PUBLISHER: Simon & Schuster, 2/2005 GENRE: Fiction SETTING: Vermont/New York, USA PURCHASE: link MY GRADE: B-
FROM PUBLISHER: New York City, 1965: Two Manhattan prep school students, Carole and Naomi, make a pact to lose their virginity before graduation. Eddie, a slick Upper East Side dropout, is handsome, fatally charming, and more than willing to help the girls accomplish their goal. But on one bitterly cold holiday weekend in an isolated cabin deep in the Vermont woods, a horrifying twist develops in the plan. Before the night is over, a stomach-turning secret is sealed between friends, setting in motion a series of events that will have dire and far-reaching consequences.
Sweeping across decades, moving from New York to Vermont to California and back again, Lewis tells an utterly gripping, psychologically nuanced tale of friendship between two very different women, of the life-changing burden of a secret, the lies we tell others to save ourselves, and the lies we tell ourselves when the truth is too painful to accept.
MY THOUGHTS: Let me start by saying I have no idea what the title means and lots of other reviewers don't either. Something bad goes down in a hotel room and Carole wants to distance herself from it and from the other two people involved. She graduates high school, goes to college, drops out, and starts a new life in Vermont. She lives under the threat of Eddie revealing their secret. She can't escape him and he shows up a few times over the years to harass her and ask for money. Eddie's a terrible character, truly a bad seed, one you want to die off as soon as possible. I'd have liked some background on him.
The story was fairly interesting but I have more questions that comments about the story. Why did Carole leave college and want nothing to do with her parents? Where'd she get money to open a restaurant? Why would she contact Naomi after all these years when she wanted nothing to do with her past? Why did she tell her boyfriend what happened? He didn't need to know.
PUBLISHER: Abrams, 4/2011 GENRE: Fiction/Fantasy PURCHASE:link MY GRADE: A
FROM PUBLISHER: The delightful classic Gnomes has been repackaged in this exceptional collector's edition to celebrate the 35th anniversary of this magical book.
The beloved Gnomes was first published in 1976 and the world became enchanted with the simple and diligent ways of these special creatures. Based on Rien Poortvliet and Wil Huygen's scientific observation of the local gnome population in Holland, Gnomes covers all areas of gnome culture: architecture, education, courtship, medicine, industry, and relationships with other mythical creatures. Thirty-five years later, this beautifully illustrated book continues to bring joy to readers of all ages.
This revised collector's edition of Gnomes features a new introduction, eight removable prints in a back cover envelope, and an all-new signature of never-before-published gnome sketches by artist Rien Poortvliet on distinctive sketchbook paper.
MY THOUGHTS: This is a precious book. It reads as factual information on the history and lives of gnomes. So many things made me laugh out loud. It has cute full-color illustrations on every single page. Within one year of the original book's release, it stayed at the top of the New York Times best-seller's list for thirty-eight weeks, so that should tell you something.
A few "facts" about gnomes are: They live to be 400 years old. They travel to the Mountain of Death to die. When a gnome is born, an acorn is planted in the ground, or a lime tree is planted. The growth of either is how they keep track of their age. They live in homes underground, beneath trees. They all have cuckoo clocks. A female gnome only ovulates once in her live and if she gets pregnant, it's always with twins. They wet the bed until they're twelve-years-old and live at home until they're 100. Siberian gnomes are the worst of them all; they're victims of crossbreading, are highly offended and vengeful and will kill farm animals or cause bad weather which will kill crops.
Near the back of the book there are nine stories featuring gnomes, of which none have titles. They vary in length from two to five pages. Near the back is a two-page epilogue by the writer, Wil Huygen, talking about how the book came to be, in late 1973 (first published in Dutch in 1976), but I don't know when that was written.
You can view images from inside the book here. You can see the eight removable prints here.
Collector plates were issued based on images from inside the books Gnomes and Secrets of the Gnomes. I can only find 30 online, none of which are from 1984 or 1985, so if you know of more, please let me know. View the plates here.
Below is an image from the book. Rien is the man smoking a pipe and Wil is the other man. They're having a conversation with a gnome about this very book. Rien died in 1995 and Wil, a physician, died in 2009.
