Any longtime reader of our sister site, Bookgasm, now 15, knows novelizations run in its blood. I suspect for many of us, movie novelizations were among the first non-children’s novels we read for pleasure. Being born in 1971, I remember a time when such books were the closest one could relive the experience of seeing the film, outside of a re-release or random TV airing. Unlike many of us, however, I kept reading them as an adult, well into this new millennium.

When I learned of the existence of a new nonfiction book treating the subject of novelizations seriously, instead of scorn, my interest was piqued. As you’ve guessed by now, the title in question is the splendid Light into Ink: A Critical Survey of 50 Film Novelizations, by the UK-based S.M. Guariento.

While doing my due diligence, it was as if a cartoon devil and angel hovered on opposite sides of my head, respectively trying to talk me out of and into buying it:
• “That subtitle sounds so academic, its bones have been drained of marrow.” / “Nonsense, look at those preview pages.”
• “It doesn’t cover the novelizations you’ve expected.” / “So what? Expand those horizons!”
• “It’s self-published!” / “You know that doesn’t mean what it used to. Plus, so were your two favorite books from 2018: Keith Alison’s Cocktails & Capers: Cult Films, Cocktails, Crime and Cool and Howard David Ingham’s We Don’t Go Back: A Watcher’s Guide to Folk Horror.”
• “It costs more than $50.” / “True, but here’s a black-and-white edition for less than $20!”

Regarding that last “argument,” Guariento has issued two editions of varying price points: respectively, the splashy, full-color, 480-page DeLuxe edition and the more affordable Midnight edition, whose only differences are being color-free inside and sporting a black cover. Being on the fence, I opted for the more prudent choice of Midnight.

Unfortunately, I loved the book — and I mean absolutely loved it — so naturally I should have kicked myself for not going DeLuxe, right? Instead, I corrected the issue; see the difference for yourself in the sample spreads at the end of this review. Either way, Guariento’s introduction alone is almost worth the purchase price. In just under 50 pages, he gives a thorough, global tour through the history of the novelization, which dates back much further than I assumed: 1608!

What follows amounts to the meat on these bones: full, no-stone-unturned discussions of 50 novelizations, grouped among eight thematic sections that encompass the post-apocalyptic, the satanic, the speculative and even the Italian. The filmographies of John Carpenter and David Cronenberg get their own separate chapters, as do novelizations better than their source material and, finally, novelizations that stand alone as excellent fiction in their own right.

In that last group falls the unlikely Taxi Driver, a literary-minded reimagining of the film’s screenplay, which Richard Elman makes all the more chilling by writing in the first-person POV of perhaps the last character in whose head one would want to spend time: Travis Bickle. Elman’s stream-of-consciousness approach includes clipped verse and thoughts that peter out on the page, bringing out Bickle as an “angry poet in embryo,” as Guariento writes. This chapter, coming toward the book’s end, is the best argument for Light into Ink’s existence.

Remarkably, not a single chapter fizzles, each adhering to a sturdy framework of context and criticism covering not just the book, but the film itself, the assigned author, the book publisher and its various editions. In essence, Guariento is reviewing as many movies as he is books, but of most value are his comparisons of the two media: what was lost, what was gained and — since authors often had to work from early screenplays that didn’t necessarily represent the final product — what could have been. On one hand, the smash novelization of The Omen, written by the film’s own screenwriter, David Seltzer, is pretty direct, like a bar band covering a hit song with little to no variation; on the other, Dennis Etchison’s translation of Halloween III: Season of the Witch draws upon more of Nigel Kneale’s notoriously discarded screenplay than the sequel that resulted. (Speaking of Kneale, his own Quatermass novel of 1979 earns its own chapter.)

In other words, you’re going to learn a lot. For example, two separate tie-in novels exist for Mad Max 2, The Cat o’ Nine Tails and Capricorn One, all of which are covered here. One of the Capricorn books is penned by Bernard L. Ross, a pseudonym for soon-to-be-famous thriller writer Ken Follett. Guariento covers another title by an author on the cusp of becoming a brand name, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes by none other than John Jakes, as well as an already established bestseller in Christopher Priest‘s eXistenZ, working under a John Luther Novak nom de plume.

