Hollywood keeps looking for material to turn into screenplays and what better place to look at than the bookshelves? Novels and stories offer fully-fledged plots and characters that already have a life, which can then be adapted for the big screen. There are those classic films that everyone and their mums know were based on books: the Harry Potter movies, Pride and Prejudice, Oliver Twist, Les Misérables and so on and so forth.
Comic books also have flourished as material for the screen for the last few years. But what about those forgotten novels and stories that in spite of being brilliant on their own accord have been overshadowed by the fame of the films they inspired? This list is devoted to them.
First Blood
The Rambo franchise is beloved by many. The 1982 film First Blood was a box office success that would come to be praised by critics in later years as a milestone of the action genre.
What not many know is that it was an adaptation of David Morrell’s 1972 novel First Blood, an action thriller with the protagonist being the Vietnam War veteran Rambo (although in the films he is given the name John, in the novel his first name is never specified). Stallone had a hand on the script, making changes that would tone down the novel’s Rambo into a more sympathetic character.
The Fly
David Cronenberg’s masterfully disgusting 1986 sci-fi body horror film The Fly, with Jeff Goldblum as a genius and eccentric scientist Seth Brundle, was itself a remake of Neumann’s 1958 The Fly. Yet they were both based on French-British author George Langelaan’s 1957 story The Fly (interestingly first published in Playboy magazine).
The 1958 film is quite faithful to the story while the 1986 one is more of a loose adaptation; yet, they both are chilling and well-directed additions to the genre and adaptations of a truly horrifying piece. Read the story and watch the films for some creepy enjoyment, but beware: they are for those of a strong stomach. As the tagline of Cronenberg’s film states “Be afraid. Be very afraid.”
Vertigo
Alfred Hitchcock was known as “the master of suspense”. With his unique cinematic techniques he could make even two people sitting in a room talking feel uncanny (with the help of a few taxidermized birds; see Psycho). But not many are familiar with the fact that plenty of his films were books first. Amongst them Vertigo, the film that dethroned Citizen Kane as the greatest movie of all time in the 2012 British Film Institute’s Sight & Sound critics’ poll.
This film about a retired detective with acrophobia who becomes infatuated with his friend’s wife, whom he is hired to follow, was based on the novel The Living and the Dead (D’entre Les Morts): a psychological mystery by the prolific French crime-writing duet of Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac.
Primal Fear
Gregory Hoblit’s courtroom psychological thriller about Martin Vail (Richard Gere), a defense lawyer who gets his high-profile clients found not guilty on technicalities and Aaron Stampler (Edward Norton), an altar boy and Vail’s client who is accused of brutally murdering the Archbishop, is a clever and dark film; it features many intriguing twists and some compelling performances.
It is also a faithful adaptation of William Diehl’s homonymous novel; Diehl was fifty years old and already had a successful career as a journalist when he decided to become a novelist. Nevertheless, he had a great run with books such as Reign in Hell, Show of Evil, and of course Primal Fear.
Total Recall
Total Recall was one of the definitive cultural milestones of the 90s. A brilliant and unique addition to both the sci-fi and the action genres, it starred Arnold Schwarzenegger in one of his most iconic roles and was directed by Paul Verhoeven (the director of hits such as RoboCop and Basic Instinct).
What not many know is that the film’s original and futuristic plot was based on Philip K. Dick’s (one of the greats of science fiction) story We Can Remember It for You Wholesale. The story went on to win a Nebula Award, while the film was nominated for many awards, including BAFTA and Oscars (it won Best Special Effects).
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
This film, directed by Don Siegel (the creator of hits such as The Beguiled, Dirty Harry, and Escape from Alcatraz), is a 1956 sci-fi horror film about an extraterrestrial invasion that starts in California. Plant spores fall from space and grow into pods with the ability to produce a duplicate of one human.
As the pods complete their development, they become perfect imitations of the humans they targeted, with one exception: they are devoid of human emotion. It was based on The Body Snatchers, a 1955 sci-fi novel by Jack Finney. The novel has been adapted for the big screen four times, the most recent adaptation (and possibly the most well-known nowadays) being The Invasion starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig.
The Running Man
And… perhaps the odd one out, a Stephen King adaptation, but it certainly deserves a place on the list; directed by Paul Michael Glaser and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, it is definitely not the most famous film based on Stephen King (films like It and The Shining hold that title, even though King disliked that last one), yet still it is worth the watch just like the book deserves the read (it was one of the novels written under King’s pseudonym Richard Bachman).
A dystopian science-fiction thriller packed with action, The Running Man exists within the same tradition as Battle Royale and The Hunger Gamesfeaturing a battle-to-the-death TV game show.
The Devil’s Advocate
This supernatural horror legal thriller with some iconic performances by Al Pacino and Keanu Reeves is packed with symbolism, the entire film essentially being an allegory about temptation, sin, and The Fall Of Man as coerced by Satan. Reeves plays the young, ambitious, and morally ambiguous lawyer Kevin Lomax who is… tempted by a legal office run by John Milton (because John Milton also wrote Paradise Lost, see?) to join them in New York (aka the Big Apple… last one, that’s a promise).
The film is also an adaptation of Andrew Neiderman’s novel of the same name. He has stated that “he sold The Devil’s Advocate to Warner Bros. on the basis of a one-line pitch: “It’s about a law firm in New York that represents only guilty people […] and never loses.”
John Carpenter’s The Thing
Initially released to staggeringly negative reviews, Carpenter’s cult sci-fi horror film has surely been redeemed in the eyes of critics now. In his profile with the magazine Starlog in 1985, he lamented that “[he] was called ‘a pornographer of violence’ […], [he] had no idea it would be received that way […] [and] [he] didn’t take the public’s taste into consideration.”
In this case, it was fortunate he did not; this film was far from merely cheap gore, with some deep ideas about human nature and trust. It was based on Who Goes There?, a sci-fi horror novella by John W. Campbell, Jr. (an extended version called Frozen Hell was discovered in 2018 amongst Campbell’s manuscripts). It was first loosely adapted in 1951 as The Thing from Another World.
I Know What You Did Last Summer
And the number one on our list and maybe the most surprising: yes, before it became the classic 90s teen slasher film everyone knows and loves, it was a novel - namely, I Know What You Did Last Summer, a suspense YA story by Lois Duncan.
While the film is a slasher through and through (ha… ha) that also drew elements from the urban legend of “The Hook”, the novel relies more on suspense, tension, and mystery rather than raw violence and it also does not end on a cliffhanger. The film received mostly negative reviews, nevertheless, it does “hook diehard fans of the genre”.