SECRETS OF THE GNOMES
PUBLISHER: Harry N. Abrams, 1/1982 GENRE: Fiction/Fantasy PURCHASE:link MY GRADE: C
FROM PUBLISHER: Rien Poortvliet and Wil Huygen, collaborating once again as they did so successfully in Abrams' best-selling GNOMES, now reveal to thousands of eager readers their recent encounters in the mysterious world of those tiny folk. SECRETS OF THE GNOMES is the fascinating account of a long, arduous journey undertaken by the authors at the request of the gnomes. It is overflowing with the authors' on-the-scene sketches and firsthand observations.
Poortvliet and Huygen are not invited as mere observers, however, for after a meal of mushrooms and cream-tasting as if were made of "everything that light, air, sun, moon, and earth could produce"-they find that they have been turned into gnomes themselves! The authors take a penetrating look at their subjects: they learn of the tender emotional life of a gnome; they see and diagram the mechanics of the ingenious gnome technology; they observe how gnomes administer justice in the wild; they are told how fairy tales first began (Little Red Riding Hood was actually a gnome). And, best of all, they are allowed to see parts of the magical Secret Book.
Endowed with gnome characteristics (which include exceptional vision and heightened senses of touch, smell taste, and hearing), complete with peaked gnome caps, Poortvliet and Huygen are led from Lapland across the Siberian wilderness by Nicholas, their gruff by kindly guide who teaches them the secrets of survival in the icy north. Because of the gnomes' rapport with living creatures, the three travel in a troika pulled by lemmings, they are borne on a fox's back and on the head of a moose-they are even carried by the abominable snowman!
Lovers of gnomes will celebrate the arrival of this new volume and will delight in the opportunity to know these elusive creatures better. Scores of enchanting illustrations by Dutch artist Rien Poortvliet record the comings and goings of gnomes and the loving interaction with nature for which they are so famous.
MY THOUGHTS:This book was terrible and definitely not meant for children. It can't hold a candle to Gnomes and hasn't got the charm of Gnomes either. In the book both authors go on a journey all over the place, meeting a few different people and different animals. There's illustrations of gnomes from other countries. They even stay with a family and the men offer to let the men sleep with their wives! Here's a photo of Wil in bed with one of them. There are many topless female gnomes, including one where you can see a bit of pubic hair. WTF?
PUBLISHER: Pocket, 1/1981 GENRE: Contemporary Horror Fiction SETTING: New York, USA PURCHASE:link MY GRADE: C
FROM PUBLISHER:
AN INTRUDER HAS ENTERED JENNIFER'S WORLD...
A glamorous world of music and movement and sensual excitement.
Now someone watching Jennifer.
He watches her beauty, her grace, her supple young body. He watches the curve of her slender neck as she smiles at her lover.
He watches from the shadows and smiles, plotting, imagining...imagining her dazzling gifts are his alone...imagining her soft warm flesh beneath his hands.
He watches with tingling excitement as he watched all those other girls, all those other times.
He has waited so long, so patiently.
Soon now, Jennifer will dance.
For the very last time...
MY THOUGHTS: The book starts with the body of a ballerina being found, one of ten from three major ballet companies in New York City that have been killed, then the abduction of another one, nineteen-year-old Jennifer North, who willingly went home with the killer, then was abducted by him. She's not a character for me to have sympathy for since she's a cheater and I just didn't care much about what happened to her.
The killer has always had a screwed up relationship with his mother yet he remains close to her. I don't like that she was in this except for in flashback. She kind of ruined it, that and that they were in on some of the happenings together, which was completely unbelievable.
This wasn't very good or too suspenseful. I like part of the ending, at the ballet, but some of the things that happened there with the killer's mother, I didn't like at all. This would have been so much better if the mother had been left out and we'd seen more of the killings.
The cover is die-cut and this image is on the stepback page behind it, but in color.
PUBLISHER: Jove, 10/1982 GENRE: Science Fiction/Contemporary Horror SETTING: California, USA WIKI: link PURCHASE:link MY GRADE: A
FROM PUBLISHER:The streets are quiet. Dead quiet as the shadows lengthen and night falls. It's Halloween. Blood-chilling screams pierce the air. Grinning skulls and grotesque shapes lurk in the gathering darkness. It's Halloween. The streets are filling with small cloaked figures. They're just kids, right? The doorbell rings and your flesh creeps. But it's all in fun, isn't it? No. This Halloween is different. It's the last one.
