, a Superman becoming not just evil, but one willing to use his abilities on the all-too-fragile human anatomy, but Brightburn is not the only story, or even the best one, that explores this idea.

Irredeemable features Superman-gone-bad the Plutonian and puts him in a world that has superheroes, but those heroes the Plutonian once fought alongside are still powerless to stop him. The Plutonian is also just as violent as Brandon, immolating people down to their skeletons with his heat vision, but he has also committed the wholesale destruction of cities and even nations, simply to lash out at a world that he believes has fundamentally wronged him. While it seems that Brightburn’s evil hero needed an alien spaceship to convince him to fully embrace his inner Armageddon bringer, Waid’s depiction of Plutonian is more nuanced, showing a hero who began his life in and out of foster homes, his foster parents rejecting him because they feared his abilities. Finally gaining the acceptance he long sought as a superhero, when people began to doubt him after a catastrophic mistake, he fully rejects them as he feels that he has been rejected, ultimately deciding to be the villain of a world that refuses to see him as a hero. Filling this world full of fully realized heroes and characters that would fit in either Marvel or DC’s superhero worlds, Waid presents a character study in the Plutonian of one both blessed and burdened by power, a true alien who can’t, despite his immense power, find what he really wants: to belong.