“You could say that these stories/ could not happen./ Yet some say they did happen.”
When I was a kid Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories was a pretty regular thing in the household among my brother and I. Most times we were just joking around about the “Bloody Fingers” guy coming up to get us, screaming, “Bloody fingers! Bloody fingers! Bloody fingers!” (a lot of fun if you’re ten). Then come over a decade later at a close friend’s book sale, I came across the trilogy and she practically handed them over to me. And what a gift it was!
Rereading Schwartz’s humorous and scary shorts accompanied by the unforgettable illustrations by Stephen Gammell really made me appreciate the series’ authenticity and huge footprint in all those who read the story’s hearts; I mean, let’s be serious: who didn’t get to experience the joyousness of these gems?
Now thanks to some of the dudes who produced the Saw series Patrick Helton and Marcus Dunstan (I know, calm down), the stories will be resurrected in movie form sometime in the near future via CBS films.
It’s not clear as to how exactly they will be implemented, but the premise is a group of kids who, “stand up to their fears to save their town when nightmares come to life.” Meaning: probably bits and pieces of Schwartz’s brilliancy will thread through the film hopefully like a foggy grey nightmare akin to Gammell’s portrayals of stories like “The Red Spot” (I can only imagine a burst of spiders coming out of some girl’s face!) and “The Dream” (if anyone remembers that chick was creepy).
(via The Huff Post; photos via Cassie’s House of Horror & bebo)
