“Once a man commits himself to murder, he will soon find himself stealing. The next step will be alcoholism, disrespect for the Sabbath and from there on it will lead to rude behaviour. As soon as you set the first steps on the path to destruction you will never know where you will end. Lots of people owe their downfall to a murder they once committed and weren’t too pleased with at the time.” ~Alfred Hitchcock

Famous movie director Alfred Hitchcock took many of his movies ideas from books or short stories. How many of these books or stories, turned into movies by Hitchcock, have you read?

Rebecca by Daphne duMaurier.
Reviewed by Rebecca at Rantings of a Bookworm Couch Potato: “Daphne DuMaurier’s writing is beautiful, I often found myself just getting taken away by her words. Many times I felt myself needing to slow down as I read, to reread a passage in order to fully absorb the language.”
Reviewed by Carrie at Reading to Know: “Although I think that Daphne Du Maurier is an extremely clever writer and makes beautiful usage of the English language, she also wrote a very broken story with Rebecca.” (Note how in his movie Hitchcock “fixed” to some extent the brokenness Carrie writes about.)

Jamaica Inn by Daphne duMaurier.
Watch Jamaica Inn (1939) with Charles Laughton and Maureen O’Hara.
Reviewed at Library Hospital: “The descriptions, the phrasing before I turned that first page I already felt with nearly all my senses the scene she was describing. It was as if in my minds eye I could almost see and with my nose I could smell and with my body I could feel that November weather. I nearly forgot it was the middle of August and I was sitting on my couch chilled only by the air conditioning and a fan.”

The Birds by Daphne duMaurier (short story).
Reviewed at Savidge Reads: “. . . the story is nothing like the film apart from the fact that birds do turn on humans. I would say that (having watched the film again since) Daphne’s original version is much darker.”

Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith.
Reviewed at Becky’s Book Reviews: “Disturbing and super-creepy, but effectively so. I think the whole point of the novel was to show what could be lurking deep inside (or not-so-deep inside, perhaps just barely under the surface) of the person sitting next to you, the stranger.”

Rear Window by Cornell Woolrich (short story).
Reviewed by Dani at A Work in Progress: “Cornell Woolrich . . . was a successful writer of pulp and detective fiction, and I read that more of his stories and novels have been adapted to film than any other crime writer.”

Vertigo based on the novel D’entre les morts, aka Sueurs froides by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac.
LitLove compares the book to the movie: ” In the novel it’s the man’s innate sadness which seems to suck in tragedy, whereas in the film, it’s the woman’s. In the film, the woman is dangerous for the man, whereas in the novel, the man is dangerous to himself.”

The 39 Steps by John Buchan.
Reviewed at Woman of the House: “I was amused rather than dismayed at the long pile-up of unlikely events throughout the story. Our hero, Richard Hannay, has the uncanniest luck I have ever seen and is more than once saved from certain demise by the unlikeliest of rescuers.”

The Lady Vanishes, based on The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White.
Reviewed by Dani at A Work in Progress: “It has all the right elements to create a perfect suspense story–a speeding train crossing Europe filled with holidaymakers returning home, a woman who mysteriously disappears, and a lone witness whom none of the passengers believe.”

Psycho by Robert Bloch.
Reviewed at The Literary Lollipop: “Highly readable and compulsively entertaining. If you’re looking for a scare this Halloween, you don’t have to look very far.”

Marnie by Winston Graham.
I couldn’t find any reviews of the book, but one blogger does call it a good movie, but a bad novel.

The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad.
Reviewed at Lizzy’s Literary Life: “It’s not a thriller in the modern sense for the lens is not focused on the derring-do of spies and terrorists. It’s an examination of the fallout of a terrorist act gone badly wrong.”

Topaz by Leon Uris.
I couldn’t find any reviews of this thriller by one of my favorite authors back in the day, the days, that is, of my teen-age reading. I was a great fan of Mr. Uris’s WW II/Holocaust novels: Exodus, Mila 18, and QB VII. I’m sure I also read Topaz at some time, but I don’t remember it.

To Catch a Thief by David Dodge.
No reviews of the book, and I’ve not read it.

The Trouble with Harry by Jack Trevor Story.

Stage Fright, based on the short story Man Running by Selwyn Jepson.

I’m still thinking about lighthouses, since Wednesday’s National Lighthouse Day post. And I’m rather fond of Longfellow. So here’s a poem about a lighthouse by that homely poet of homespun Americana.

The rocky ledge runs far into the sea,
And on its outer point, some miles away,
The Lighthouse lifts its massive masonry,
A pillar of fire by night, of cloud by day.

Even at this distance I can see the tides,
Upheaving, break unheard along its base,
A speechless wrath, that rises and subsides
In the white lip and tremor of the face.

And as the evening darkens, lo! how bright,
Through the deep purple of the twilight air,
Beams forth the sudden radiance of its light
With strange, unearthly splendor in the glare!

Not one alone; from each projecting cape
And perilous reef along the ocean’s verge,
Starts into life a dim, gigantic shape,
Holding its lantern o’er the restless surge.

Like the great giant Christopher it stands
Upon the brink of the tempestuous wave,
Wading far out among the rocks and sands,
The night-o’ertaken mariner to save.

And the great ships sail outward and return,
Bending and bowing o’er the billowy swells,
And ever joyful, as they see it burn,
They wave their silent welcomes and farewells.

They come forth from the darkness, and their sails
Gleam for a moment only in the blaze,
And eager faces, as the light unveils,
Gaze at the tower, and vanish while they gaze.

The mariner remembers when a child,
On his first voyage, he saw it fade and sink;
And when, returning from adventures wild,
He saw it rise again o’er ocean’s brink.

Steadfast, serene, immovable, the same
Year after year, through all the silent night
Burns on forevermore that quenchless flame,
Shines on that inextinguishable light!

It sees the ocean to its bosom clasp
The rocks and sea-sand with the kiss of peace;
It sees the wild winds lift it in their grasp,
And hold it up, and shake it like a fleece.

The startled waves leap over it; the storm
Smites it with all the scourges of the rain,
And steadily against its solid form
Press the great shoulders of the hurricane.

The sea-bird wheeling round it, with the din
Of wings and winds and solitary cries,
Blinded and maddened by the light within,
Dashes himself against the glare, and dies.

A new Prometheus, chained upon the rock,
Still grasping in his hand the fire of Jove,
It does not hear the cry, nor heed the shock,
But hails the mariner with words of love.

“Sail on!” it says, “sail on, ye stately ships!
And with your floating bridge the ocean span;
Be mine to guard this light from all eclipse,
Be yours to bring man nearer unto man!”