Amicus Horror Novelisations & Tie-ins

[dem]

Amicus Horror Novelisations And Tie-ins

Can't have Hammer without Amicus! Threads for a number of these already, but another won't hurt. The Monster Club and The Uncanny are post-Amicus productions but Subotsky involvement suggests they belong on the list so i hope you're not going to complain too strongly. Same as before. Your favourite, not-so-favourites and suggestions for which you would have liked to receive the novelisation treatment?

And Now The Screaming Starts … - David Case - (Pan 1973, originally MacDonald, 1971 as Fengriffen & Other Stories)
Asylum - William Johnston (Bantam, Dec. 1972)
Dr. Terror’s House Of Horrors - John Burke (Pan, 1965)
From Beyond The Grave [The Elemental] - R. Chetwynd-Hayes (Fontana, 1974)
Madhouse [Devil Day] - Angus Hall (Ace, 1969, Severn House, 1986)
The Monster Club - R. Chetwynd-Hayes - (Nel, 1981, originally Nel, 1976)

Scream And Scream Again - Peter Saxon (Paperback Library, 1970)
The Skull Of The Marquis de Sade - Robert Bloch (Pyramid 1965: Corgi 1976: Robert Hale 1975)
Tales From The Crypt - Jack Oleck (Bantam, 1972)
Torture Garden - Robert Bloch (Four Square, 1967, originally Four Square, 1965 as “Horror-7“)
The Uncanny - William Lauder (Arrow, 1977)
The Vault Of Horror - Jack Oleck (Bantam, 1973)
What Became Of Jack And Jill? - Laurence Moody (Sphere 1972)

It's definitely more of a case of tie-ins than novelisations with Amicus, just the Burke, Johnson, both Oleck's and the 'William Lauder' Uncanny being rush-written to order by the looks of it. Other than the sole exception of Enoch, Robert Bloch's Torture Garden has nothing to do with the film of the same name, rather it's his Horror 7 given a hasty makeover to cash in on the movie's success. No novelisation of The Deadly Bees, but it's based on H. F. Heard's A Taste Of Honey from the 'forties; how closely, i couldn't tell you, as i charity-shopped a copy unread pre-Vault. A novelisation would have been fun. Laurence Moody's What Became Of Jack And Jill? began life as The Ruthless Ones: the grim tale of a pair of students who plot to frighten gran to death for her inheritance money. Only seen the film once as a child, but it's haunted me ever since.

Others of interest;

The Land That Time Forgot - Edgar Rice Burroughs (Tandem, 1973)
At The Earth's Core - Edgar Rice Burroughs (Tandem, 1975)
Anonymous - Just For Fun! (Mayflower-Dell, 1962)
Macgregor Urquhart - It's Trad, Dad (Digit, 1961) Jazz-pop music extravaganza.
Charles Eric Maine - The Mind Of Mr. Soames (Panther, 1969) Blimey! nude BLOKE on the cover! what's that all about then?

[dem]

Edgar Rice Burroughs - At The Earth's Core (Tandem, 1975)

Blurb

Forseeing only a dreadful death when their scientific experiment went wrong, David Innes and his company hurtled through endless subterranean miles until they broke through into a strange inner world at the earth's core.

Pellucidar! A land of no horizon and eternal day. A world of weird beauty and terrifying peril, where ferocious monsters unknown to man, and beasts from a prehistoric age long forgotten on earth, roam the forests and swamps, and where the hideous and savage Mahars keep a race of primitive men and women in abject slavery.

MAX J. ROSENBERG and MILTON SUBOTSKY present AN AMICUS PRODUCTION starring DOUG MCCLURE & PETER CUSHING in EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS' AT THE EARTH'S CORE
with CAROLINE MUNRO, CY GRANT and GODFREY JAMES, SEAN LYNCH
producer JOHN DARK
director KEVIN CONNOR
screenplay by MILTON SUBOTSKY
A film from British Lion

Not sure if this one qualifies as it's not strictly a horror film, but Subotsky and Rosenberg's involvement is enough for me, as the delightful cover image with Doug McClure looking not overly concerned that he's being sucked to a slimy death! Only just got this but if i remember the film, the gist of it is that the hero and his inventor friend (the Cush) are test-driving their mole-burrowing machine in Wales when the brakes fail and they bore right through to the lost world at the earth's core, a world where dinosaurs thrive and the few humans are enslaved by a vicious reptilian crew. To hold-up their escape for as long as possible Doug falls in love with a beautiful slave girl and gets into loads of fights.

