Films

Halloween is fast approaching, as is the opening of the new film, The Box, starring Cameron Diaz and James Marsden in early November. Of course, many great books have been made into movies, and sure, there's the Twilight series and Cirque du Freak, both book franchises with new movies coming out, but what are the some of the best horror and science fiction books for adults that have been made into films that you may or may not have heard of?

• Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison for Soylent Green
• The Box: Uncanny Stories by Richard Matheson for the new movie of the same title and a new Twilight Zone “Button, Button” episode from 1986. Also, don't miss his novella for "I Am Legend" [see the film]
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick for Blade Runner
• Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist (translated by Ebba Segerberg) for the film of the same title. The U.S. version of the book is sometimes entitled Let Me In. A bestseller in his native Sweden.
• The Ring by Kôji Suzuki for the 2002 U.S. remake with the same title of the 1998 Japanese film, Ringu.
• For an example of Hollywood going to the book first, check out the first of Guillermo Del Toro (The Orphanage, Hellboy, Pan's Labyrinth) and Chuck Hogan's new vampire trilogy, The Strain.

This picture is at Mount Loretto, which was founded as Catholic orphanage on Staten Island in the late 19th century. It is still operating today, but it is not really an orphanage anymore; it is more of a social service agency. They recently built a CYO on its grounds and it has become a community center, with inside basketball courts and meeting rooms.

The church in the picture is still standing, but the buildings on either side are gone. In the early 1970's the exterior of the church was used in a scene from the famous movie The Godfather. There was a fire at the church shortly after the filming; only the facade was still standing. The church was rebuilt and was in operation again a few years later.

Mount Loretto is located about a mile from the Tottenville Library.

For more information, check out these two websites:

http://mountloretto.org/document/18621

and:

http://www.miv-mountloretto.org/home.html