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Movie Novelizations #3: Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Posted in books, movies, pop culture, reviews with tags , , , , , on May 15, 2006 by Paxton

Everyone has heard of the tv show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, the show is a darkly humorous take on horror movies and teen dramas that has captured a very specific and loyal audience. The mythology of the show is very intricate and the rules very strict. In fact, the tv show Buffy the Vampire Slayer bears little resemblance to the 1992 movie that birthed it.

Back in 1992, 20th Century Fox decided to release Joss Whedon’s creation about a cheerleading vampire killer. Unfortunately, they also thought his vision was too dark. They decided to re-write it and make it more humorous and remove some of the darker aspects of the slayer myths and much of the killing. They continued to re-write throughout filming. So much so, that Joss walked off the set never to return. 20th Century Fox went ahead without him and we all saw the result. The movie tanked. I saw it in the theater because I thought it had a very interesting premise. While the underlying ideas were very cool, the execution was a complete disaster. If you are familiar with the tv shows Buffy and Angel, then you can hear parts of the movie that shadow what may have been. Donald Sutherland is great as the watcher, Merrick. Kristy Swanson is a pretty good, Buffy, too. The movie falls apart with the performances of two people. Rutger Hauer as Lothos, and Luke Perry as Pike. These two are bad, laughably bad. Not laugh ha-ha, but laugh “oh my god this is awkward” bad. I expected this from Luke Perry, as I was never a fan of him, even when I was watching 90210 religiously. But Rutger Hauer has had some really good roles. I have no idea what happened, but it wasn’t good whatever it was.

Buffy DVD Angel DVD
Since the movie was so bad, it took Joss another 5 years before he could begin to get the ball rolling on the Buffy storyline again. Figuring the damage done by the movie had long been forgotten, he wrote a somewhat “sequel” to his original Buffy script that became the pilot to a new show about the same character. To further distance the show from the movie, he moved the setting from LA to the fictional Sunnydale, CA and recast the lead actress. The show became a hit and spawned a very successful spinoff, Angel. I didn’t jump on the Buffy bandwagon right away. It was one of the first shows on the new WB in 1997 and I was just not convinced. After hearing about it for several years I checked it out but was a little lost because the storyline was so involved. Although I didn’t like it, I watched Angel which aired right after it. This show, while also confusing, had several characters I very much enjoyed and a darker premise. I really enjoyed Angel and watched it off and on until it was cancelled in 2004. I joined Netflix while consulting so I could watch the entire 5 season DVD collection of Angel. I finished it in Spring 2005 and the show stands as one of my favorite shows of all time. Buffy has been harder to finish. I am currently working through the season 3 DVDs as I have time (I bought the seven season Chosen Collection cheap during a sale last november). The show definately improves each season.

Anywho, that brings me to the 1992 movie novelization. What I was really hoping for was that the book would reflect the original Joss Whedon script and not the shooting script. I was wrong. There are several differences between the book and movie, though. Don Sutherland’s Merrick kills himself in the book to save Buffy, but he gets killed in the movie (like a bitch). The prologue in the book gives more information on the history of the slayers as opposed to the movie. Also, in the end, you see Buffy and Pike ride off into the sunset on a motorcycle. In the book, you see them ascending a long staircase at an old stone building, I guess alluding to their further adventures. The rest is pretty much the same. I enjoyed the book and there was definately more evidence of Joss’ writing in the book than in the movie. It’s an interesting proposition to think what would have been the result of the movie and tv show if they had used his original, and darker script. Would the movie have been successful? Would that have led to more movies and no tv show? Who knows.

A final note on the 1992 movie. I was suprised how many famous faces show up in this movie. One of Buffy’s group of girlfriends is Hilary Swank. Luke Perry’s buddy is David Arquette. If you watch closely at the end during the final basketball game, you’ll see Ben Affleck in a quick scene. The school’s counselor is Stephen Root who played Milton in Office Space and Jimmy James on the TV show NewsRadio. Several suprises I didn’t expect. Doesn’t really help the watchabilty of the movie, though.