MY THOUGHTS: I'd like to point out that the author dedicated this book to himself using his real name. I don't like the synopsis the book was given as it doesn't tell you anything about the plot and instead wants you to believe this is a typical slasher novel, which is isn't.
What's not in the film at all: The book's entire prologue isn't. It's Challis sleeping in the lounge room at the hospital, being woken by nurse Agnes, who's complaining about him working double shifts. She's massaging his shoulders. The Agnes in the movie doesn't match with the one in the book.
The novel has him at a convenience store buying cheap masks for his two kids, nine-year-old Bella and seven-year-old Willie. A man and his young son are there and he buys his son a Silver Shamrock Novelties witch mask. As he's going into the store he sees an "uncommonly large person" near the parking lot but lost sight of him. As he pulls away from the store he sees a "tall stiff figure" come out of the shadows and walk past the store. He drives to his ex-wife Linda's house and sees near her front door a "shape." Those sighting are confusing to me. I don't understand why those Silver Shamrock Novelties men in gray suits would be watching him or anyone else in public, especially in a different town than where the mask factory is and where the action takes place later, in a town called Santa Mira.
The scene where Ellie and Challis are traveling to the Silver Shamrock Novelties factory in Santa Mira, CA, she tells him of a time when she was six years old and her father bought her a bird. She let the bird out of its cage and her father beat her for it. She said a child never forgives something like that.
Right after that, still in the car, Challis falls asleep and has a very odd dream. He dreamed that he's in another town and there are crying children who are dressed oddly in colorful old fashioned clothes, and a boy with a large head is in a tunnel-like passage with red glowing walls. There's a priest at the end of it. Children came out of wherever they were hiding and followed him. He gathered them into a circle made of rocks. The sun rose up out of it. The priest had a featureless face. He raised a knife, the children screamed, the sky turned red.... and the dream ended. I can see why this was not put in the film because it had nothing to do with anything that I can think of.
Challis meets Marge, the woman staying at the motel, in the parking lot. She's talking about the Silver Shamrock mask and showed him how the round emblem came off when her four-year-old threw it against the wall. She sees the microchip on the back of it, says it looks like the inside of her transister radio, that it must be electronic and asks him to bring her batteries for her to put into her radio to see if she can get the emblem to light up "or whatever it's supposed to do." He also notices the emblem's the size of a U.S. quarter and is made from ceramic. Later on in the book but not the film, Cochran tells Challis that each Silver Shamrock Novelties emblem has a piece of Stonehenge on it.
The film doesn't have Challis and Ellie going to Marge's room right after hearing a lot of noise and finding her dead. In the film they acknowledge a loud sound but that's it. The book's version of this is so much better than the film's.
The lab worker, Teddy, whom Challis is keeping up with about the case of the gray-suited man who burned himself up in the car at the beginning, she's only in the book once, I think, and her death scene's not in the book.
There's a scene in the book where Challis is caught and put in the room at the factory, hands tied with tape and a skeleton mask on and made to watch on a monitor Ellie in another room. Cochran goes into the room with Ellie, she calls him "Daddy" and he gives her a witches mask, comes back into the room with Challis, tells him Ellie is now six years old mentally and that that's a good age to be a victim. He tells Challis that he's bought two minutes of airtime on all three networks (which would be NBC, CBS, ABC) and they're going to air the special commerical at 9 PM.
In the book when Little Buddy was in the room with his parents, watching the Silver Shamrock commerical, it activated the emblem on the mask, making it glow red, which it didn't do in the film. A black spider the size of a hand came out of Little Buddy's mouth then jumped onto his mother's face.
Challis is tied to a chair with black tape or something and he kicks the television screen in, gets a piece of the glass and cuts the tape on his bindings, and escapes. In the book I don't think he's tied to a chair. He gets a Silver Shamrock emblem out of his pocket, the one he took from Marge's room after she died, throws it at the television screen, causing it to explode.
In the book he escapes the room, finds Ellie, they're on a catwalk above all the workers, she spots Cochran and yells out "Daddy!", they all see her, she asks him if she can let the bird fly, she takes out some Silver Shamrock emblems, throws them as if they're birds, they hit the television screens, causing them to explode and the workers to short-circuit, "Their bodies instantly short-circuited and split open in fountains of squirting silicone." The scene in the film is much better because I like how Challis set all the televisions in the room to the Halloween commerical, which caused the emblems to explode when they hit the screens.
