Discussing books on movies … almost as good as watching them, and without the sticky floors!

A short time ago, I found myself sitting in front of my television experiencing that odd sensation the French like to call déjà vu. It happened while I was watching the 1988 remake of THE BLOB starring a fabulously mulletted Kevin Dillon and (dreamy sigh) the lovely Shawnee Smith. Despite my professional reputation as an appreciator of the horror genre, this was the first time I had actually seen the movie, which was why it seemed so strange to me that I found so much of it eerily familiar.

At first I thought this was because the film was a remake, but then I remembered that I’ve never actually seen the original Steve McQueen version or its 1972 Larry Hagman-directed sequel (BEWARE! THE BLOB), either. As far as I could remember, I was a BLOB virgin, yet as the highly entertaining movie played on, I felt that somehow I had been there before.

The movie was nearly over when finally I realized what was going on: While it was true that I hadn’t seen any of the movie versions of THE BLOB franchise, I had read the novelization of the remake back in the eighth grade and the déjà vu I was experiencing was the result of my residual memories of that experience.

It’s been a long time since I stopped reading novels based on movies (rather than the more traditional vice versa), but there was a time in my childhood when they constituted the totality of my fictional literary intake. I can remember quite clearly a time when my favorite section in my local bookstore was the dark corner devoted solely to those insta-paperbacks whose covers promised the same thrilling adventures that were playing in the local cineplex at that very moment, only better, because – as everyone knows – the book is always more satisfying than the movie.

Like so many things, this all changed when puberty struck and I decided I was now too mature to devote any time to something so juvenile as novelized adaptations of junky Hollywood trash, and I instead bought my first copy of SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE. True, that, too, had once been a movie – and one with a buttload of memorable Valerie Perrine nudity to boot! – but it had been a book first, so it didn’t count. And so, with the exception of one book I shall discuss in the weeks ahead, I didn’t read or even think about the film novelization genre again until my BLOB epiphany a few days ago.

Clearly, it was time for a re-examination.

The problem was that – besides the one title I just alluded to – I didn’t actually possess copies of any of these books anymore, despite the fact that they once constituted 90 percent of my personal library. Luckily, like so many of you, I have a mother, and she is the kind of person who considers it a sin to throw away a book, no matter how much time has passed since someone last laid their eyes upon it. I suspected that if I were to make an exploration deep into the bowels of my parent’s basement, I would doubtlessly return with a handful of old novelizations to review.

My suspicions turned out to be correct. After a thorough search through the most-cluttered section of my parents’ home, I found seven books that met my precise requirements, which – along with the title I keep mysteriously refusing to name – meant I had eight chances to explore the question of whether or not the canard that the book was always better than the movie was true, even if the movie happened to come first.

Since this is a question that deserves serious attention, I have decided to devote not one, but three columns to its investigation. In this first one, I shall look at the novelizations of ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING, RED HEAT and DICK TRACY, while in the second I shall discuss POLTERGEIST, THREE AMIGOS and THE RESCUE, and I’ll finish up with a look at TOTAL RECALL and the lone not-yet-named title I held onto for all these years.

So, enough with the blibber-blabber, let’s get to it!

ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING by Elizabeth Faucher

Movie: How can you hate a movie that has the chutzpah to feature a scene where Elisabeth Shue (aka Ivory McPalewhitegirl) earns the respect of an all-black blues club audience by improvising a ditty in which she expresses the pain of being a babysitter? Very easily, you say? You’re all a bunch of no fun, hard-hearted bastards. If only for featuring the utter non sequitur of the character of a 10-year-old girl obsessed with the Marvel version of Thor, god of thunder, this movie deserves some of your nostalgic-appreciation.

Book: Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the book, which not only denies us the pleasure of watching young Miss Shue as she exudes her inexplicable Shueness, but also is written primarily to appeal only to young adolescents. And while I’m sure I appreciated this when I was a young adolescent, I now find the book’s lack of depth insulting and wish that Ms. Faucher had taken the time to include some of the movie’s deeper subtextual subtleties in the body of her no-frills prose. Plus, reading about Elisabeth Shue singing the blues simply doesn’t come close to being as powerful as actually seeing it for yourself.