Those men, however, are the outliers. We won’t count the directors doing their own dirty work (as John Boorman and George A. Romero did as co-authors of the respective Zardoz and Dawn of the Dead tie-ins, both discussed at length herein), but most of Light into Ink’s featured names aren’t recognizable à la Alan Dean Foster, Robert Sheckley or Mike McQuay — and thank God for that, because it allows Guariento to widen his scope to the likes of Hadrian Keene (The Laughing Woman), proving not even Radley Metzger’s porn was immune to riding the tie-in train, no matter how counterintuitive that move may be; and to Phil Smith, whose interpretation of the gory monster mash The Incredible Melting Man is backhandedly celebrated as “pulp trash. … When its aspirations are so deliciously low, can we honestly complain when it achieves them?”

Which brings us to Guariento’s secret weapon: the scalpel. To his credit, he doesn’t dismiss novelizations outright, but when the books are junk, he calls them junk. However vicious his takedowns read — deliciously so — they are equally well-informed, precise and funny. I’m going to share three of my favorite examples:

• On Harriet B. Gilmour’s Eyes of Laura Mars: “There’s simply no way to make lines like ‘”Oh no!” she gasped’ read well, for example, and she really ought to have had the good sense to leave ‘Aargh!’, ‘”No!” she screamed’ and, especially, ‘Nooooo…oo…oo!’ in the comic books where she found them.”

• On Alan Radnor’s Rabid: “Radnor appears to have left the world of letters in peace, leaving behind him one baffling question: how was he ever allowed inside in the first place? Never was a bush so beaten around by a writer. Faced with a slender script, Radnor seems to have chosen simply to quadruple the word count and hope for the best. … No observation is too trite, no thought too clichéd. Taken together, the effect is cretinising.”

• On Michael Hudson’s The Case of the Bloody Iris: “Never was there a sorrier case of talent outstripped by ego. Hudson is as keen on gore as he is on exclamation marks, but hasn’t the same zeal for proofreading. The text is plagued by missing words, misplaced apostrophes and contagious italics, plus Google Translate gibberish (‘You like the closer, no?’), mangled readymades (‘All of the sudden…’), tautologies (‘Jennifer screamed. They were hysterical screams, and she couldn’t stop’), baffling imagery (‘His face was a large translucent crust’) and gobsmacking illiteracy (‘A gloved hand like what surgeons wore’). Dialogue scenes repeatedly confuse the identity of interlocutors, so that Jennifer ends up interrupting herself, and her ditzy roommate Marilyn somehow discusses her own murder, despite being dead.”

Nothing gets by him, so pity the poor transposed vowel! Whether his prose is irreverent, sober or somewhere in between (“pendulous of bosom and crude of tongue”), I simply love the way Guariento writes across these winning essays. Coupled with several hundred glorious illustrations of cover art, that makes Light into Ink a volume to treasure. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

What’s a book on “elevator music” doing on a movie site like this? Well, when you’re Joseph Lanza’s Easy-Listening Acid Trip: An Elevator Ride Through ’60s Psychedelic Pop, barely a spread goes by without one film or another either mentioned in passing or discussed in detail. Metaphorically speaking, does any other text allow Ronnie Aldrich to rub elbows with Russ Meyer?

A rather intoxicating companion to Lanza’s seminal 1994 work, Elevator Music, this square (in size and subject) paperback from the mighty Feral House is more spin-off than sequel, in which the author casts his ears and pen toward the flower-power era and its unlikely marriage of hippie music covered and co-opted by the chronically unhip. And thank God they did!

Acid Trip’s opening chapters serve as a crash course in the history of “mood music”: soothing instrumentals so nonthreatening, they’re vanilla. Ranging from Muzak to orchestra-backed crooners, the easy-listening genre enjoyed a quiet run of roughly three decades before a dose of LSD turned it into a highly carbonated vanilla soda. Suddenly, such mood-music masters as Percy Faith, Lawrence Welk and 101 Strings were making mainstream waves and chart hits by covering rock acts from Bob Dylan to The Beach Boys, not to mention theme songs from blockbuster films as varied as Airport, Midnight Cowboy, The Thomas Crown Affair and Rosemary’s Baby.