The ending is exactly the same except in the book when Challis is calling television stations to get them to not air the 9 PM commercial, he claims he's going to set off a bomb but in the film, he just told the person on the phone to tell whomever's in charge that a bomb's going to go off if it airs.
Other differences: The film's entire opening scene, with the old man running from a car that's following him and clutching a Silver Shamrock Novelties pumpkimask, and the gray-suited man getting crushed between two cars, isn't in the book at all. This scene is far superior to the book's and a suspenseful scene was an excellent way to open the film.
The scene in the film where Challis leaves the liquor store and runs into a man who wants a drink of his liquor then gets killed by two gray-suited men, the man's death scene isn't in the book. In place of that, later, after Marge is killed and put in the car on a stretcher by the men in white coats, in the book Challis sees a headless man in the back of it, dressed like the man from outside the liquor store and assumes it's the same man.
The scene where Challis escapes the motel room through the bathroom window and finds a phone booth down the street, in the book he calls his ex-wife to tell her to get rid of the masks. She misunderstands him as saying to get rid of the masks she'd already bought the kids, Silver Shamrock ones, yells at him, he calls her a "fucking bitch", and she hangs up on him. He leaves the receiver hanging when he leaves the booth and a suited man hangs it up. In the film, the call doesn't go through to her and he hangs the receiver up after the call. Later in the movie when he escapes the room he was held in, he finds a telephone in the building, calls his ex-wife to tell her to get rid of the masks, she misunderstands what he's saying and hangs up on him without him calling her a "fucking bitch."
What's not explained in either book or film is what lead Ellie to wonder if the old man who went to the hospital clutching a Silver Shamrock Novelties pumpkin mask is her father in the first place. I suppose she couldn't get hold of her father and wondered if the dead man, who I assume was mentioned on the news, was her father.
MY THOUGHTS: There's not much to dislike about this film. The opening credits are are best, the theme song with the synthesizer, and the ending, which is the greatest one yet, as it's so damn unexpected. I love the gray-suited men lurking about everywhere showing no facial expressions. I don't understand the dislike for this film.
There are things in the book I wish had been in the film but the film's opening scene is so good that I'll have to say I like the film better than the novel. Wikipedia said the novel was a "best-seller" but I have no idea how many copies were sold, and it was reissued two years later.
A friend bought me a movie poster and I framed it, here.
PUBLISHER: Titan Books, 10/2018 PURCHASE:link MY GRADE: D FILM GRADE: F
FROM PUBLISHER: In 1978, Laurie Strode survived an encounter with Michael Myers, a masked figure who killed her friends and terrorized the town of Haddonfield, Illinois on Halloween night. Myers was later gunned down, apprehended and committed to Smith's Grove State Hospital.
For forty years, memories of that nightmarish ordeal have haunted Laurie and now Myers is back once again on Halloween, having escaped a routine transfer, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake. This time, Laurie is prepared with years of survival training to protect herself, her daughter Karen and her granddaughter Allyson, a teenager separated from her family and enjoying Halloween festivities.
MY THOUGHTS/SPOILERS: Graded D for disastrous. The novel and film are the sequel to the 1978 Halloween. Laurie is no longer Michael's sister, as was introduced in Halloween II (1981). I have no idea why he's still after her, and her relatives, forty years later. It's a crying shame what they've turned the character Laurie into. I don't like it at all. I guess my review is more for the film and not the novel since the author was just going off the screenplay.
I don't like how they've incorporated things from the first three (and probably the others but I didn't notice) Halloween films into this one. Examples: Teenager Vicky babysat on Halloween night, like Annie did in the original. Vicky's boyfriend came over in this one but in the original, Annie's friend Lynda and her boyfriend came over, so in this one they've incorporated both of those into the character of Vicky.
She also made popcorn for the nine-year-old she's babysitting, just like Annie did in the original, for the nine-year-old she was watching, Lindsey.
While babysitting, Vicky looked out the window at night at two white sheets blowing on the clothesline, just like Laurie did in the original, but she did it during the day, right after school on Halloween day.
Michael pins Vicky's boyfriend, Dave, to the wall with a knife, just like he did to Lynda's boyfriend in the original.
On Halloween night, a character named Andrea was at home on the phone with a friend named Sally when she got killed. In Halloween II, the same thing happened to Sally while on the phone with a friend. They weren't even creative enough to change the character's name in this book from Sally to something else.
