After nearly 60 years, Richard Matheson\u2019s short story \u201cNightmare at 20,000 Feet\u201d still packs the same ice-cold punch to the gut that it did back when it was first published and continues to reign as one of the finest horror tales ever conceived. It\u2019s an expertly-crafted and seminal work and has been adapted for the screen twice and was most recently paid homage in an episode of Jordan Peele\u2019s reboot of The Twilight Zone. The plot is probably familiar to most people: businessman Robert Wilson\u2019s flight home quickly turns into a sweat-soaked, pitch-black carnival ride through his own sanity after he sees a mysterious creature on the wing of the airplane. We are planted next to Wilson moments before take-off, perhaps the most exciting and nerve-wracking moment of any flight. With no time to get acquainted with our protagonist, or even find out where we\u2019re going, it\u2019s wheels up and there\u2019s no getting out until the plane touches ground again. Like Wilson, we are trapped, with little to do but lay at the mercy of the events as they unfold. Straying from the source material, this version of Wilson (1963) isn\u2019t travelling for business, but is returning home after a 6-month stay in a mental hospital, where he went after suffering a nervous breakdown. When he begins to see the creature, he tries very hard to maintain his composure and dignity, always very aware that the slightest hint of erratic behavior could land him back in the hospital.\u00a0In another divergence from the original story, Wilson is travelling with his wife, who serves as a frustratingly staunch non-believer of the goings on, and to continuously remind him of his illness.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Both the 1963 and 1983 versions, however, remove all of that doubt. Matheson\u2019s script instead calls for one final twist, in which it is revealed that the wing is severely damaged, proving to the audience and the other characters that Wilson\/Valentine had been right all along and that he actually saved the plane. This daring addition turns the story in a completely different and far more interesting direction and presents a terrifying truth\u2014that the monster was real.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is a landmark in the history of horror fiction, melding mental illness, paranoia and the primal instinct for survival into a dizzying narrative that has been told and re-told for decades and will continue to inspire horror on the page and on the screen for decades to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The story of Matheson\u2019s Nightmare at 20,000 Feet <\/em>is interesting to me as it plays on another emotion and conception we have of flight. That it can be foreboding, tense, or paranoid. Where other examples of art I\u2019ve selected use flight as a metaphor for freedom, expression, or control over ones destiny, Nightmare <\/em>does the opposite. The plane becomes Wilson\u2019s prison. In the 1963 version his wife and the pressure of avoiding an institution keeps Wilson from expressing himself. Compare this to Lenny Kravitz\u2019s Fly Away <\/em>or to the story of Lawn Chair Larry. These passion projects show the freedom flight in a romantic light saying, \u201cimagine the beautiful things we can see from all the way up here!\u201d While Matheson dares to asks the opposite. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve also considered that it is the fear of freedom itself that the story is dealing with. Perhaps Wilson is institutionalized, and the gremlin story sending him back to hospital is his own unwitting self sabotage. While he is flying he is out of the institution, yet he is not safe because of something that exists in his mind. This version works under an assumption that original ambiguous ending implies that Wilson imagined the gremlin. <\/p>\n\n\n\n However if the ambiguous ending is interpreted as in later versions, where there was beast of some kind on the plane, then the world is big dangerous place full of things beyond our comprehension. Maybe we\u2019d be safer under control, inside a metaphorical institution. Of course, such reading in which Matheson is saying \u201cfreedom bad, control good\u201d is a stretch. I just found it to be an interesting thought as fear of freedom\/freedom as a dangerous concept are things I\u2019ve thought about.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gauthier, J. (2019, April 10).\u00a0Flight and fright: Richard Matheson\u2019s \u201cnightmare at 20,000 feet\u201d and its many adaptations<\/em>. Bloody Disgusting! https:\/\/bloody-disgusting.com\/editorials\/3555152\/flight-fright-richard-mathesons-nightmare-20000-feet-many-adaptations\/\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After nearly 60 years, Richard Matheson\u2019s short story \u201cNightmare at 20,000 Feet\u201d still packs the same ice-cold punch to the gut that it did back when it was first published and continues to reign as one of the finest horror tales ever conceived. It\u2019s an expertly-crafted and seminal work and has been adapted for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":15747,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-15744","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts","8":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15744"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15748,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15744\/revisions\/15748"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Sources<\/h2>\n\n\n\n