Not only that, but the studio-based artists often did so with more innovation than they get credit for, likely because listeners approach the material with closed ears — if they dare approach it at all — and are predisposed to dismiss it as wallpaper. This, if nothing else, is Acid Trip’s Big Takeaway. Lanza aims to prove the snobbery wrong — and succeeds. He describes tracks so richly (e.g., “soft, chewy, melodic center” and “a creamy, orchestral soft-serve”) that even if you’re unfamiliar with them, you come away knowing exactly how they sound. Trips to YouTube will prove it; that the book is not packaged with an accompanying soundtrack is its only negative.

As Lanza guides us through this lounge-adjacent America, seeing it from the birth of surf to the post-Hair fallout, he pauses to give more ink on seminal acts and songs of influence. In the former group, you have The Beatles and The Doors, whose singles caused controversy among pearl-clutchers for alleged sex-and-drugs content — some valid, most imagined — yet perfectly fine among the same audience when turned into orchestral confections void of lyrics. Every now and then, particular attention is paid to an entire album, such as Forever Changes, the divisive third (and final) LP from Arthur Lee’s Love. While considered a masterpiece today, the record was commercially and critically derided upon release as Love’s hard-charging rock that won over Whiskey a Go Go had suddenly downshifted — without warning — to a relaxed flavor of baroque pop emblematic of the tune-in/turn-on times.

In the latter group, you have Paul Mauriat’s “Love Is Blue,” The Lemon Pipers’ “Green Tambourine,” Scott McKenzie’s “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair),” actor Richard Harris’ “MacArthur Park” and more, each bearing an incredible backstory and each sparking a multitude of covers that pour from the faceless Hollyridge Strings, the twin pianos of Ferrante & Teicher, the mysterious Mystic Moods Orchestra, the mad hits of Bert Kaempfert and so many others. In fact, Easy-Listening Acid Trip closes with an A-to-Z appendix of 50 such standards, “Psychedelic Favorites Refurbished,” providing discographic details for completists of “Never My Love,” “A Whiter Shade of Pale” and 48 more.

If you’ve ever read any of Lanza’s cultural history lessons, including last year’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Film That Terrified a Rattled Nation, you know to expect a heavily researched, but breezy tour filled with incredible sights — in this case, full-color album art every few pages, potentially hallucinogenic and definitely addicting. —Rod Lott

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Look, here is everything I dislike about Austin Trunick’s The Cannon Film Guide: Volume I, 1980-1984:
• Volume II is not yet available.
• Volume III is not yet available.

Otherwise, this book is B-movie gold.

Anyone who has seen Mark Hartley’s amazing 2014 documentary, Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films, knows that when it comes to The Cannon Group — and Israeli cousins/co-owners Menahem Golan and Yoran Globus — no shortage of great stories exists.

Whereas Hartley was limited to a manageable running time, print carries no such burden, and Trunick takes full advantage of that freedom — as if the behind-the-scenes book being broken into a trilogy weren’t already a dead giveaway. For example, Hartley’s doc recounted Golan and Globus’ decision to flip the order of the first two films in Chuck Norris’ Missing in Action franchise, but Trunick shares the full, more complicated details. While he may not have A-list access in terms of interviewees, he has the luxury of getting to plumb the depths of the deets … and strikes the mother lode.

Starting with 1980’s The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood, Golan and Globus’ first release after purchasing Cannon, Trunick devotes a chapter to each movie they theatrically released in the United States. Yes, that means The Last American Virgin and Ninja III: The Domination, but it also means such forgotten oddities as Seed of Innocence and Over the Brooklyn Bridge — the latter of which was advertised and opened with the wrong iconic bridge, the Manhattan, which Golan brushed off thusly: “Eh, a bridge is a bridge.”

