I remember back then, Bob, when novelizations of movies, particularly horror and sci-fi, flew off the presses like penny-dreadfuls. And usually they were. The stacks in our local bookstore were filled with them. There was one of the cult classic, It's Alive, a low-budget but incredibly creepy and atmospheric flick about a murderous, monstrous new-born infant genetically deformed by a "miracle" contraceptive drug the mother had previously used. As it went on a bloody spree of mayhem and was being hunted down, the pharmaceutical company tries to hush-up causing the situation. The novelization? Pheh. And then there was Grizzly, cashing in on the Jaws phenomena. It also became a cult hit and, again despite a limited budget, it had the ability to cause screams, shrieks and shivers from the audience. An enormous 18-foot-tall bear comes from the hinterlands and brings its own mayhem until the hero finally blows it up with a bazooka. It was a shark-on-land ripoff but it worked. The producers knew what they were doing. The novelization? Eech. The only film-to-book that was far-above-average was the adaptation of Prophecy. The movie was about, again, monstrous grizzly bears but this time they've been mutated into horrific creatures from the poisoning of the water by a paper-mill company dumping toxins. Talia Shire, fresh off of her award-nominated and critically acclaimed role in Rocky, starred. The film got medium critical positives, but the novelization was done by an author who decided to take the screenplay and make it his own, rather than rehashing dialogue with mediocre fillers. He took it seriously. The characters and scenes were fleshed out to make the reader sympathetic and understanding. It was one of those rare incidents where the novelization was actually better than the movie. The only other time that happened, from the books I purchased or read, was the novelization of Star Wars. Like the film, it was of high quality.
Gerard