Now get this scene from the 2018 version, as it combines Halloween and Halloween III- On Halloween night, Laurie's lurking around outside and yells out to three children to go home, since Michael's on the loose. That scene copies the original Halloween when Dr. Loomis yells out to Lonnie to get his "ass" home. One child is wearing a witches mask, one's wearing a pumpkin mask, and the other one's wearing a skeleton mask, homage to the Silver Shamrock masks in Halloween III.
The scene where Laurie goes over the balcony and is lying on the ground, then isn't there when Michael goes outside to her is exactly what happened in the original film except it was Michael who went over the balcony and disappeared.
I suppose some would find all of the similarities clever or funny, but not me. Try being original instead of ripping scenes out of other films and rearranging them to fit your narrative. I'm speaking of the film writers.
I don't understand why they needed a Dr. Loomis clone, complete with British accent, which they have in Dr. Sartain, but I like the madness in him. That was unexpected.
Wikipedia says that Michael's doctor, Sartain, admits to arranging Michael's escape on the bus, "Hawkins and Sartain arrive just in time to save Allyson. Hawkins tries to kill Michael, but Sartain – obsessed with Michael's enigmatic motivations – kills Hawkins, and reveals he seeks to understand how Michael feels when he kills, and reveals that he arranged for Michael's escape to reinforce his perceived role as an "apex predator" who needs to finish what he started and kill Laurie to reassert himself" but I can't find that being said during that scene in the film or novel and I've watched and reread that part multiple times.
PUBLISHER: Zebra, 10/1981 GENRE: Fiction/Horror PURCHASE:link MY GRADE: D
FROM PUBLISHER: It's Halloween night in Haddonfield, Illinois. Six gunshots pierce the silence of this normally quiet town. Neighborhood kids trick-or-treating on the street stare as a man plunges off a balcony. A doctor form the county mental hospital rushes from the house. He has followed his patient, who escaped from the institution, back to Haddonfield, where fifteen years earlier he brutally murdered his own sister. The demented young man has already killed three teenagers this evening. Tonight's massacre has only begun!
MY THOUGHTS: I've never liked the Halloween II film so I didn't expect to like the novel, and I didn't though it's a little better than the film. It's not interesting because all it is Michael killing people in a hospital and there are too many characters to keep up with. In the book Loomis said twice, pages 30 and 39, that Michael killed two people in 1963 but he only killed his sister, Judith. I have no idea why he'd say that. I don't know why that would have been in the manuscript so I'm assuming the author made that up.
It's not stated anywhere in the book that this is based directly on the screenplay, like the book Halloween by Curtis Richards was, so it's unclear if Jack Martin read the screenplay or if he's basing this directly off the film, with a little extra thrown in.
Book vs. Film- Opening credits are very cool when the pumpkin opens up, revealing a skull. Not in the film is hearing Loomis, while still outside at the end of the film Halloween, waiting to kill Michael and not knowing yet of the murders of Annie and Lynda, talk to himself, "I should have torn your heart out with my bare hands and stuffed it down your fucking throat. I should have carved out your eyes like one of your miserable pumpkins and fed them to your rotten face, read you your future from your stinking entrails." That violence doesn't sound like Loomis at all.
Mrs. Elrod's female neighbor, who's on the phone with a friend is named Sally in the book and Alice in the film. In the book there's a death involving news reporter Debra, who's television station is there on the scene where the chaos is that's not in the film at all. Her car has a flat tire, a man stops to help, he makes her uncomfortable so she asks him to leave, she opens the trunk to get tools and Michael's there. He slits her throat. That scene is right before Mr. Garrett, the security guard's, death scene. There's a scene right after that in the film where kids are trashing the old Meyer's house. That's not in the book, I don't think. When Budd and Karen are in the tub in the therapy room at the hospital, the book says Michael turns the water's temperature up to 127 degrees F. The book is more graphic in describing what Karen looks like after being in the scalding water, "...the skin of her face and breasts boiled and peeling loose in long, dangling strips."
In the book when Laurie's roaming around the hospital, right after Michael thought she was in her bed and started stabbing her, we hear her internal monologue. I don't know how she knows that Michael's her biological brother but she was thinking about how, as a toddler right before their parents died in a car accident, she'd ask about him and they'd beat her for it.
