Marilyn & Julia

[dom]

I thought this had come up previously but I couldn't find it during my brief search.

I saw a picture in a recent Forums slideshow of Julia with one or a number of cast members and I remember thinking that it would have made a great Marilyn Ross paperback novel cover photo. Then I wondered why Julia never made it to the cover which then made me wonder if Julia had ever made an appearance in a Marilyn Ross novel? And then I wondered if all the characters/actors on the front of the novels were actually in the novels (not necessarily as the characters we know them as)?

Does anyone know?

[Midnite]

Dom,

Julia appears in a few of the books, yet she only graces the cover of House of Dark Shadows-- the movie cast seen in posters, but flipped.

Reprints of the first 5 books feature Barnabas on the cover, though he's not in them.  That must have disappointed a lot of kids!  He's even fanged in one, sigh.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Reprints of the first 5 books feature Barnabas on the cover, though he's not in them.  That must have disappointed a lot of kids!  He's even fanged in one, sigh.

It certainly disappointed me at first. But then as I started reading them, I found that I didn't really miss him. And then after he finally did show up, it wasn't like he was written the same way that he was on the show, anyway. And increasingly the storylines began to make less and less sense with him popping up in all sorts of time periods in the past, yet, unless I'm forgetting any instances, no one in those time periods had ever heard of a Barnabas Collins prior to his appearance in their time! But then I came to think that the only way to read those books and stay sane was to take each one as a self-contained story and not to try to think of them in any way as a connected storyline.

[Uncle Roger]

Julia, Willie Loomis and Professor Stokes, all popular characters on the TV show, appear very late in the series, after the release of HODS. Stokes never seems to have much to do and Willie is there basically replacing the Ross character Hare. Julia's most interesting moment comes in a fashion debate with Elizabeth. I believe it's Julia's mod red pantsuit versus Elizabeth's white linen gown.

[dom]

Thanks! 

[Gerard]

One of the silliest scenes I vaguely remember from a MR novel (I still have it somewhere in the house) was a plot set back in the late 1890's where some non-DS womanly character moves to Collinwood (as a governess/maid/companion/whatever) and she's looking out a window during a winter storm.  She sees a man walking up to the front door of the mansion in a heavy coat and hat.  A dog attacks him, taking off the hat, revealing he's a werewolf.  He growls at the dog that runs away in fright as the werewolf pick up the hat and puts it back on its head.  There's a knock at the door.  The latest heroine goes down to answer it and screams when she sees the figure is the same as the werewolf, but when it takes off its hat, it's Quentin.  Barnabas was somewhere in that plot (one of the usual "Barnabas, Quentin and..." things), but no one else from the DS canon (from what I recall) in the late 1890's. 

Those MR novels certainly weren't literary classics (neither were the Gold Key comics with their awful illustrations).  But they did give us our DS "fix," especially for another year after the series went off the air.

Gerard

[dom]

I loved going to the book store to search for them, finding them, marveling over them, buying them. Never read one. Well, I did read one - the one with uncle Charles - that's all I remember of it.

[Gerard]

I would purchase them at the book counter in our local Montgomery Ward's.  They cost a whopping 45 cents.  The novelization of HoDS was a mind-boggling ninety cents because it contained photographs from the film.  Every few years, I pull it off the shelf, blow the dust off it and re-read it.  With some embellishments and minor changes, it pretty much follows the uncut script word-for-word (including the hanging-David scene, complete with a still in the photos section).  The only major addition was at the end, where a final scene was written by MR of the survivors, especially Maggie and Jeff, commiserating over everything that happened as the police clean up the mess.  The final line is:  "A bat swooped and circled, and then it flew away."

Gerard

[Mysterious Benefactor]

I would purchase them at the book counter in our local Montgomery Ward's.  They cost a whopping 45 cents.

You must have been lucky enough to get discount prices because I paid the price that's on each book (50 cents for Dark Shadows through Barnabas Collins VS The Warlock, 60 cents for Barnabas, Quentin, And The Avenging Ghost through Barnabas, Quentin And The Grave Robbers, and 75 cents for Barnabas, Quentin, And The Sea Ghost and Barnabas Quentin And The Hidden Tomb. Those latter two were the only ones I could find back in the day. I didn't get copies of Barnabas, Quentin And The Mad Magician and Barnabas, Quentin And The Vampire Beauty until about 2000 when I paid $2.50 for each one - but I considered myself quite lucky to get them for that price because back in the '90s I'd seen them go for $10.00 and more!

The novelization of HoDS was a mind-boggling ninety cents because it contained photographs from the film

On the other hand, back in the day I only paid 75 cents for the hoDS novelization. I wonder if the price increased for subsequent printings?

But speaking of that novelization -

With some embellishments and minor changes, it pretty much follows the uncut script word-for-word

- that's mostly true, but not quite because the version of the script that Ross used was an intermediate version - neither the original draft nor the final draft. For example, the version in the book of the scene that's currently in the hoDS slideshow is an intermediate version. It's not even close to the film's version, and it also happens to include Sheriff Patterson actually trying to question Daphne without any luck, whereas in the film Daphne is unconscious. And interestingly enough, one of the lines of dialogue from that intermediate version is actually featured on the Fest's 1999 Movie Calendar because they also used the intermediate version of the script for the calendar.

All will become clear once I get back to sharing what's different in previous versions of the script...

[Gerard]

MB, you paid more than 45 cents for the novels?  What economically privileged place did you live in?  You paid less than 90 cents for the HoDS novel?  What economically privileged place did you live in?  Oh, you rich people always getting richer. 

I also remember where MR re-wrote scenes from the movie/script.  One had to do when Jeff staked Roger.  There were others.  But, like I said, they were rather miniscule and maybe even better (or worse).

I remember the novelization of Close Encounters of the Third Kind written by his royal majesty himself Stephen Spielberg.   God, it was awful.  He can direct but he sure can't write. 

Gerard

[Bob_the_Bartender]

Gerard,

Yes, I also read the CEIII novel years ago; I agree that the novel was eminently forgettable.

Bob

[Gerard]

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

[The Doctor and K9]

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 only film-to-book that was far-above-average was the adaptation of Prophecy......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.

I also thought the Star Trek Log Series by Alan Dean Foster were very good. He adapted the animated episodes and did 3 to a book for the first 6 books and then fleshed out the last three into novels by adding story elements. They were better than the Blish adaptations of the original episodes. Blish packed at least 5 and usually more into a similar sized book. The animated stories were really fleshed out and felt like lost episodes from the original show. Foster also did a great job with Star Trek The Motion Picture.