While the standout chapters are — no shock — about the making of Cannon’s bread-and-butter classics (those referenced on the book’s cover tagline: “Ninjas! Breakdancers! Death Wishes!”), I confess it may be even more fun to read about Cannon’s legendary failures and the misbehavior that contributed to their downfall. For example, That Championship Season’s legitimate awards-season bid goes up in flames at the premiere when notorious alcoholic Robert Mitchum decides to hurl a basketball into a woman’s face. Then there the diva demands of Brooke Shields’ mother, Teri, “working” as a first-time producer on the flop adventure Sahara with bold displays of ego strokes — and swaths! — bested only by John and Bo Derek on the ill-fated sex romp Bolero. (And that’s really saying something when we also have Faye Dunaway at play, as The Wicked Lady.)

The misbehavior extends to Golan and Globus, of course, particularly in getting a Hercules sequel out of Lou Ferrigno under the guise of reshoots, so they wouldn’t have to pay him!

The book is well-researched, with only a few factual nits to pick, from incorrectly identifying the boxing drama Body and Soul as the first time Leon Isaac Kennedy and Jayne Kennedy shared the big screen (don’t forget Death Force!) and the campus comedy Making the Grade as the movie that gave us Andrew “Dice” Clay (it was Wacko), to denying poor Robert MacNaughton his due by giving credit for his role as the big brother in E.T. to Sean Frye. (Elsewhere, I’ll let the misspelling of Jon Voight’s name slide since the man has become a lunatic.)

When available, Q&As with key players supplement the film discussions. Again, Trunick may not have landed interviews with above-the-title talent, but everyone he did get adds considerable insight and value, including The Apple’s Catherine Mary Stewart, frequent helmer Sam Firstenberg (Revenge of the Ninja) and uncredited Exterminator 2 director William Sachs.

Published by BearManor Media and numbering more than 525 pages, this first Cannon Film Guide is as thorough as you’d hope it would be. Initially, I thought I might skip reading about the movies I disliked or had no interest in seeing, but that proved futile, because Trunick’s work is excellently entertaining. Less than 48 hours later, I had devoured every word. Given that Volume II promises to spotlight Cannon’s golden age, I cannot wait for more. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon or BearManor Media.

As a first grader, I distinctly remember sitting by my dad in front of the stereo cabinet, as he recorded a friend’s borrowed Star Wars soundtrack LP to reel-to-reel tape for my brother and I to listen to whenever we wanted, which was always. My only regret at the time is I wouldn’t — and didn’t — have the cardboard sleeve to gaze at while reliving George Lucas’ movie through John Williams’ instantly iconic score. (This was before the VCR invaded American households, folks.)

Aaron Lupton and Jeff Szpirglas would understand. That’s the experience Planet Wax: Sci-Fi/Fantasy Soundtracks on Vinyl exists to commemorate and celebrate. A sequel to their last year’s Blood and Black Wax, Lupton and Szpirglas pivot from the music that fuels famous horror films to the tunes of that misunderstood genre’s more beloved big brothers of science fiction and fantasy. This follow-up is every bit the keeper.

Once again from 1984 Publishing, the full-color hardcover looks sleek and gorgeous. As with the previous volume, Lupton and Szpirglas give each featured album a page to itself, with a brief (but highly knowledgeable) essay running underneath the cover art commanding the space from left margin to right. Some discs earn extra pages, such as the multiple releases of the big Star franchises — Wars and Treks. Peppered throughout are sidebar interviews with select composers, from Stu Phillips (TV’s Battlestar Galactica) to Brad Fiedel (The Terminator).

SF fans will be delighted with the such soundtrack behemoths represented as Vangelis’ Blade Runner, Jerry Goldsmith’s Planet of the Apes, Basil Poledouris’ Conan the Barbarian (and the Destroyer) and John Williams’ Close Encounters of the Third Kind (not to mention Superman and Raiders and E.T. and Jurassic Park and …). The story behind the classical gas that is the 2001: A Space Odyssey LP is almost worth the purchase alone.

