attention movie buffs Frankenstein question inside

[SnakeEyes]

I actually read the novelization before I saw the movie, which ended up being about 10 years after it came out. I've now also read the original Frankenstein and I gotta say it's pretty dry. If I hadn't read the movie novelization first I probably would have given up on the original 10 pages in.

[Zardoz]

Ok, getting a little but I have a fun story,
One reason you see book versions of movies is that all the movie studios are owned by huge congomerates now. If they own a property, they will sell it in every format they can, if they have a publishing wing, they hire a writer to 'novelize' the script, (sometimes the novelization is better than the movie) and so on, if they own a comics publisher, tv outlet, etc...

the well regarded Sci-Fi writer Allen Dean Foster has done a few novelizations, including the original Star Wars. He tells a story about being hired to novelize this crappy Korean jungle girl movie in the 70's. They showed him a rough cut of the movie, all in Korean, but he said it was a train wreck in any language, he couldn't figure out what it was about. They also showed him the poster art, which was a exciting scene of the "jungle girl" fighting a lion with a stone knife etc. nothing like the movie, but very cool looking.. So he novelized the poster!

A few years later, the Walt Disney company bought the publisher that put out Foster's jungle girl novelization, they called his agent to try and aquire the 'movie rights' to the novelization!

[Panache]

... I've now also read the original Frankenstein and I gotta say it's pretty dry. If I hadn't read the movie novelization first I probably would have given up on the original 10 pages in.

No less a personage than Stephen King has written "Mary Shelley is- let us bite the bullet and tell the truth- not a particularly strong writer of emotional prose (which is why students who come to the book with the expectations of a fast, gory read-expectations formed by the movies-usually come away feeling puzzled and let down)..."

I too realize that Shelley's novel is a bit dry. I prefer Bram Stoker's "Dracula" or perhaps a good Lovecraft tale.

Cheers

Jamie