Horror Adaptations I Wish Were Made, by Nick Montelongo

I firmly believe that the future of horror movies lies with solid adaptations of books. I never fully believed in remakes. Some are necessary but mostly they serve as distillations of the originals and excuses for the younger generation to look no further than the crap that is laid before them. "It's a remake?" Someone actually asked that of me when I talked about the most recent Evil Dead movie. I see a lot of wasted opportunity in stories that haven't been adapted for film. Re-adaptations are acceptable too because a good/better vision of a horror story translated to film is always a possibility. Here are a few titles I would like to see filmed:

"I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" by Harlan Ellison. The world's computers become so smart that they form into a godlike entity that wipes out mankind. It leaves five survivors to suffer whatever tortures it can contrive while they travel through the center of the Earth in a landscape reminiscent of Dante's Inferno. An incredibly bleak and vivid portrait of suffering and body horror written well over a decade before Clive Barker's Books of Blood. I guess this description alone might make it unpalatable for some audiences but at least it's a change of pace from the B.S. presented as true stories on behalf of Ed and Lorraine Warren.

Baltimore or the Steadfast Tin Soldier , by Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden. The unprecedented bloodshed of the first world war awakens an ancient vampiric evil. Soldier and nobleman Lord Baltimore runs afoul of a vampire in the battlefield and is inextricably drawn into a war between good and evil. This is a brilliant piece of fiction that was optioned for film but never came through. A considerable amount of Mignola's work deserves to see an adaptation of some form, especially one as vivid an exciting as this novel and the comic series that came from it.

Undertaker's Moon, by Ronald Kelly. The world deserves decent werewolf movies and there are only a few that really please me. This novel is my favorite werewolf novel and if you haven't heard of Ronald Kelly then shame on you. Stop reading this article and go purchase a copy of this book on Amazon. The audiobook recording is excellent. Ok are you back? Good. To me, this has all the elements to a good werewolf tale. Pure storytelling, effective suspense, suitable atmospherics, and kickass action. Ron even threw in some Irish historical background to enrich the story that make it unique to werewolf fiction.

The Great God Pan, by Arthur Machen. My favorite Machen story. A tale about a woman conceived through a demented union between a human and the pagan god Pan. It is a memorable novella of body horror and eldritch evil. The first chapter give strong implications of the human mind being opened to see other dimensions. This novella seized my imagination. The problem is that the only director who I think would truly go for this idea is Guillermo del Toro and he has committed himself to a thousand projects already.

There is still plenty to talk about but I'll save that for another article. You haven't seen the last of me discussing one of my favorite subjects to speculate on.

Written by Nicholas Montelongo