What those fans may not be as enthused about are the oddball choices the guys throw readers’ way, which actually kicks the book up several levels for me. This includes the accidentally kitsch disco rock of Cannon’s The Apple, Queen’s anthemic and unconventional Flash Gordon score, the largely electro compilation for The Matrix, the library cues used by the Spider-Man cartoon series of the late ’60s, Harry Nilsson’s much-derided Popeye songs and, of course, the chart-topping funkster known throughout the Milky Way as simply Meco. All hail Meco.

Hell, speaking of, there’s even a spread on Star Wars novelty albums! (As someone who wrote an article on the subject for issue #13 of the late Cool & Strange Music Magazine, I can attest a galaxy’s worth of those puerile platters could fill an entire book.)

You don’t have to be a vinyl collector to appreciate the wonder of Planet Wax. But if you are, do your damndest to seek out the Record Store Day edition dropping Aug. 28. Only available through participating stores, that limited edition of 1,000 copies includes a bonus 7-inch of Christopher Young’s two-part theme for Tobe Hooper’s Invaders from Mars, on an exclusive, slime-green slab! (You also get a numbered bookmark signed by both authors, but I wouldn’t attempt to play that.)

Whatever these two tackle next, my eyes — and ears — eagerly await. —Rod Lott

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In the same vein as his book on sci-fi and horror films of the same era, Mark Thomas McGee covers a decade’s worth of JD and other teenage-targeted movies with Teenage Thunder: A Front Row Look at the 1950s Teenpics. After a meaty introduction to the subgenre, McGee gets to the main course: full A-to-Z reviews of enough movies to fill a few swell jalopies, with Elvis Presley, Mamie Van Doren and Roger Corman turning up everywhere. Rather than quoting other critics to give context on the films’ reception, McGee instead quotes the actual exhibitors, which yields some lines as vicious as any from a poisoned pen; says one of Teenagers from Outer Space, “better to leave the house dark for three nights.” The BearManor Media paperback squeaks through with a few glaring errors (one “Capital” Records is forgivable; multiple instances of Dick “Clarke” are not), but the book is so much fun, it’s nearly essential. To borrow the tagline from the poster for Rock, Pretty Baby!, it’s the most! The greatest! It’s crazy, man, crazy!

Where were you in 1962? If you were alive, perhaps in a theater watching To Kill a Mockingbird, The Manchurian Candidate or any number of landmark films the year brought. With Cinema ’62: The Greatest Year at the Movies:, Stephen Farber and Michael McClellan make the case for those 12 months being an absolute peak for Hollywood celluloid. We’ve all heard similar claims laid for 1939 and, more recently, 1999, but 1962? Nope, never — not until right now. They don’t convince me — every year brings its share of four-star winners — but they do succeed in crafting a credible, critical narrative of an art form in transition, with chapters covering the foreign-film revolution, the loosening of sexual morals onscreen, the increasing influence of psychoanalysis and, naturally, the move from black and white to glorious Technicolor. In hardcover from Rutgers University Press, Cinema ’62 registers as a brainier take on Peter Biskind’s style, but not nearly as breezy and boisterous.

Spoiler Alert!: The Badass Book of Movie Plots is part screenwriting manual, part humor title and part graphic novel. From the minds of Stephen Espinoza, Kathleen Killian Fernandez and Chris Vander Kaay (the latter two of whom co-authored 2018’s Indie Science Fiction Cinema Today), the Laurence King Publishing paperback is nothing if not colorful. But it’s more than that, too, breaking down the beats of 38 film subgenres — e.g., Teen Sex Comedy, the Disaster Movie, the Superhero Origin Film, the Erotic Thriller, the Animal Attack Horror and so on — in three acts. The result is like a bunch of Mad magazine parodies of movies that don’t exist … except they kinda do! The authors have nailed the hundreds of clichés still permeating the pictures produced today. While the book is well-designed, its cutesy-verging illustrations belie the mildly wicked humor to be found in the word balloons. —Rod Lott

Get them at Amazon.