Other Movie Novelization Reviews:
Clue: The Movie
Back to the Future Trilogy

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Movie Novelizations #2: Clue The Movie

Posted in books, movies, pop culture, reviews with tags , , , on April 24, 2006 by Paxton


Ever since I was a kid I’ve loved the game Clue. My friend Steve and I used to play it in his basement. It was so much fun. For Christmas, I even got the Clue VCR Mystery Game. Even though that VCR game was insanely hard, I still loved seeing the characters come alive. So, in 1985, when I heard there was a movie coming out, I had to see it.

I have stated before that Clue: The Movie is one of my (and my wife’s) favorite movies. It told the story of our six hapless dinner guests holed up in mysterious Hill House. One by one people in the house start dying and they have to figure out who among them is the murderer. The script is very quick and clever, and the actors perform the script with utmost enthusiasm. It is easily one of the most enjoyable and funny films I’ve ever seen. My wife and I quote it all the time.

When it was released, the movie screened one of 3 endings randomly sent to the theater. I had kept the newspaper clipping advertising the endings, but have since lost it. The theater by my house in Birmingham, AL got the ending that included all three with title cards telling you when one ending ends and another begins. This is the incarnation that would later appear on VHS then on DVD.

For such a large ensemble movie, I don’t remember there being too much advertising prior to the movie release. In January of 2006, I was Googling around the internet and found the Cluedo Fan Site which is a large site celebrating the history of the board game Clue (or Cluedo in countries outside the USA). On this site’s Clue: The Movie Guide, I was “clue”d (haha) in to the existence of the Clue movie novelization and the fact that the novel included an as-yet-unseen fourth ending. I was floored. I had no idea up until this point that this book or the extra ending even existed. I had to own it.

Needless to say, the book was tough to track down. In the span of a few weeks, I had found only one eBay auction that was offering it…..at 85 bucks. I don’t think so. I did some digging and procured a copy from an anonymous source.

You can see the book above. This novelization was a fascinating read because you can see the improv work done by the actors throughout the movie. Martin Mull as Col Mustard had several good ones. Like this:

Mustard: “Are you trying to make me look stupid in front of the other guests ?”
Wadsworth: “You don’t need any help from me.”
Mustard: “That’s right!”

The last line was not in the novel. I guess during shooting Martin Mull ad-libbed this comeback. They must have liked it because Martin Mull does this same comeback later in the movie in the kitchen while yelling at Mrs. White, but this is also not in the book. Madeline Kahn had the classic line:

Mrs. White: Yes, I did it. I killed Yvette. I hated her so… much… it… it… the… it… the… fee… flames… flames… on the side of my face… heaving… breathless… heaving breaths…
[mumbles on]

This was also not in the book meaning it too was ad-libbed on the spot. Such classic lines and they were created on the spot. During other scenes, there are some interesting tidbits about Michael McKean’s Prof Plum, and how he’s scared of screaming. Just little things that didn’t make it into the movie that I found intriguing. Other than these small tidbits, I am surprised how much the movie sticks to the script and the novel. Until, that is, we get to the infamous fourth ending.

To be honest, it was a little disappointing, but I had built it up pretty big in my mind. The ending involved Wadsworth telling how all the murders were done by Peacock and Plum. Plum protests his innocence and realizes that the gun is missing. Whoever has it, must be the killer. It is revealed that Wadsworth did it and he also poisoned the brandy, so everyone is going to die in the next few hours. The cops bust in like every other ending and Wadsworth recounts the entire story again, mesmerizing everyone. When he opens the door describing how Col Mustard arrived, he steps outside, shuts and locks the door. He then speeds away in his car, satisfied that he got away with it, but hears a low growl in the back seat. Apparently one of the German Shepards stowed away in the back seat and attacks him. Fade to Black….THE END.

As you see, it is the least clever ending and one that I’m glad got cut. Nevertheless, it was good to finally read it. If you’ve seen and loved the movie, by all means, track this book down, but you won’t be missing anything. Seeing the performances by the on-screen actors is better than the book anyway.

