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We have A Revised Book Review today. Five years ago we were engrossed by author S.M. Guariento’s book Light into Ink: A Critical Survey of 50 Film Novelizations . I loaned it to a friend who was in publishing in New York, who loved it. I’ve just now seen the New Revised Edition which prompts a repeat of the old review-essay. We’ve added some notes at the bottom.

From August 8, 2020:

… I have a Book Review of an impressive discovery: an exhaustive, well-written study of film novelizations — the (mostly) pocketbook tie-ins for movie releases, both to promote them and maximize profits. They were everywhere when I was young, and for all kinds of pictures.

The Deluxe Edition from Ideogram Press of Light into Ink: A Critical Survey of 50 Film Novelizations turns my thinking around 180 degrees…. author-researcher S.M. Guariento has broken ground on a fresh topic and done it justice. The text dives right into the subject, paying no need to the fact that many novelizations are fast-buck items that some were spun out by hack writers. Guariento’s title says fifty novelizations but his 480 authoritative, entertaining pages cover hundreds more movies that were converted into reader bait for the drugstore racks. All the collectable oddities are covered, even those strange tie-in versions of Gorgo and Reptilicus that added laughable sex scenes. We’re still disturbed by mental images of Peter Cushing lusting after schoolgirls in Brides of Dracula.

Light into Ink qualifies as an art book as well — it is illustrated with hundreds of color reproductions of vintage paperback covers, in many cases, multiple covers for popular novelizations. I know a couple of collectors that would consider this volume something of a Bible on the subject.

 

The easy-reading but academic-level text does more than give an overview. The author analyzes his fifty focus titles in great detail, explaining why novelizations vary so much from their accompanying films. In most cases the book is written before the movie is released, and the author must work from an early script draft. Guariento covers specialists in the form, but also charts unusual situations, at least one in which the original story author, who had nothing to do with the movie script, is brought back to do a novelization. He essentially got to ‘direct’ his version of the story.

A full range of films and genres is represented — pulp thrill items and even European art pix. Marguerite Duras and Alain Robbe-Grillet wrote book versions of their movies for the news stands. Annie Carlisle’s novelization for  Liquid Sky, which she only starred in, is described as autobiographical in nature. We’re told that the authors of the tie-ins for  Forbidden Planet and  Mad Max used an epistolary format.

The text of Light into Ink isn’t padded. All of the facts in the previous paragraph came from page 43 and 44. I was hooked by the book only a few pages in, when Guariento broke the ‘Information Barrier’ on the mysterious horror movie  Blood and Roses. He says that the published novelization follows the feature closely, and includes the rumored blob vampire-monster in the heavily-edited dream sequence, that now exists only in a couple of tantalizing photos. Guess who is going to be trying to track down an elusive, 60 year-old pocketbook? Until now all I collected were different editions of Day of the Triffids.

 

There’s a revelation to be had on every page. Light into Ink puts photo-faces on scores of unheralded novelization writers. Frankly, some novelizations made us think that the writer slammed out his words behind an alias, holding his nose as he typed. That’s how I felt when I first read the paperback edition of Major Dundee which Harry Julian Fink adapted from his treatment, and presumably his unused screenplay. It’s a shapeless mess, plain and simple.

The fifty films given individual chapter attention are an eclectic bunch, from horror pix by Carpenter and Cronenberg to Leone’s spaghetti westerns to things like  The Day the Earth Caught Fire. In comparing images to ink we learn something about both. The novelizations will illuminate different elements, or follow a different path than the film entirely. Guariento’s dedication to detail digs deep into foreign version research for the pocketbook adaptations of a number of Giallo classics.

The book gravitates toward films that might be difficult to adapt to print: a section called ‘Dangerous Visions’ covers films as diverse as  “X”,  Performance,  Zardoz,  Phase IV,  Sorcerer and  Harlequin. Extensive quotes make the case that the novelization for ‘X” betters the movie in visualizing Dr. Xavier’s X-Ray visions. For the book tie-in for  Taxi Driver we learn that author Richard Elman preferred to skip the descriptor ‘novelization’ in favor of the phrase ‘parallel reimagining of the screenplay.’ Author Guariento argues well that the writers of tie-in books are not necessarily hacks — you know, like the thuggish architect in  The Fountainhead who growls out, “We wanna express our creativity too!”

 

Note March 10, 2025: the revised edition is about fifty pages longer. It has more detail and information on the films and books discussed, plus a discussion new of tie-in publishing post-2019. According to Guariento, the field has exploded, with new titles and ‘classic’ reprints, and writer Alan Dean Foster has penned a memoir. Guariento’s revision now includes a helpful index. So many titles and names are involved, that I had to keep dropping Hansel & Gretel post-it markers into the first edition. It really makes a difference.

The hardcover Deluxe Edition   Light into Ink: A Critical Survey of 50 Film Novelizations  is in full color (white cover) and is available exclusively through Amazon.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson