PUBLISHER: Dial Books, 1981 GENRE: Children's fiction READ FREE:link MY GRADE: A
FROM PUBLISHER: Journeying thorough a dark, dark house, a black cat surprises the only inhabitant of the abandoned residence.
MY THOUGHTS:Despite the title this isn't a dark tale. It's your typical picture book with just a couple lines of text on every other page. There's no moral to the tale. I absolutely love the illustrations, every one. They're gloomy and spooky and only a couple are colorful. My favorite image is below. Click on it to enlarge.
PUBLISHER: Four Winds, 1983 GENRE: Children's Fiction READ: link MY GRADE: A
FROM PUBLISHER: When a terrible witch vows to eat her for supper, a little girl escapes with the help of a mirror and comb given to her by the witch's cat and dog.
MY THOUGHTS: I like this a lot. It's very short, 40 pages, and clearly inspired by Hansel and Gretel. There's minimal text on each page with illustrations on each page. The witch with teeth of iron spends her days waiting for children to come near so she can eat them. Sasha, the little girl who goes in search of needle and thread for her aunt, almost falls victim to the witch. I really like the cleaver things the author did with the comb and mirror. I really wish this story had been at least twice as long. My favorite image from the book is below. Click on it to enlarge.
PUBLISHER: Dial Books, 9/1993 GENRE: Fiction/Children's Folk Tales PURCHASE:link READ FREE: link IMAGES:link MY GRADE: A
FROM PUBLISHER: A retelling of a Celtic tale in which two cats set out to save children in a Highlands village who have been put under a sleeping spell by three wicked witches.
MY THOUGHTS: I really like this very dark story. This is another children's story that has violence in it. It has twenty-one pages of text and the other pages are illustrated in color. Some of the illustrations are beautiful. Two cats, Rory and Tam, are the heroes. Three green-eyed witches are putting eternal sleeping spells on children via singing mice. Tam and Rory are given magical powers from Granny Pine's magic willow stick, shown below, so they set out to stop the witches. They spy on them in their home through their peephole and witness them turn into huge black cats. They follow the cats into the forest and things get violent.
See some images from inside the book here. Below are my two favorites.
PUBLISHER: Clarion Books, 1993 PURCHASE: link REISSUE:link MY GRADE: B
FROM PUBLISHER: In 1697, Charles Perrault published a collection of eight stories. The stories, including The Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Puss-in-Boots, and Little Red Riding Hood, are among the best-loved nursery tales ever. Complete with morals at their conclusions, these dramatic and witty stories tell of princes and princesses, fairies and monsters, and ordinary people who use their luck and common sense to vanquish their foes and achieve happiness.
This complete edition of all eleven of Perrault's classic tales includes a new translation by Neil Philip and Nicoletta Simborowski that captures Perrault's sardonic tone and his sense of drama in modern English. An introduction and afterword provide biographical information on Perrault and set his tales in their folklore context. Beautiful and refind color illustrations by Sally Holmes gracefully draw the reader into Perrault's timeless and magical world.
Stories include: The Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, Bluebeard, Puss-in-Boots, The Fairies, Cinderella, Tufty Ricky, Hop o' My Thumb, Patient Griselda, Donkeyskin, The Foolish Wishes.
MY THOUGHTS/SPOILERS: These stories were first published in 1697. I didn't care for the story Tufty Ricky, named after his tuft of hair. A boy is born to a princess and is "ugly" and "malformed." At his birth a fairy said he'd be very clever and well-liked to make up for his unattractiveness. Many years later he meets a girl who is beautiful but "stupid" and persuaded her to marry him by telling her the fairy from his birth gave him the ability to make his future bride smart and he'd become handsome. Her sister too was "extremely ugly" but was smart to compensate for it.
I really disliked Patient Griselda, which is about a jealous and controlling man who thinks poorly of women. He wants to make his kind and gentle wife Griselda miserable because he's obviously sick in the head. He follows her around trying to aggravate her but it never does, which aggravates him more. He keeps her locked in a dark room. He lies and tells her their daughter died when in reality he's sent her away to a convent. Fifteen years later he tells her the daughter is alive and she marries. The story is just stupid.
I don't like The Foolish Wishes either. A poor married man is granted three wishes by Jupiter, Lord of the World. He makes three really dumb wishes and that's it.
The strangest one is called Donkeyskin. A girl's mother dies so her father falls in love with her and wants to marry her. Yes, her own father. She confides in her fairy godmother. The godmother tells her to make demands on him that he can't fulfill, like asking for extravagant gowns. He complies with all her demands. He's able to afford it because the donkey he owns poops out gold coins! She asks for the donkey's skin...and he gives it to her. She hides under the skin and escapes and finds a job as a house servant. The queen's son takes a liking to her and asks for her to bake him a cake. She does, her ring comes off in the batter and he almost eats it. And like in Charles's story Cinderella, he has all the women in town try on the ring to see who it fits and he'll marry her.
The most violent one is either Bluebeard, where a man has a room filled with the blood and corpses of his two previous wives and plans to decapitate his current wife for entering the room, or Hop O' My Thumb, a similar version of Hansel and Gretel, but with seven sons, not brother and sister. The family is poor and the parents lead all seven sons into the woods with plans to leave them there to fend for themselves. Hop, who's the size of a thumb, overhears their plan and leaves a pebble trail so they can find their way home, so they do. The parents do the same thing, lead them back into the woods and like before, Hop overhears them and this time leaves a trail of breadcrumbs so they can find their way back, but birds eat them. Now here's where it get really morbid- They come to a house and the wife there tells them that her husband's an ogre and will eat them but they have no choice but to stay with them. She puts them to bed with caps on their heads. In another room are their seven daughters, who have crowns on their heads. The ogre plans to slit the boys' throats the next morning, then eat them. Hop switches their caps for the girls' crowns to fool the ogre. He doesn't know who's in which room so he goes looking of the boys, finds them, slits their throats only to find out he really just murdered all seven daughters.
At the end of the book is one to three pages about each story's origin and similar versions that were around before and after Perrault's.
I enjoyed this, especially the color illustrations. There are about three or four pages per story that have illustrations and the stories are up to six pages long, with larger font. At the beginning and end of each chapter is a small images of something too.
I have an affinity for the macabre so I like the darker stories best, like Hop O' My Thumb, Bluebeard, and The Sleeping Beauty. After Beauty wakes up after a one hundred year curse, the prince puts his mother in charge of looking after her and their two children. The mother is jealous of Beauty and plans to eat her and her children then claim they got eaten by something in the woods. The queen was deceived and planned to make all three jump into a vat of snakes, vipers, and serpents while the prince was away but the prince arrives back home and finds out what she planned and she jumps into the vat herself. Puss-in-Boots is really cute. It's about a clever cat who helps out his owner. I prefer the Grimms version of Cinderella because of the punishment the stepsisters and stepmother get.
You can see my images from inside the book here. All illustrations were done for this edition by Sally Holmes. This book is back in print in hardcover with a similar cover on January 31, 2020.
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.
PUBLISHER: Dial Books, 1981
