Book Review: FROM PAGE TO SILVER SCREAM

 

Classic horror/sci-fi movie historian Tom Weaver's latest book is FROM PAGE TO SILVER SCREAM: 21 Novels That Became Horror and Sci-Fi Movie Favorites. I purchased this from the author personally at this June's Monster Bash Conference in Mars, Pennsylvania. 

The subtitle explains the volume very well. Tom Weaver gives succinct chapter-by-chapter summations of 21 novels that were the source material for various horror and science fiction movies. As Weaver explains in his introduction, nearly every element has been discussed or analyzed when it comes to the making of most classic genre films, but the novels on which these titles were based on get very little coverage, if any at all. The author attempts to correct this by bringing to light a number of books that have been either forgotten or have gone out of print. Weaver also covers a few that are still well known, such as THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, DONOVAN'S BRAIN by Curt Siodmak, and THE MASK OF FU MANCHU by Sax Rohmer. 

What the summations of the novels reveal is that most of them are very different from their cinematic adaptations. This shouldn't be much of a surprise, since novels and films are two quite separate forms of storytelling--what works well in one wouldn't necessarily carry over to the other. A novel can contain far more denser and elaborate material, while a movie has to get to the point and make more of an immediate effect. This is especially true for horror and science-fiction films, particularly the classic ones, where running times (and budgets) were for the most part rather limited. 

Some of the novels chosen by Weaver were adapted rather closely, such as BENIGHTED, the J.B. Priestley book that became James Whale's THE OLD DARK HOUSE (the major difference between the two is the fate of a major character). Others have almost nothing in common with the resulting films, which makes one wonder why the producers even used the books in the first place. 

One major reason for the differences between the novels and the films based on them is censorship issues. Weaver covers Richard Matheson's THE SHRINKING MAN, made into one of the best 1950s science-fiction films by Universal. In Matheson's novel, one subplot discusses the main character's sexual urges--that's certainly something that wouldn't be dealt with by an American genre movie made in 1957. 

Weaver provides a number of sidebars and photos dealing with the movies based on the novels. In the chapter on THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES, 21 pages of 20th Century Fox memos are reprinted, showing how much time and care studio executives used to shape the 1939 adaptation starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. These memos show that these men were much more perceptive than the usual Hollywood front office type from the classic period is given credit for. 

I do wish that the author had gone into a bit more detail on the differences between the novels featured and their cinematic offspring, but one has to realize that this book is already 300 pages long, and if Weaver had done that for all 21 entries (and their sequels and remakes), the project would be twice as long, and invariably twice as expensive. The point of the book, after all, is the original novels, not the films made from them. (I also believe that Weaver feels most monster movie geeks know the movies like the back of their hands.) 

FROM PAGE TO SILVER SCREAM has plenty of surprises, such as the fact that even the notorious THE NAVY VS. THE NIGHT MONSTERS was based on a novel, and there's even stills from the original long-lost trailer for the 1932 THE OLD DARK HOUSE. (Tom Weaver, by the way, showed this trailer at Monster Bash, a very welcome and pleasant treat.) 

I highly enjoyed FROM PAGE TO SILVER SCREAM, and I think Tom Weaver's idea of going back to the original novels that certain famed horror and sci-fi features were based on is a great one. In the book the author hints that he might turn this idea into a series of books, which I would be looking forward to. Finding out what the original versions of well-known films were, and what those films could have been, is a fascinating exercise, and, in a age where reading something off of a page instead of a screen makes one almost a social pariah, you've got to love a book that is about other books. FROM PAGE TO SILVER SCREAM is published by Bear Manor Media.