Last year I read William Peter Blatty’s novel for the first time. As one might expect, there is more detail in the book than the movie. I liked seeing things through the priest/psychiatrist’s perspective. He’s a much more interesting character in the book. What’s interesting is that even up to the very end, the priest allows for a perspective that maybe, just maybe, Satan has nothing to do with the girl’s psychosis and her condition is triggered by some kind of mental illness. Mind you, it is an illness that grants supernatural powers; super strength, telekinesis, etc., but an illness never the less.
The book is great. And yet, here I go favoring the film. It’s hard to compete with the visual of Regan’s head spinning around. Her monstrous face, her demonic voice! The fact that it freaked-out audiences when this film premiered.
But the book is good. No, It’s great. It’s just, well, I like the movie. And that is all.
Confession time: I have never read a Hardy Boy’s novel. I had several growing up, probably passed down to me from an older brother-in-law. They were hard cover treasures with blue spines and enticing cover images; two teen boys on the verge of discovering something, their eyes filled with both wonder and fear. The series featured two brothers, Frank and Joe Hardy, sons of a detective I do believe. They live the lives of clean-cut All-American boys, but oh gee whiz, here they go again, solving some kind of murder mystery that had led the boys on several dangerous escapades.
Okay, I lied in the above paragraph. I’ve read some chapters from some of this series. I remember getting lost in the plot, putting the books down and picking up the joystick of my Atari game system. Though these books were written for young adults, they failed to gain my attention for reasons for which I can’t remember. As an adult, I have never read Agatha Christie. I never watched Murder She Wrote. I have seen several Scooby-Doo episodes though! The “Scoobmiester” is more my speed. Each episode features several scary antics and the perpetrator is always that one other character introduced at the beginning of the episode. Oh but it was still exciting to remove the mask of the Scarecrow Man and find the face of Old Man Crawley.
For the Halloween season, I read James J Cudney’s “Haunted House Ghost”. It is a murder mystery and the disturbing events unfold in October, culminating on Halloween. Kellan is the central character, the solver of mysteries. As with the Hardy Boys, he’s done all this kind of solving before. This is the 5th book in Cudney’s Braxton Campus Mystery series. To date it is the last book and here I am, beginning the series with it. I had to, for it had a haunted house and a ghost. Kellen bought a house in his hometown of Braxton, a college town where he professes at (He’s a professor at Braxton college in other words). Oh but the house once belonged to Prudence Grey, who mysteriously disappeared a long time ago. Or maybe she was killed? So is it her ghost that is banging on the locked basement door? Is it her ghost that vandalizes his property and causes disarray for the construction crew?
Aside from murders and scandals, Braxton is a charming community. Everyone knows everyone. Former mayors patronize with librarians, the town’s female sheriff is “chummy” with Kellan, the parish priest is known by all, you get the idea. And it seems that all their energies are devoted to Braxton activities, especially the upcoming Fall Festival. And it is wonderful, several days of games, fortune telling, haunted hayrides, corn mazes. It really was fun reading about these things in October. Oh but gosh darn it, there goes a murder, right smack dab in the middle of the hayride. Does this murder have anything to do with the remains of a skeleton that was found at the construction site of a former library that burned down in the 1960’s? Does it have anything to do with “the ghost that haunts” Kellan;s house?
This is a whodunit book. In order for the reader that narrow the scope and take a guess at “who” the killer is, there has to be many suspects; a whole lot of potential “whos”. And there is. And…this confused the Hell out of me. Thankfully Cudney provided a character outline at the beginning of the book, describing who was who in the town of Braxton. He listed characters that fell under the heading of (This) Family or (That Family), even including ex-wives and long departed grandfathers and such. Constantly, I slid the eReader arrow back to the beginning to remind myself who a certain character was in relation to another character. Still I was bewildered, and it didn’t help that the “status” of many of these characters changed as the book went on. It turns out that Boy is not really the son of This Man but rather his father is Him. Him, as it turns out, once slept with HER and therefore That Lady over there is really an Aunt. And no, She was never murdered, it was Her instead who was killed, but maybe not because She was wearing a disguise the whole time and was never who you thought she was. Honestly, I felt like clawing my brains out at times.
I can’t really criticize the book though. It is very well written and assembled brilliantly like a house of cards, with each card representing a character, or a plot point, and no they can’t be out of place or else the whole story crumbles. The story doesn’t crumble. I would go mad trying to write this story and keep track of everything. I would fail. Cudney does not fail.
Maybe these whodunit stories just aren’t for me. I have nothing to compare Cudney’s story to due to my lack of experience with mystery novels. I’ve watched several Perry Mason episodes though and these plots drive me bonkers as well. I just wanted more action in the story. Most of the novel gets bogged down in backstories and unofficial testimonies and descriptions of families and extended families. But I guess that’s what is needed for this kind of novel. And there wasn’t much haunted house activity going on to satisfy me, a haunted house kinda’ guy! Oh well.
In short, this is a well-crafted mystery plot. Maybe it’s just not my kind of genre. I should read me some Agatha Christie. Hell even some Hardy Boys just to widen my perspective of the mystery genre. But I have a feeling you, my reader, will enjoy this Haunted House Ghost more than I did. It fits in quite well with the Halloween season.
For years I didn’t know that there even was a book. I thought Roman Polanski’s 1968 film was the one-stop-shop for this tale of a woman who is about to give birth to Satan’s baby. Little did I know that the book came first. Little did I know that Iva Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby is one of three books credited for spawning the horror paperback novel trend (Along with William Peter Blatty’s novel The Exorcist and Thomas Tryon’s book The Other).
