FEATURE: Celebrating Richard Matheson

Calling Richard Matheson an influential genre author is like calling the Himalayas "big."  Although he's never been name-checked as much as Poe, Lovecraft, or King, there may never again be such a prolific genre writer with such a varied (and excellent) body of work.

Listing his classic stories is like listing required coursework in "Understanding Horror."  His novels include I Am Legend, A Stir of Echoes, and Hell House.  He wrote unforgettable short stories like "Dress of White Silk," "Button Button," "Dance of the Dead," and "Duel."  He scripted fourteen episodes of The Twilight Zone.  Along with adapting his own writing to screen, he reworked Edgar Allan Poe in House of Usher and Dennis Wheatley in The Devil Rides Out.  The man was a jack-of-all-trades.

Matheson's most defining characteristic, in addition to writing some terrifying stories (Hell House, "Born of Man and Woman"), was his tendency to unpack fantasy by studying it or placing it in more "civilized" settings.  I Am Legend featured a hero who treated vampirism like a pathogen. Hell House's heroes theorized that ghosts were electromagnetic residue.  Meanwhile, along with Robert Bloch, Matheson brought horror out of the rustic, into civilization.  He found nightmares in planes and sewers and cellars, on the road and in suburbia.  With Matheson, the horrific was right outside your door, and it couldn't wait to get in.

If you're not familiar with Matheson's work, here are four places to start:

(Steven Spielberg, 1971)

Steven Spielberg's debut film, scripted by Matheson, is still a fantastic flick, and much of that comes from the ingenious simplicity of Matheson's story.  A truck driver silently mocks, harasses, and tries to kill a mild-mannered family man, who must dig within to find the savage animal that can fight back.  The story also features a creeping paranoia, with the hero searching for his pursuer in a bar full of likely candidates.  Stephen King nods to the film in Danse Macabre as "one of the half-dozen best movies ever made for TV."

A book not quite as iconic and intimidating as I Am Legend, Hell House may be more inviting to casual readers.  Its premise is classic ghost story fiction, as a small team of parapsychologists and "experiencers," as Jose Chung might call them, visit a mansion with a dark past.  Matheson's twist is that the heroes are equipped with the finest in ghost-busting equipment.  Sexual and lurid and violent and freaky and, apart from an underwhelming punchline at the end, intensely satisfying.

(Jack Arnold, 1957)

The Incredible Shrinking Man is a nuanced and triumphant thriller about a man who encounters radiation and gets smaller... and smaller.  Yes, this sounds like a ton of sub-par 50's films that should be avoided.  What impresses is how the story uses this idea to look at a world where nuclear panic and increasingly liberated women could leave men emasculated and fearful.  The film is an honorable adaptation with the courage to see the novel for what it is: humanistic and heartfelt.

The Twilight Zone

(selected episodes, 1959-1964)

Matheson wrote fourteen original scripts for The Twilight Zone, and nearly all of them impress.  "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" perches a demonic gremlin on the borderline between fantasy and reality.  "The Invaders" omits dialogue almost entirely from its story of aggressive miniature space scouts.  "Little Girl Lost" presumes the idea of a dimensional rift in a suburban house.  The list continues, and all of the episodes are quick, high-concept treats that demonstrate Matheson's endless invention.