Verdict: The movie is clearly better than the book.

We Suggest: That someday in the near future you get the kids together to enjoy an Elisabeth Shue double feature and watch ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING and LEAVING LAS VEGAS back to back, thus teaching your children how to go from fetching ingénue to skanky Oscar nominee in just eight short years. Entertaining and educational!

RED HEAT by Robert Tine

Movie: Movie Executive #1: I’m just spitballin’ here, but how about we do a Schwarzenegger movie where his crazy foreign accent makes sense?
Movie Executive #2: Like what?
ME #1: I dunno, he could be a Russian or something….
Movie Executive #3: But Movie Executive #1, it’s 1988 and the Russians are still totally evil!
ME #2: And isn’t Schwarzenegger German or something?
ME #1: First, he’s Austrian. Second, who gives a fuck? All those crazy Eastern European accents are totally interchangeable. And third, he could be a Russian cop. Y’know, a commie, but a law-abiding Dirty Harry commie people in the Midwest will like.
ME #3: We could make it a buddy-cop movie!
ME #1: Exactly!
ME #2: I hear Eddie Murphy’s available….
ME #1: Cheaper.
ME #3: How about Joe Piscopo?
ME #1: Cheaper. We need someone who isn’t going to out-act Schwarzenegger off of the screen.
ME #2: Uh … Jim Belushi?
ME #1: Brilliant! Gentlemen, I believe we have our next blockbuster picture!

Book: While the novel’s pedestrian prose and inability to transcend the limitations of the film’s high-concept artificiality work against it, it at least has the good taste to include all of the sex and violence that was presumably cut out of the finished film. Trust me when I say that Gina Gershon’s character is a lot sluttier (read: better) in the book than she is in the movie.

Verdict: The book is better than the movie, but then so is passing a kidney stone. It’s all relative.

We Suggest: You get together with some of your friends and improvise scenarios in which other bad movies from the ’80s got made. Try it! It’s fun!

DICK TRACY by Max Allan Collins

Movie: Pretty colors! Madonna’s boobs! Al Pacino getting some of that Jack Nicholson Joker action! Madonna’s boobs! Amazing makeup effects! Madonna’s boobs! Star-studded cameos! Madonna’s boobs! Sondheim, Sondheim, Sondheim! Madonna’s boobs!

Book: Hey, where did Madonna’s boobs go? In all seriousness, this book has a slightly better pedigree than its peers, if only for being authored by the acclaimed crime novelist Max Allen Collins, who also happened to be writing the Dick Tracy comic strip at the time of the film’s release. Thanks to his experience with the genre and the strip’s specific characters, Collins is able to give the book far more style and depth than what you’ll find in the beautiful, but otherwise vapid movie.

That said, the book has one major flaw that I remember really pissed me off when I first read it in junior high school: Apparently Collins was forbidden by the studio (most likely at Beatty’s request) not to give away the film’s shocking end reveal (in which Madonna’s boobs turn out to be the true identity behind the faceless villain The Blank), which means the book ends with its main mystery unresolved. As a 14 year-old who had seen the movie before he read the book, and who thus knew that The Blank equaled Breathless Mahoney, I thought this was a major rip-off and this experience might have been the motivating factor in my eventual abandonment of the whole novelization genre.

Verdict: A tie. The book is entertaining and well-written, but Madonna’s boobs made me a man.

We Suggest: That you write and send a letter everyday to the Walt Disney Company and Warren Beatty, demanding that a new version of the book be released with the proper ending. If we all do it, they’ll have no choice but to heed our call. –Allan Mott

Buy it at Amazon.
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OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THESE AUTHORS:
• THE LAST QUARRY by Max Allan Collins
• MY LOLITA COMPLEX AND OTHER TALES OF SEX AND VIOLENCE by Max Allan Collins and Matthew V. Clemens
• QUARRY’S LIST by Max Allan Collins
• THE WAR OF THE WORLDS MURDER by Max Allan Collins