Nicholas Condé’s novel was initially released in hardback but was, of course, eventually relegated to those drug store mass market racks where horror always managed to reach the masses best, in a form meant to be read and trashed. I reiterate that the awkwardness remains but not the intention. I think if Condé had created a bizarre cult of his own, I’d have been much more into The Religion, but I guess I’m just a horror fiction atheist after all.” Residues of awkwardness from the cultural appropriation, as Errickson reads it, remain in the film, but those instances do not discount what is a solid and smart thriller, given its origins. “Early on I liked the academic anthropology angle, but making ‘the religion’ an actual one – Santeria, a voodoo variant – showed little imagination and a weird sort of tasteless cultural appropriation. Errickson’s reading provides us a decent reception of the novel to begin noting some of Frost’s tasks in adapting the screenplay.

That is where I began looking for information and history on the original novel, anyhow.Ĭonsulting Hendrix’s book, I couldn’t find any mention of Condé or his novel but was then able to reference the blog that inspired Hendrix, Too Much Horror Fiction by Will Errickson, and was able to find an entry.

First, the film is based on Nicholas Condé’s 1982 novel, The Religion, a work, it seems to me, right out of horror’s 1970s and 80s paperback history as compiled by Grady Hendrix in last year’s Paperback from Hell.

IMDb summarizes the plot as: “A New York psychiatrist finds that a brujería-inspired cult, which believes in child sacrifice, has a keen interest in his own son.” Succinct as that summary is, there is a lot to unpack about this film and some of the decisions Frost must have encountered in writing the screenplay. In perfect time for the Halloween season, we are finally looking at Mark Frost’s screenplay for John Schlesinger’s 1987 film, The Believers.

The believers novel