The book is more mysterious and suspenseful than the film. However, the film’s cast is excellent. Ruth Gordon is great. And who can forget that other old lady shouting “Hail Satan!”
I suppose if someone put a gun to my head and demanded that I state a preference, I might then go with the book. But there is no gun to my head, so I don’t have to do that.
I saw the 1973 film The Legend of Hell House before I read Richard Matheson’s book. I liked it. It was spooky fun, a good haunted house film. But some of the finer plot points just didn’t make sense to me. It took the book (“took the book”, that rhymes!) to fill in the gaps. When a medium doesn’t do the job of making me understand the story, it obviously must take second place to the medium that does. And so, the book is better.
I enjoyed the film better after reading the book (watched it a second time), but that is only a testament to the novel’s superiority.
For a more in-depth comparison, read my review of the two (“review of the two”, rhymes again!) Hell House/Legend of Hell House
A long-standing mansion torn apart by the widening of a central fissure. A family of long-linage down to two sole surviving members, pitted against each other in a death match. And finally, the splitting of the psyche; madness and mental decay. All this one short story from Edgar Allen Poe. Themes of totality, dualism and a whole bunch of other “isms” for literary analysts to study for years and years. This has been a favorite of mine since I was a young reader. I’ve seen one or two movie portrayal over the years. Just the other night I rented what I hoped would be the best cinematic portrayal of this extensively themed story. It was. Directed by Roger Corman , screenplay by Richard Matheson (this guy will appear on this list two more times) and starring Vincent Price, how could it go wrong? It didn’t. Unlike the story’s pitting of one thing against the other, I will not but the two mediums at odds in this case.
Shirley Jackson uses her words brilliantly, poetically, to create this terrifying story that set the standards for a good haunted house read. Likewise, Robert Wise brings the same terror to life on the screen. Impressive visuals, great camera work, and who can forget the phantom pounding. BOOM BOOM BOOM!
So once again, I refuse to declare which is the better. And remember, the film I am referring to is the 1963 movie titled The Haunting. Forget that terrible remake in 1999. Forget it I tell you! For a more detailed comparison, read this review – The Haunting of Hill House/The Haunting
Also, the Haunting of Hill House inspired Season 1 of Michael Flannagan’s Netflix series which is also titled The Haunting of Hill House. Season 2 is this year and it is The Haunting of Bly Manor, which I told you about in the last entry on this list.
The Henry James classic ghost story, analyzed by many over the years, praised by nearly all. Including me. Do I dare put a film of this on equal ground? I dare. And the film, from 1961, is The Innocents.
It’s the story of a Governess for two children. She is convinced that ghosts are haunting poor little Miles and Flora. Is this really happening or is all in her mind, making her an unreliable narrator?
James, of course, deserves praise for his work. But his writing is a little challenging. The film tells the same story and it flows perfectly. So – a tie. For a more detailed comparison, read my review: Turn of the Screw/The Innocents
Also be on the lookout for the Netflix series The Haunting of Bly Manor, which is inspired by The Turn of the Screw. It premieres soon. In days.
Let’s see, I think I’ve seen two Phantom of the Opera films. I saw the silent film of the 1920s starring Lon Chaney Sr. and then I watched a version by Hammer Film Productions. The silent film is the better of the two.
Oh but the book! By Gaston Leroux! I read a large chunk of this book while I was in Paris, where I visited the famous Palais Garnier – The Paris Opera House, which of course is the site of the events in the story. To read the words and then take in the sites. Here is a quote from me from an article I wrote:
“There’s the grand staircase of white marble with breathtaking views over the balcony balustrade. There are towering pillars with ornate carvings. There are corridors that seem to stretch beyond infinity. Life-like statues haunt their corners. Thankfully, there is an author who succeeds in matching these wonders of the eye with the marvels of storytelling. His name is Gaston Leroux. His novel – The Phantom of the Opera.”
I was so intrigued by the story of “the Opera ghost” that haunts the singers and stagehands, only to learn he is not a ghost at all. He’s a disfigured musician who lives in the sewers of Paris and rises up once in a while inside the Opera House he once performed at. None of the films were able to capture the essence of the story as well as the book in my opinion.
It was sold out. The movie theater, I mean, when I first attempted to see Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hallow. I was so disappointed. I ended up waiting until it came out on video to finally watch it. And once I did, I was disappointed again. Sure the graphics were great; the headless ghost on his black mare rising out of the tree – creepy. Ah but the premise of the story sucked. Ichabod Crane, an investigator played by the handsome Johnny Depp? No Mr. Burton, Ichabod is a homely looking school teacher.
What’s missing is the charm of the original. The picturesque description of Sleepy Hollow that Washington Irving conveys. Irving captures the spirit of autumn and sets it loose on the page.
I guess there are several film versions. I remember a made-for-TV film and that was better than the Burton bomb. As was a cartoon. But none of these compare to the original tale.
H G Wells makes this list again with his novella The Island of Dr. Moreau. The doc in question is creating beast-folk on his island via vivisection surgery on animals. There were several film adaptions of this work, including a 1996 film starring Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer. But the only film version of this book that I saw is Island of Lost Souls from 1932. It is this old black and white film for which I draw the comparison.
I don’t know, the movie was okay. Nothing extraordinary. But in the book, there are things that stand out, like the inhuman shrieks of pain that are heard throughout the jungle whenever the mean ol’ doc is doing surgery on his subject. There are many more interesting beast-folk in the book than the movie, so the book wins.
The Books of Daniel 