The book's epilogue said that the murder count was ten so I guess he's talking about everyone except Annie, Lynda and her boyfriend. So that's Sally, Mrs. Elrod, head nurse Mrs. Alvers, nurses Jill, Karen, Janet, paramedic Budd, security officer Mr. Garrett, Dr. Mixter, and Deputy Hunt. Jimmy wasn't murdered but died later in the car with Laurie from head trauma from hitting his head when he slipped in Mrs. Alvers blood. The reporter Debra was murdered elsewhere.
I don't like how in both book and film when Laurie was in the elevator towards the end, Michael, instead of stopping the elevator door from closing with his hand since he was right at it, he just stuck the knife's blade in it to prevent it from closing, then pulled it out and let it close, allowing Laurie to escape him. I also don't like that we're to believe Ben Tramer, the boy Laurie has the hots for in the first film, was the Michael lookalike who died in the car accident. Two teen boys go up to a sheriff in the movie and book and tell them that Ben left for home an hour before and hasn't made it home yet. Nothing strange about that and no one's going to be telling the police that someone hasn't been seen in only an hour anyway unless it's a small child. We know there's no way Ben could have had an outfit exactly like Michael's so that bit was downright stupid.
GENRE: Fiction/Contemporary Horror SETTING: Illinois, USA 1978 WIKIPEDIA:link MOVIE TRAILER:link PURCHASE:link
MY GRADE: A++
FROM PUBLISHER:Based on the screenplay by John Carpenter and Debra Hill.
Tricked by his cunning ... Treated to his savagery ... Annie, Linda and Laurie ... fresh, pretty, ready to be taken ... stalked by a sadistic power who has returned to claim new victims, on this ... the most frightening night of the year.
THINGS NOT IN THE FLIM:This book was actually released a year after the film. Not sure why. I love the film but the book's so much better! It's only 166 pages but boy is it packed with extras. It's more graphic sexually and the murders are more gory, especially the murder of his sister. The best part is that we get to learn a little about Michael Audrey Myers' life before and during the fifteen years he was away at Smith's Grove Sanitarium for the murder of his seventeen-year old sister, Judith, when he was six years old. We learn his thoughts before and during her murder and what he did immediately afterward, before his parents came home to find him standing outside.
We meet Michael's mother's mother at the beginning of chapter one. It's Halloween and he shows her his Halloween clown costume that he got from Woolworth. I love his granny. She's sassy. She was offended by his cheap store-bought non scary costume and even referred to Michael once as 'Mister Woolworth Clown Costume'. She began to reminisce to him and his mother Edith about what Halloween was like when she was a child. She said if it was a tame Halloween only your chickens would get beheaded, or as Michael said, unheaded.
We learn that Michael had started wetting the bed after not doing so for three years. He'd been getting into fights at school and with his sister. He'd been having violent dreams and scariest of all, he'd been hearing voices that were telling him to say he hates people. Later in the book Loomis and Sheriff Brackett were discussing how Michael's great-grandfather Nordstrom (his mother's father's father) had heard voices too and had even murdered two people at a harvest dance in the 1890's and was hanged for it.
Shortly before murdering his sister, he goes trick or treating at his own house on Peecher Street with other kids from the neighborhood. His sister jokingly asked the kids what they'd do if she didn't give them candy and Michael said he'd kill her. She said, 'Was that you Michael Myers?!' and he said, 'I'm not Michael Myers. I'm a clown'. Every time I've read that line its caused me to laugh out loud, for some reason.
Soon after that Judith's boyfriend Danny comes over. Michael is spying on them through the window. They're kissing downstairs then later upstairs in her bedroom. Michael can hear the sounds they're making through the open windows and 'the sounds filled him with a murderous hatred.' He doesn't understand why they're making those sounds. While he's standing outside listening to them we learn of a recurring dream he's been having. In the dream two people who look like Judy and Danny are dancing around a fire outside with other people. He's jealous as he watches them dance and voices are telling him to kill the lovers.
After Danny leaves he goes into Judy's room and stabs her over thirty times while she's sitting at her vanity, brushing her hair, naked except for bikini underwear that have red hearts on them. He stabs her in her wrist, hand, breasts, arms, legs, groin and throat. He goes into the kitchen, eats a cookie, drinks milk out of the bottle, then goes outside and that's when his parents show up and find him holding the knife.
