As a lifelong horror nerd (no, really?), I'm ashamed to admit how long it took for me to "discover" the books of Jack Ketchum -- but let's just say I'm making up for it now. Although Mr. Ketchum (real name: Dallas Mayr) has been writing for about thirty years, his works have never made ANY sort of cinematic impact until recently. The first one out of the gate was Chris Sivertson's chilling The Lost, which was followed by the also-harsh The Girl Next Door. The third adaptation, Red, is still making the round on the festival circuit -- plus we recently caught word that Ketchum's Off Season would soon hit the screen. And now we have a new project to announce.

Right to Life is a story that Mr. Ketchum penned back in 1989, and here's what it's about: A pregnant woman is kidnapped on her way into an abortion clinic. Apparently the abductors want her baby. And frankly I don't want to know much more until I pick up the paperback* for myself. The movie will come from the filmmaking team of Eric Shapiro and Rhoda Jordan, whose Rule of Three is about to screen at Austin's Fantastic Fest. Says Ms. Jordan: "What's great about this book is how it works as a good, scary horror story, but it also brings the abortion issue into light. The kidnappers carry the pro-lifer argument to its logical extreme."

Yikes. Not only do I expect this indie thriller to incite a small amount of controversy ... I bet this very blog post gets inundated with opinionated viewpoints! More news on this adaptation as it becomes available. And let's keep things civil in the comments section, eh?

(* Yes, I know the book's title is Old Flames. But Right to Life is in there, trust me.)

When someone who's read hundreds of horror novels says something like "Jack Ketchum is one of the best authors out there," you might want to bring up a few titles on Amazon and maybe snag a tome or two. (That's if you're looking for horror fiction in the first place, obviously.) Over the last few years, we've (finally!) seen several of the author's works transformed into indie flicks, and I'd say those filmmakers are presently three-for-three! (Those films would be The Lost, The Girl Next Door, and Red.)

So it's with no small amount of nerdly excitement that I read the following over at Dread Central: Looks like the guys behind the harrowing Girl Next Door are about to tackle Offspring, a 1991 Ketchum "crazy cannibal" novel that is actually the follow-up to the truly disturbing Off Season. (And I mean "disturbing" as a compliment.) But why would producer Andrew van den Houten start with Part 2 instead of Part 1? I assume it has something to do with rights issues -- as in "someone else probably owns the rights to Part 1" -- but Shock's Ryan Rotten very astutely makes the same point that I was going to make: That if someone did Off Season straight from the book, it'd look a whole LOT like Wrong Turn or yet another rendition of The Hills Have Eyes. Kind of a shame, really, but you can always read the book.

For more on the brutally memorable work of Jack Ketchum, check out his official site right here.

I finally had my annual nightmare-inducing film from Fantastic Fest this year after seeing Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door. It's not a horror film in the traditional sense, but rather an odd combination of family drama and scenes of physical torture -- like a Lifetime movie directed by Eli Roth. The movie is adapted from the 1989 Ketchum novel, which was based on the real-life story of Sylvia Likens. Likens' story was also told in An American Crime, which premiered at Sundance this year.

The Girl Next Door is set in "innocent" 1950s small-town America, structured as a long flashback of David, a guy currently in his fifties. When young David (Daniel Manche) was on the verge of adolescence, two girl cousins moved in with the Chandlers next door, a family of several boys and their divorced mom Ruth (Blanche Baker). The girls lost their parents in a car accident, and the younger one, Susan, wears leg braces and uses crutches. Ruth was always considered a "cool" mom because she let the boys drink beer and talked about sexual matters. Now she starts bullying her nieces in a minor way, slowly advancing to higher and nastier levels of abuse especially targeted at teenager Meg (Blythe Auffarth).

I'm embarrassed to admit it, being a lifelong fan of horror cinema & fiction, but I only just recently discovered the dark awesomeness of Mr. Jack Ketchum. While strolling through a massive discount store that won't stock NC-17 movies, I noticed the "uncut, uncensored, unexpurgated" version of Mr. Ketchum's debut novel, Off Season, sitting on a shelf next to Cosmo. I bought the book, read it in four days, and then thought it was deliciously ironic that such an stunningly disturbing novel would be sold at the same store that won't carry Requiem for a Dream.

I'm rambling.

No, there's not a movie of Off Season on the way, but Ketchum fans assure me that the author's The Girl Next Door is just as good as Off Season ... if not better. And that's the book that someone's making into a movie. That "someone" will be Gregory Wilson, sophomore-stage director whose first flick was the little-seen Home Invaders. Mae Whitman (Ann Veal from Arrested Development) and Blanche Baker (the drugged-out bride from Sixteen Candles) are among the cast members.

I'd be happy to give you a plot recap on The Girl Next Door ... but that's the next Ketchum book I'll be buying, and I don't want the thing spoiled for me. (In other Ketchum-related news, the movie version of his The Lost has been bouncing around the festival circuit, but has thus far eluded my own eyeballs.)

And as far as Off Season goes... Yowch. I doubt anyone could make it into a movie without gutting the thing.