Truck Monster

Duel: adapted by Richard Matheson from his novella; directed by Steven Spielberg; starring Dennis Weaver (David Mann) (1971): The late, great Richard Matheson adapted his own novella for this television movie, one of the first (and best) things ever directed by Steven Spielberg. Hitched to a great script, the young Spielberg pretty much shoots out the lights in this gripping, terse tale of Man vs. Truck(driver). David Mann vs. Truck(driver), actually.

Dennis 'McCloud' Weaver plays David Mann, a frustrated California travelling salesman driving through California's scrub brush and deserts to make an appointment. He's having problems at home, centered around his wife's perception of him as something of a nebbish. Then he innocently passes a slow-moving truck. All hell follows.

You can view this a great thriller with a sub-text that deals with a modern man's battle with his own feelings of inadequacy and emasculation. You can view this as a thriller of paranoia and terror, as the early stages of Mann's battle with the truck-driver (never fully glimpsed at any point during the movie) repeatedly put Mann in situations in which no one believes that he's in a duel to the death with a crazy person.

Weaver is flat-out terrific, sympathetic and squirmy. Screenwriters aspiring or otherwise should look at this film as a model of how to effectively use voiceover narration in a movie. We're privy to Mann's internal dialogue at points, and it's beautifully done. The scenery is suitably deserted. The truck, as much a character as Weaver, is about as sinister a vehicle as one could want, grimy and menacing and way, way too fast for its weight class.

Duel taps into very specific fears related to driving, and driving around large trucks. But it's also rich and wide-ranging in its use of fear and suspense. There are moments that have the quality of a nightmare, and suspense scenes that Spielberg would never surpass in all his later years of film-making.

In a way, this is a companion piece to two of Matheson's great 1950's novels that were adapted into movies, The Shrinking Man and I am Legend. Both dealt with self-doubting masculinity left virtually alone to confront some mounting horror. Taken together, they form a triptych, though I am Legend has never received a satisfactory film adaptation in the way the other two have. Highly recommended.

Prodigy Lost

Night Ride and Other Journeys by Charles Beaumont (1960) containing the following stories: The Music of the Yellow Brass (1959) ; A Classic Affair (1955); The New People (1958); Buck Fever (1960); The Magic Man (1960); Father, Dear Father (1957); Perchance to Dream (1958); Song for a Lady (1960); The Trigger (1959); The Guests of Chance (1956) (with Chad Oliver); The Love-Master (1957); A Death in the Country (1957); The Neighbors (1960); The Howling Man (1959); and Night Ride (1957):

Charles Beaumont's career output would be good for someone who'd lived to be 80. As he died before he was 40 from what appeared to be Pick's Disease and/or Alzheimer's Disease, that output becomes even more impressive given that his last few years saw many of his friends 'ghosting' for him so that he could meet his writing commitments.

Beaumont (born Charles Leroy Nutt) became one of Rod Serling's go-to writers on The Twilight Zone, credited with writing or co-writing 22 episodes. Much of Beaumont's short-story output was in the fantasy genre, with forays into absurdist science fiction and suspense stories with twists. But not all. This volume, collected in 1960, consists almost entirely of stories from Beaumont's breakthrough years into the well-paying slicks, specifically that new magazine on the block, Playboy.

And one can see, in several of these stories, a writer pushing at his own comfort zone, moving away from a strict genre construction of things. "Buck Fever" seems like an homage to Hemingway, but an homage inverted in its view on hunting and the modern man. "Night Ride" and "The Neighbours" have twist endings of a sort, but neither is even remotely a thriller or a fantasy story. And "The Music of the Yellow Brass" seems like a melancholy tip of the hat to Ray Bradbury in his Mexican phase, with a twist that only increases the mournful quality of the story.

It's the genre stories here that seem slight; the much-anthologized "The Howling Man," adapted for The Twilight Zone, seems like something of a gimmick next to the more realistic rhythms of "A Death in the Country." "The Neighbours," while something of a 'preachy,' nonetheless provides strong characterization and much more satisfaction than the similarly structured "The New People."

