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.