Earlier that day he told his grandmother, in response to her suggesting he disguise is face with white clown makeup, that he wasn't going to play any pranks, and was just going to ask for candy and in response she told him to have an 'innocent, Woolworth kind of Halloween.' Oooh, it was anything but!
Loomis is remembering all the times at the sanitarium over the past fifteen years where Michael got revenge on other kids for some slight but was never seen doing it. One kid got food poisoning after playing a joke on Michael by loosening the salt shaker top so the salt would pour out when you went to use it, one boy was scalded in the shower after repeatedly turning the TV volume down when Michael kept turning it up, a nurse fell down the stairs and fractured her pelvis days after an argument with Michael, a boy who forgot to return a game to Michael got a mysterious rash and had to be hospitalized, and worst of all, Michael suggested one year that they be allowed to have a Halloween party, of all things. A girl was bobbing for apples when the lights went out. Soon after when the lights came back on the girl was laying there, almost dead, from someone, Michael, trying to drown her. Loomis looked over at Michael, who smiled at him, but his costume was dry and Loomis had no proof Michael did anything to the girl.
When Laurie's walking home from school with Annie and Lynda (it's spelled Linda in the book) and goes inside, her red-haired mother is there, making candied apples and they have a short conversation about evilness. This is right before Laurie goes into her room and sees Michael staring at her from the clothes line. In the film, she walks though the front door and is shown walking straight into her bedroom.
Laurie's father is Chester Strode. Film credits say his name is Morgan though it's never spoken in the film.
In the book, several people who see Michael are close enough to tell he may be wearing a mask, but they aren't sure. In the film, most aren't close enough to him to wonder if it's a mask until they're being murdered by him.
When Loomis and Sheriff Brackett (Annie's father) go into Michael's old house and find the dead dog, they say his intestines are hanging out.
Shortly before Annie's killed, she's at Lindsey's, brushing her own hair. Michael's watching through the window and is staring at her 'large' breasts and becomes sexually aroused. 'The sex between his legs throbbed in an unpleasant way.'
Annie asks Lindsey why their laundry room is in a separate building outside. Lindsey tells her that her mother wanted it outside because of the noise they both make. That's not mentioned at all in the movie.
Toward the end when Laurie goes to Lindsey's looking for Bob and Lynda and finds Annie's dead body in bed with Judith's tombstone, her stomach had been cut open up to her throat and her intestines were out.
I usually repost this review every year.
MY THOUGHTS: I've always been a fan of the film and got a copy of the book in May 2009 from a friend. The book is so great. Unfortunately it's so expensive that most fans of the film will probably never get to read it. I don't know if the added stuff that I've mentioned was in the original screenplay or not or if Curtis came up with it on his own. Either way, I'm glad it was in the book and not the film. It makes reading the book so much more exciting.
PUBLISHER: Quirk Books, 9/2017 GENRE: Nonfiction/Horror novels PURCHASE:link MY GRADE: A
SYNOPSIS: Take a tour through the horror paperback novels of the 1970s and ’80s . . . if you dare. Page through dozens and dozens of amazing book covers featuring well-dressed skeletons, evil dolls, and knife-wielding killer crabs! Read shocking plot summaries that invoke devil worship, satanic children, and haunted real estate! Horror author and vintage paperback book collector Grady Hendrix offers killer commentary and witty insight on these trashy thrillers that tried so hard to be the next Exorcist or Rosemary’s Baby. It’s an affectionate, nostalgic, and unflinchingly funny celebration of the horror fiction boom of two iconic decades, complete with story summaries and artist and author profiles. You’ll find familiar authors, like V. C. Andrews and R. L. Stine, and many more who’ve faded into obscurity. Plus recommendations for which of these forgotten treasures are well worth your reading time and which should stay buried.
MY THOUGHTS: This book is worth the price just for the book covers alone. The author is very funny and entertaining. The book is a large and heavy paperback. It's full-color with thick pages. The cover has French flaps. It has eight chapters: Hail, Satan, Creepy Kids, When Animals Attack, Real Estate Nightmares, Weird Science, Gothic and Romantic, Inhumanoids, Splatterpunks, Serial Killers, and Super Creeps. My favorite section is called Toys 'R' Death, from the Creepy Kids chapter, about killer dolls/stuffed animals.
Humorous spoilers are given for most of the books mentioned so be careful not to read too much if it's a book you're interested in.
Brief biographies are given for thirty-one authors and some for publishing houses.
