Richard Matheson was born on 20 February 1926.
No writer is more iconic than Matheson in the world of psychotronic film. He’s also one of those guys who I wish I knew less about. He whined and bitched his way through every interview I’ve ever read. And I get it. The world respected and loved him. But the world didn’t pay a lot for the pleasure. He did okay. But he wasn’t rich. And as he got older, that annoyed him. He would have done better if he were coming up now. Of course, the competition is way worse!
He wrote the novel I Am Legend. It’s good. But I’m more interested in it because it is the basis for The Last Man on Earth — one of my favorite movies. The Shrinking Man was his other big novel. It was the basis of the films The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) and The Incredible Shrinking Woman (1981).
But he is iconic because of his work for television and American International Pictures (AIP). For example, 16 episodes of the original run of The Twilight Zone were written by him or based on his stories. These included some of the best-loved episodes like “A World of His Own” (Keenan Wynn can write people into existence), “The Invaders” (Agnes Moorehead is menaced by tiny space aliens), and “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” (William Shatner has a very bad flight).
He also wrote the screenplays for a number of great TV movies. These include Duel (1971), The Night Stalker (1972), and The Night Strangler (1973). As for the AIP films, Richard Matheson wrote half of the Roger Corman Poe cycle. And he wrote the fantastic The Comedy of Terrors.
Since I haven’t talked much about Duel around here, let’s watch it to celebrate Richard Matheson’s birthday. It’s one of those films that I saw as a young boy that works just as well today as it did back then.
Image cropped from Richard Matheson by JaSunni at PicasaWeb under CC BY-SA 3.0.