The Screaming Mimi

A touchstone of psychological horror, Frederic Brown's (1906-1972) cult novel The Screaming Mimi (1949), was subsequently filmed in 1958, (an adaptation famous for a shower scene of its heroine warding off the villain with a knife) and again by italian horror director Dario Argento in 1970 as "The Bird WiTh The CrysTal Plumage"