I haven’t
done a throwback Thursday for a while so I thought I’d dig into the archives
for something interesting. A couple of years ago I started a series for a
website that I was writing for that covered novelizations of popular horror
movies. Now these aren’t books that inspired movies, but those written to cash
in on movies coming out. I’ve always found them interesting because most of the
time they were written from scripts and the author, normally not involved with
the movie, only had the shooting script to work off of. This means many times
you get to see what was in the script before the director and editor got their
hands on it. Makes for some interesting differences. Introduction out of the
way let us take a look at the novelization of Grizzly.
I love me
some drive-in movies and am even a bigger fan of Jaws inspired nature run amok
movies. So of course William Girdler
movies play quite often in my house. I
was rather shocked to find a novelization of Grizzly available and of course I
had to own it. So after watching the
movie I cracked the book open for some more fun.
The plot
of the book mirrors that of the movie.
An enormous “throwback” grizzly bear stalks the visitors of a mountain
park. It finds people both tasty and
easy to kill, so we are added to the menu quickly. A park ranger named Kelly (named changed from
the movie) and others track down the beast and do battle with it, but not until
it has a pretty decent body count. The
heavy equipment comes out and the bear is finally stopped. But of course you knew that was going to
happen, didn’t you?
This might
be one of my favorite novelizations that I’ve ever read. Will Collins takes a very simple plot and
manages to pad it out into a decent read without effecting the pacing too much. The book is itself rather short at less then
200 pages, but again that seems about right.
All the fun stuff from the movie is in the novelization. The bear, the oddball characters, and the
kills. Being a book we get to have much
more character development of the most important character, the bear. We find out where it came from, why it comes
down from the mountain, and even why it first attacks humans. Couldn’t really do that in a movie so the
change of format is fun and more importantly blends nicely with the original
plot. Collins even is able to stretch
the gore out a bit more then we were able to see on screen. I’m a nerd for a good bloody kill and the
book gives us more detail then we see in the movie.
Whenever
I’m reading a novelization of a movie that I really like I’m always worried
about what liberties the author might take.
With that in mind let’s talk about the differences between the movie and
the book. We get a few minor things like
the character of Kelly getting a name change, and he has more of an adversarial
relationship with his boss. It has a
much more Roy vs. the Mayor shut the beaches down Jaws vibe to it then we get
in the movie. I think I’d chalk that up
to something that was in the script that never made it to the film version. I don’t think this brings anything to the
story and makes it feel more like a Jaws want to be. There are a couple of scenes added with
characters like a father and son going camping that seems to exist only to add
a few extra pages in.
The
biggest change is the ending. In the
movie we get a rather explosive ending much like Jaws (see a theme?). But the book has hand grenades and a flame
thrower tossed in for fun. I have no
idea if this was from the script and was changed during shooting, but I like it
much better. Though to be fair seeing
how it is played out in the book I have no idea how they could have shot that
sequence on a low budget. Oh and the way
the movie is edited you get the idea that one of the main characters had died,
but in the book he didn’t. I’m a big fan
of the actor Andrew Prine so that made me happy.
This is a
fun, easy read that should appeal to both fans of the movie as well as someone
just looking for a good creature story.
I’m recommend it and am glad to have it in my collection.
© Copyright 2017 John Shatzer
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