Before hitting the big screen, five famous horror movies had already established their terror through novels. Jaws, The Exorcist, Psycho, The Silence of the Lambs, and Ring all have literary origins, with their iconic characters and core premises rooted in the written word.
Jaws stems from Peter Benchley's 1974 novel. The story follows Police Chief Martin Brody as he attempts to stop a great white shark from terrorizing a seaside town in New England. While the novel was inspired by real-life shark attacks and the resulting public fear, its plot and characters are fictional.
William Peter Blatty's novel The Exorcist was published in 1971, inspired by an alleged exorcism that took place in 1949. The story centers on 12-year-old Regan, whose bizarre behavior prompts her mother and a priest to seek answers. Psycho, meanwhile, is based on Robert Bloch's 1959 novel, with the character of Norman Bates loosely inspired by criminal Ed Gein.
The novel The Silence of the Lambs was published in 1988, focusing on the psychological duel between FBI trainee Clarice Starling and the imprisoned Hannibal Lecter. The film adaptation later became only the third movie to sweep the five major Academy Awards.
Ring originates from Koji Suzuki's 1991 novel, which follows journalist Kazuyuki Asakawa as he investigates mysterious deaths linked to a cursed videotape. The 1998 film directed by Hideo Nakata, along with the 2002 American remake, brought this premise to a wider audience. Koji Suzuki has since continued to expand the novel series, and the films have spawned numerous sequels and spin-offs.