Many have noted that Beaumont may be one of the most influential fantasy writers of the 1950's and early 1960's because of his naturalistic prose style, concerns with suburban fantasy, and high-profile Twilight Zone output. This collection also suggests a writer in the process of growing despite the commercial success that had already come his way -- it, too, is melancholy, a gesture towards a later career and a later man that never was. Recommended.

Blue World

Blue World: written by Robert R. McCammon: containing "Yellowjacket Summer", "Makeup", "Doom City", "Nightcrawlers", "Yellachile's Cage", "I Scream Man!", "He'll Come Knocking at Your Door", "Chico", "Night Calls the Green Falcon", "Pin", "The Red House", "Something Passed by" and "Blue World" (1981-89; collected 1989): Superior collection of Robert McCammon's 1980's non-novel-length work (though the title story is nearly the length of a short novel). The collection encompasses psychological, science-fictional, and supernatural horror, along with two works of suspense ("Blue World" and "Night Calls the Green Falcon").

One of the standouts is "Nightcrawlers," filmed for an episode of the 1980's Twilight Zone revival. A Viet Nam veteran walks into a highway diner, and bad things happen. It's an excellent bit of science-fictional horror, and also seems to be the precursor to a novel that never materialized.

Many of the other stories are set in McCammon's home-state of Alabama, generally in small towns you really don't want to visit ("Yellowjacket Summer," "He'll Come Knocking at Your Door," and "Something Passed By."). The latter is an extremely effective bit of Cthulhuesque cosmic horror that dwells on the effects of a dimensional incursion without worrying about the how, why, or who.

"Night Calls the Green Falcon" is another stand-out that would make a terrific movie. An aging, forgotten, and psychologically damaged former star of a children's superhero serial about crimefighter the Green Falcon finds himself dropped into a real-life mystery that he initially has no real desire to tackle.

But tackle it he does, sometimes literally, dressed in the faded remnants of his movie costume. The story strikes a nice balance between the childish idealism of the superhero and the realities of the real world that's much more heart-breaking (and ultimately heart-warming) than the vast majority of adult superhero comics of the last thirty years.

Finally, there's the title novella, a plunge into a hard-boiled world of porn, sex, and serial killers with a Roman Catholic priest and a strangely innocent female porn star as its two protagonists. It verges on hard-core at points, but it's ultimately a story about conventional and unconventional morality set in San Francisco's famous Tenderloin district. McCammon's deft third-person narration is really on display here as the narrative moves seamlessly from the thoughts and actions of one character to another and another and then back again. Recommended.

Rocky the Robot

Real Steel: adapted by John Gatins, Dan Gilroy, and Jeremy Leven from the short story "Steel" by Richard Matheson; directed by Shawn Levy; starring Hugh Jackman (Charlie Kenton), Dakota Goyo (Max Kenton), Evangeline Lilly), and Kevin Durand (Ricky) (2011): Surprisingly pleasant, oddly low-key CGI-laden movie about, um, robot boxing.

This one falls into the category of 'unannounced alternate history movie,' as by 2014 robot boxing technology was already capable of making the robot star of our film, Atom, and dropping him into an environment in which there was already some sort of robot boxing circuit. This seems unlikely to happen in the next 2 years.

Set some time in the 2020's, Real Steel is also Bradburyesque in that the one altered technological detail doesn't seem to have had any effect on anything else and, indeed, seems to have propelled history backwards to some occasionally bucolic 1950's America. Of course, there's also urban robot boxing and, at one point, robot boxing in an abandoned zoo inhabited by kinder, gentler extras from the Mad Max movies.

Anyway, washed-up real boxer Hugh Jackman is also washed up as a robot boxer. Then a former girlfriend dies. Jackman's 11-year-old son shows up. The kid's aunt and uncle want him. But the uncle doesn't want him until after their Italian holiday. Kid reluctantly goes with Hugh, who accepts money to relinquish all parental rights to the kid. Kid gets enthralled by robot boxing. Kid accidentally discovers a second-generation robot boxer, whom he names Atom, buried in a robot boxing junkyard.

Man, a lot of this alternate Earth's economy seems to be built on robot boxing!

