Believe it or not, I was never a super-duper, die-hard fan of this great white shark. I saw Jaws 2 and Jaws 3D, both in the theater, long before I watched the original on TV and then via streaming. Sure, it’s entertaining. I like that the music, the “dun-dun, dun-dun, dun-dun, dun-dun” that seems to summons the shark, which throughout most of the film displays only its fin, piercing out of the ocean as its hidden body makes its way towards its victim.
The book, which came first, was a best seller. Many people forget that the book was as popular and noteworthy as the film. Some have read it and dismissed it. Too much concentration of the sheriff and his marriage, town politics, person-to-person rivalry, they say. But it is for these reasons that I prefer the book. Also, the book offers theories as to the shark’s origins that aren’t found in the film. So the book wins.
Some say this is a true story. Others say it’s a bunch of bullshit. I favor the second perspective but never mind, it’s an entertaining story.
The tragedy that sparked the story is true – A young man kills his family in the Amityville house. Included in the slaying are his parents and siblings. Years later the Lutz family purchases the house. They said it was haunted, not by your average house ghost but by demonic forces. The book, written in a diary format, covers more ground than the movie does. There are so many more paranormal occurrences in the book and I wonder why the film omitted so much. Anyway, the book is better and if you want to read a more detailed comparison between the book and movie, read this article here: Amityville Horror Book and Movie
I first saw this film on television as a kid. A doomed family rents a summer home which turns out to be a vampire house – the house itself feeds off of the life force of its occupants and regenerates as its victims die. There is this phantom hearse driver with dark sunglasses and a creepy smile that shows up whenever someone is about to die. Scary stuff.
Great movie. It is based Robert Morasco’s book by the same name. The book is better. It’s a rather obscure work and yet it is very influential. Like its predecessor The Haunting of Hill House, Burnt Offerings continues the trend of “a house as an entity” theme. The book gives a very detailed account of the house’s slow-building but inevitable power it has on the occupants. The film does its best with this but the book does it better.
One- two. (Um, what?) That’s how I introduced myself to both the book and movie, one right after another, hence “one-two”. Only it wasn’t quite like that, cause the book, which I took in first, is a behemoth thing, so it was more like onnnnnnnnnnnnnnnne then two. A lot is happening in Peter Straub’s meaty novel. Perhaps the title should be called “Ghost Stories” since there are several ghostly happenings varying across time and place. The film sticks to one of these stories – a female ghost returns to haunt four old men who harmed her when they were young. It was wise of the film to stick with one perspective. Film is a restrictive medium when compared to a story that is meant for a long novel, so I commend the filmmakers for not biting off more than they can chew. The plot of the book strayed several times, and because of this, I initially favored the film over the movie. You can read all about it here Ghost Story
However, as time marches on, I find myself remembering less and less of the film. But there is something about the book that is sticking with me. I’m not sure what it is. It’s sort of a vague feeling, as if part of me is still inside this snowy town when most of the hauntings take place. For this reason, I am doing a 180. I prefer the book.
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 Books of Daniel 