Check out Review #1:
Back to the Future trilogy movie novelizations

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Movie Novelizations #1: Back to the Future Trilogy

Posted in Back to the Future, books, movies, pop culture, reviews with tags , , , , on April 6, 2006 by Paxton

By the mid ’80s I was 10 years old and I loved to read. Now, I wasn’t reading Tolstoy or Shakespeare, but I was reading nonetheless. Movie novelizations were one thing that really got me interested in reading. I’m not talking about books that “inspired” a movie, or the novel a movie was based on. I’m talking about a novel written AFTER the movie script was written or based on the script of an in-development movie. In the ’80s and ’90s, movie novelizations were everywhere, yet today, they are rare if the movie isn’t based on a comic book. Every awesome genre movie got one. Demolition Man, War Games, the Back to the Future trilogy, the Batman movies, even more recent movies like the 1996 Mission Impossible remake had a movie novel based on its script. There was a WaldenBooks in the Riverchase Galleria many years ago (it’s a clothing store now) that had an entire section of movie novelizations. That’s where I spent most of my time at the mall (when I wasn’t in the mall arcade, Diamond Jim’s). Any movie that I enjoyed at the theater, I’d go pick up the movie novelization. For the most part, I still do it. One thing movie novelizations have going for them is that they are, for the most part, only released in paperback. This makes it extremely portable and easy to read anywhere.

In these books, the movie story was basically the same, but since the book was usually written on an earlier draft of the script, scenes that were cut out of the movie are still in the book. In some of the better novels, you also get inner monologue of the main characters. It gave an entirely new dimension to the story.

Being a pack rat, I still have most of these books. I thought it would be interesting to review some of these novels for you and let you know the good ones and the bad ones and how they compare to the movie they represent. Since I have so many of these books, I’ll only do a few at a time and make this an ongoing series. For a preview of some of the books, see the pic above. I have more, but I need to find them as they are hidden away in cardboard boxes after my move from Birmingham, AL to Jacksonville, FL. The first series of books today will be the books based on one of my favorite series of movies…the Back to the Future trilogy.

These were 3 of my favorite movies when I was a kid. When the first was released in 1985, I saw it in the theater at least 10 times. I was a freak for this movie. I almost died when it took 4 years to release the sequel, Back to the Future Part II. Part II was the first novel I bought of this series (at the aforementioned WaldenBooks). I had no idea the first movie had been released in novel form also. Many years later, after all the Back to the Future movies had been released on video, a “garage sale” store opened up about 20 minutes from my house. Now these places are called antique shops, but originally it was a garage sale store. This place was a goldmine for old books as it had an entire room dedicated to selling them. I can’t even tell you how many books I’ve found in this store. It was here that I stumbled across the paperback for the original Back to the Future. It even had the original sales receipt dated 1985. I was dumbstruck. I read it immediately. I began wondering if Part III had a movie novelization. I searched high and low. This was before the proliferation of the internet and Amazon.com or eBay. If it wasn’t at a local bookstore or at a garage sale or second hand store, you weren’t finding it, my friend.

After over a year of going back to the garage sale store, it finally appeared, like a great desert oasis, Back to the Future Part III: The Novel. It was my Holy Grail and I had found it. Giddy as a schoolgirl, I bought it and began reading it that night.

The books in this series are very true to the movies. You’ll find little tidbits here and there that weren’t in the movie. For instance, the original Back to the Future novel starts with Marty in school instead of in Doc’s lab. Some scenes are longer and some dialogue is slightly different, but overall it’s a really good adaptation of the movies.

Years later, before the garage sale store closed, I did find an alternate cover for Back to the Future Part II, it was white instead of blue, but I thought enough is enough. I believe you can find these on Amazon right now from third party sellers, but I’ll always cherish these books because it took me years to complete the set.

Coming up I’ll have looks at the novels for Clue: The Movie, The original Batman movies, the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies and the X-men movies. If I find my old stash of books, maybe I’ll have some more suprises.

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