Jackman and the kid learn some life lessons. Much robot boxing ensues.

In the manner of a lot of contemporary movies, Real Steel is too loud, too frenetic, and feels the need to hammer home every character moment with all the subtlety of a robot punch to the groin. I'd expect nothing less from Shawn Levy, director of the equally frenetic Night in the Museum movies. Really, several robot punches to the groin. Still, there's something weirdly charming about Hugh Jackman playing this dumb (his character makes Wolverine look like a brain surgeon) and a movie with this many effects having absolutely nothing to do with saving the world, the universe, or even a continent.

The whole thing is very loosely based on the early 1950's short story "Steel" by Richard Matheson, whom you may remember from other such recent loosely based films as The Box and I Am Legend, along with earlier, more faithfully adapted films that include The Incredible Shrinking Man (itself loosely re-adapted as The Incredible Shrinking Woman), The Legend of Hell House, and Spielberg's brilliant, ultra-faithful Duel. Of course, most of the faithful adaptations had screenplays written by Matheson.

For the record, Real Steel uses the idea of robot boxing and a down-on-his-luck robot trainer, and nothing else. The story was earlier adapted into an episode of The Twilight Zone. I'm starting to think Matheson's work may outsurvive almost everyone else's in one form or another. Lightly recommended.

The Mighty Matheson

The Shores of Space by Richard Matheson, containing "Being," "Pattern For Survival," "Steel," "The Test," "Clothes Make The Man," "Blood Son," "Trespass," "When Day Is Dun," "The Curious Child," "The Funeral," "The Last Day," "Little Girl Lost," and "The Doll That Does Everything" (1957): Thanks to his own television and movie work, and adaptations of his stories for those media by him and others, and all the parodies and homages and outright steals of his ideas by the makers of movies and TV shows, Richard Matheson has become one of the most influential American writers of the 20th century when it comes to popular culture. And he's still alive. It's a remarkable career, but it all started with the printed page, and an astonishing and prolific run of stories and novels in the 1950's and early 1960's, a time period from which this collection hails.

　
I suppose Matheson's closest 'lookalike' is Robert Bloch, about ten years older but with a similar pedigree in several media. Bloch's most famous achievement was writing the novel from which Alfred Hitchcock adapted Psycho. Matheson's biggest moment is a bit harder to pin down. The panicky airline passenger played by William Shatner in the Twilight Zone series and John Lithgow in the 1983 TZ movie? That's Matheson's creation. Recent movies based in whole or in part on Matheson's stories and novels include I am Legend, Real Steel, and The Box.

　
His novella "Duel" supplied pretty much a shot-by-shot blueprint for his own screenplay for Steven Spielberg's TV-movie breakthrough of the same name; his story "Little Girl Lost", adapted for Rod Serling's Night Gallery, supplied Spielberg's Poltergeist with its girl who vanished in her own living room. His novel The Shrinking Man spawned two adaptations; the novel I am Legend spawned three official ones and at least one acknowledged unofficial one (Night of the Living Dead) making Matheson the grandfather of the entire zombie genre and of the scientifically plausible vampire sub-genre).

　
The stories here show Matheson in solid, genre-crossing form. Science-fictional horror occurs in "Being" and "Trespass"; nuclear apocalypse spawns both satire ("When Day is Dun", "Pattern for Survival") and elegy ("The Last Day"); at least four stories here would be adapted at least once for television and/or movies ("Steel", "Blood Son" (itself suggesting an unacknowledged source for George Romero's vampire film Martin), "The Funeral" and "Little Girl Lost."

Matheson established his plain prose style, shot through with startling images and turns of phrase, pretty early, but it was his ability to find new horrors, and new combinations of horrors, thrills and genre concepts, that made him so invaluable -- he helped firmly establish the American supernatural tale both in terms of pure science fiction and in terms of finding new ways to present old horrors such as vampires and werewolves and haunted houses. And he could be funny, as he is here in "When Day is Dun", "Pattern For Survival" and "The Funeral." A brilliant, influential writer caught at the prolific beginning of a half-century career. Highly recommended.