What is your favorite adaptation of a short story?

In my Film&Literature class, I am getting ready to start my unit on adaptations. I’d like to focus on short story adaptations, so what are some of your favorites?

The adaptations of the Sherlock Holmes stories with Jeremy Brett were fun. They generally stayed pretty close to originals, but some had deviations that might be interesting to discuss.

You could look at all the movies made from Philip K. Dick stories. (Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report… am I missing anything?)

Maybe I’m being trite, but my favorite at the moment is The Shawshank Redemption. Loved the short story, loved the movie.

I think Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption is well into novella territory, isn’t it? It’s a fantastic adaptation, though. (Apart from the updating of the poster and the difficulties reconciling Freeman’s fantastic performance with his character’s name.)

James Joyce’s The Dead was beautifully adapted by John Huston.

I second **Larry Mudd ** on John Huston’s adaptation of James Joyce’s The Dead. It was excellent.

I’m not sure how available it is, but some years ago PBS did a splendid adaption of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Bernice Bobs Her Hair.” It starred Shelley Duvall and Veronica Cartwight.

Mystery Channel is showing reruns of the early 1970’s Night Gallery. One recent episode included Silent Snow, Secret Snow by Conrad Aiken. It’s an interesting adaptation, with a voice-over by Orson Welles. I think it’s wonderful, except for the clunky ending where they left out the last line.

I’d think that short 15-minute clip be useful in a class. You could discuss how they updated it (from the 1930s to 1970), the faithfulness of the script (there are a few added lines for the father, less for the doctor), film vs. written images, why the ending was modified (probably too down-beat for network TV back then), the use of the musical score to show emotion, uses of stage lighting, etc.

Can you tell I liked it?

Blade Runner, Demon with a Glass Hand (Outer limits episode with Robert Culp), The Soft Weapon (Niven short story redone as an episode of the animated Star Trek show) (stop laughing…), Total Recall.

The New Twilight Zone did some superb adaptations. Some that come to mind are “Shatterday,” “To See the Invisible Man,” and “The Cold Equations.”

Alfred Hitchcock’s adaptation of “Lamb to the Slaughter” is also a great one (and a great story). There was also a superb adaptation of “The Man from the South,” though that may have been in the series revival (or some other show).

Star Trek adapted Fredric Brown’s “Arena” into “Arena.” Brown’s was better – more interesting alien – but Star Trek did a competent job, and it’s interesting to see the changes.

“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” was made into a terrific short subject by a French filmmaker. It was picked up and run on the original **Twilight Zone ** and is often associated with that.

What he said.

Also, Stand By Me

The Ten Commandments.

Duel from a short story by Richard Matheson (who did the screenplay, too). It’s Steven Spielberg’s first real movie – made for TV but all he had done before this were some episodes of Columbo and Night Gallery. 70s production values, and low budget at that, but it’s a top-notch thriller. I saw it this week for the first time in years after buying the DVD at CostCo. I knew how it comes out but was on the edge of my seat anyway.

DD

Second The Dead and would add Rear Window (Woolrich), The Killers (Hemingway), and Short Cuts (Carver) to the list.

Alfred Hitchcock also did adaptations of two short stories by H.H. Munro, “Saki”

One was “The Schwartz-Metterklume Method”, and was rather humorous I though. The other I haven’t seen, and would kill to get a copy of, was “Shredni-Vashtar” a dark, ultimately violent tale about a boy’s hatred, or indifference, to the fate of his aunt.

Richard Lupoff’s short story 12:01pm was made into a short movie called 12:01pm starring Kurtwood Smith.

This idea was later stolen to make Groundhog Day - not that I didn’t enjoy that movie - but the original took itself seriously, was pure Sci-Fi, and very well done.

My favourite has got to be Death Race 2000 (Based on Ib Melchior’s The Racer). It’s not an ACCURATE adaptation by any means, but it’s entertaining. It even more or less kept the social commentary in place…albiet wrapped up in the same sort of gruesome spectacle it’s commenting on - which, honestly, made it more effective, IMO.

Another movie in the same vein is They Live (Ray Nelson’s Eight O’Clock in the Morning) - a more or less serious short story done as a goofball action movie - and actually manages to survive as a separate entity from the original.

For more accurate adaptations, there’s a TV series (Ray Bradbury Theatre) that adapted a lot of Bradbury’s short stories. The Sound of Thunder is my favourite of the lot.

nitpicks – Bladerunner was based on a novel. Demon with a Glas Hand was an original teleplay (although Ellison’s other Outer Limits teleplay, Soldier, was based on the short story of the same name by Ellison). Total Recall was nominally based on the Phili K. Dick story “We can Remember it for you Wholesale”, but it exhausted all of that in the first 20 minutes or so. I’ve always felt that most of the rest was stolen from Robert Sheckley’s novel The Status Civilization, right down to the mind-reading mutants.

The original Twilight Zone did a lot of adaptations of short stories. Two British TV series, Out of the Unknown and Out of This World adaped a lot of classic SF short stories (including I, Robot !), and I’d dearly love to see them sometime.
A lot of SF movies are based on short stories, but most of them are disappointing. Mimic is based on a pretty good story. So (surprisingly) is Invasion of the Saucer Men (and the grade-Z remake, Invasion of the Eye Creatures, that ran on MST3K) – It was called "The Space Frame, and it was pretty good. Asimov’s “Nightfall” has been made into [itwo* really bad movies.

On the other hand, The Day the Earth Stood Still was a fil superior to its source, Harry Bates’ short story “Farewell to the Master”. I liked both versions of The Thing, for different reasons. They’re both based on John Campbell’s short story “Who Goes There?” Charly was based on Daniel Keyes’ short story “Flowers for Algernon”, which he later expanded into a book. For that matter, This Island Earth was based on a book tha was an expansion of Raymond F. Jones’ short story called (I think) “The Alien Machine”.
The new Outer Limits has done several adaptations (as alreasdy noted), but I liked the adaptation of Larry Niven’s “Inconstant Moon” best.

Nitpick of a nitpick: Ellison’s OUTER LIMITS episode, “Soldier” is based on his 1957 short story, “Soldier From Tomorrow.”

I think he subsequently had it reprinted just as “Soldier,” but when he sold the script it had only appeared in magazine form and with the longer pulpish title.

And Ellison says that “Demon With A Glass Hand” will be transposed into prose and will be the final section of a novel called “Obituary For An Instant.” However, HE has been saying this since 1964, and the novel has yet to appear.

Sir Rhosis

I’d recommend Joyce Carol Oates’ “Smooth Talk” and the film made from it featuring Laura Dern and Treat Williams–except that they messed up the ending.