Don't think i've read any Burroughs beyond The Resurrection of Jimber-Jaw in Peter Haining's The Fantastic Pulps which i can't remember a damned thing about, so this looks as good a place to start as any.

[Craig Herbertson]

I am that sad ERB man. The cover is certainly a good indication of the worth of the equally appalling film. The book was fractionally better. Sadly, neither make it into the so bad its good category.

There are a lot of deeply dark sub currents in Burrough's work. Woman are constantly being captured by beasts and semi beasts. The beast seem to have a clear idea why and its not dinner. Killing people is easy peasy, often done by mad amoral Scientists but more often by the square jawed hero; experiments are almost always brutal. Lots of corpses and mouldering, dark always but by no stretch is anything horrific in the Vault sense.

Anyone who fancied a try at Burroughs could do no better than The Land that Time Forgot - subject and inspiration of many appalling films but a very good book all the same and I think there was a crappy pulp with bad pictures in it too.

Burroughs work inspired A Million Years BC. The great scene where the hero and chum seek out the pterodactyl was a direct lift from The Eternal Lover, another good book.

[Johnlprobert]

I've got most of those Amicus novelisations! In fact the only one I'm missing is 'Asylum' but I've got all the original stories in different anthologies.

It's definitely more of a case of tie-ins than novelisations with Amicus, just the Burke, Johnson, both Olecks and the 'William Lauder' Uncanny being rush-written to order by the looks of it

Absolutely! You can probably read both Oleck's in an afternoon and still have time to vacuum the house. Any idea who William Lauder actually was? Was it Michel Parry - he wrote the original script and there are some subtle differences between the book and the finished (and fairly rubbish) film that suggest it was adapted from an earlier screenplay.

From Beyond the Grave is another pretty tenous tie-in with only one story from the film. I've never quite understood how that worked - in an interview Kevin Connor said he picked the RCH stories from The Unbidden, even though only The Gate Crasher is actually from that, two are from Cold Terror, and the title story from this book. But I'm pretty sure the tie-in is also the first edition, in which case how did Connor see that story?

Laurence Moody's What Became Of Jack And Jill? began life as The Ruthless Ones: the grim tale of a pair of students who plot to frighten gran to death for her inheritance money. Only seen the film once as a child, but it's haunted me ever since.

Dem - you may well have seen the same TV screening of Jack & Jill that I did as it hasn't been on TV since and I was reading somewhere it's now a 'lost' film! I remember it being very grim and dark and only watched it because of the Amicus banner. Even Paul Nicholas' incredible matching paisley shirts and ties couldn't lighten the atmosphere. And this must be the only mention of that film that takes into account the costume design.

And Now The Screaming Starts is a lot better than the film because the novella should make a 45 minute short, not a whole movie. Plus that cover is ace.

[dem]

Michel maintains his innocence of any involvement in the Uncanny novelisation, and as he's always cheerfully 'fessed up to his other pseudonymous efforts, i so no reason to disbelieve him. He reckons it was the work of a name author, though evidently, not that big a name that he can remember them.

From Beyond The Grave: The tie-in is anything but thanks to a dispute between Tandem and Fontana who both wanted to publish it. Eventually, Fontana landed the all-important title and The Elemental while Tandem merely got to subtitle Terror By Night Tales Of Horror From Beyond The Grave. Presumably RCH gave Subotsky copies of everything he'd written up to that point and Milton passed on the most suitable to Connor?

I'd love to see 'What Became Of Jack & Jill' again as well as dig up the novel: how can anyone 'lose' a film? Just goes to show you had an eye for fashion ever then, Lord P. All i remember is Paul rerouting a student's rag week parade so that it passed Gran's place and there's her inside convinced it's the Euthanasia police coming to get her. You don't always need gore to be nasty, eh?

Craig, cheers for the Burroughs info. There seems to be a fair amount of his work available to read online via Project Gutenburg and Co., though i'll hold out 'til i find The Land That Time Forgot in paperback.