Too many titles were mentioned in the book to list here but you can see photos of the titles from the "credits" section here. Click on each image to enlarge. Edit- Someone created a list on Goodreads of all the books mentioned, here.
You can see many images from inside the book here. Click on each photo to enlarge.
The only things this lacked was a list of films that were based on horror novels and maybe a listing of all the horror novels published during the 70s and 80s. A large task, I know.
PUBLISHER: Crowel, 1974 GENRE: Fiction/horror SETTING: Maryland, USA PURCHASE:link READ FREE:link MY GRADE: B
FROM PUBLISHER: Surely, it was only a game. In the orderly, pleasant world Barbara inhabited, nice children -- and they were nice children -- didn't hold an adult captive.
But what Barbara didn't count on was the heady effect their new-found freedom would have on the children. Their wealthy parents were away in Europe, and in this rural area of Maryland, the next house was easily a quarter of a mile away. The power of adults was in their hands, and they were tempted by it. They tasted it and toyed with it -- their only aim was to test its limits. Each child was consumed by his own individual lust and caught up with the others in sadistic manipulation and passion, until finally, step by step, their grim game strips away the layers of childishness to reveal the vicious psyche, conceived in evil and educated in society's sophisticated violence, that lies always within civilized men.
More than a terrifying horror story, Let's Go Play At The Adams' is a compelling psychological exercise of brooding insights and deadly implications.
MY THOUGHTS: I can't think of much to say about this one. It left me feeling emotionless. I was after a print copy for years and finally got one in 2018 for almost $13 total. I have the cover shown, which is from 1993. I'm almost positive I learned of this on the now defunct IMDB forum years ago. While very disturbing, it wasn't as disturbing as I'd anticipated and I'm really let down. I found ten-year-old Cindy to be very annoying. Seventeen-year-old Dianne is quite disturbed but I just don't buy it. The ending wasn't what I was expecting either. The epilogue sucked majorly and is implausible and it kind of ruined the book.
Basically the point of this post is to let you know you can get on a wish list at Archive.org to read this and you can also read about the author here.
Edit- The book I'm currently reading, Paperbacks from Hell, dedicated a page to this novel. Read it here. Click on image to enlarge.
PUBLISHER: Parent's Magazine Press, 10/1980 GENRE: Children's Fiction PURCHASE:link MY GRADE: A
FROM PUBLISHER: Four witches discover their lost magic hats have been turned into houses by four homeless cat.
MY THOUGHTS: This is a very short full-color, fully illustrated rhyming picture book that's beyond cute. I wish this one in particular had more text and was a bit longer. Four witches are flying upside down and their magic hats fall off. They search and find that four anthropomorphic cats are living in them. "It's raining houses!" said the cats. "How nice." They moved right in and dined on mice." The cat's won't give the hats back but the witches win in the end and the cats go with them.
PUBLISHER: Pantheon, 9/1978 GENRE: Children's Fiction PURCHASE:link MY GRADE: A
FROM PUBLISHER: Wendy is a little witch who is afraid of her mean, bossy witch sisters—until one special Halloween night when she makes a magical discovery and outwitches her older sisters.
MY THOUGHTS: Another cute children's book that has a lot of text and is fully illustrated in full color. This is about Wendy, younger than her two sisters who don't seem to want her to learn to fly on her broom or cast spells. She learns how to on her own but in the process, on Halloween night, meets a child dressed as a ghost who's out trick-or-treating and hangs out with them (don't know the gender) and their mother. I wouldn't say this is suitable for the youngest of child because Wendy casts two negative spells on her sisters and in one of them, her sister could have been seriously injured.
PUBLISHER: Houghton Mifflin Company, 10/1991 GENRE: Children's Fiction PURCHASE: link MY GRADE: B
FROM PUBLISHER: On their way to a Halloween party, Helen and her dog Martha happen upon a very creepy supermarket for witches.
MY THOUGHTS: Helen saw a woman drop something, a coupon, so followed her inside a supermarket that turned out to be for witches only. The products they sold were quite humorous, such as baby brown bats, iguana chops, poison apples, poison mushrooms, apples with or without worms, just to name a few. Chaos ensued when they discovered Helen's dog in the shopping cart. The very end is pretty funny but the book isn't all that exciting. The artwork is very nice. The book is full color and age appropriate of the smallest child.
PUBLISHER: Simon & Schuster, 2/2005
