CineSavant Column
wash away the garbage and trash off the sidewalks.”
Hello!
First up is the business of a Book Review.
Last week I noted that a couple of hot books had arrived to review; we wasted no time before crawling through Tom Weaver’s From Page to Silver Scream, from Bear Manor Media.
For several years Tom has been editing a series of ‘Script from the Crypt’ books; I’ve reviewed some of them here. This new item is his work alone, and he’s hoping it will catch on and yield future volumes. The prospect of that seems entirely possible.
The format focuses on books that became noted fantastic movies, mostly horror pictures. The majority are fan favorites — but in all but a few cases the source books are not commonly read today. In his autobiographical confession up front Tom admits that he wasn’t always a reader, but that catching up with some of this arcane literature was a rewarding step that he’d like to encourage in other fans.
His choice of films is eclectic — horror milestones like The Old Dark House as well as the minor Sci-fi item The Navy vs. The Navy vs. the Night Monsters, which is of worth because its source author is the noted Murray Leinster.
After reading Tom’s introductory chapter I did what anyone would — I zeroed in on his coverage devoted to a favorite, The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham. His 25 pages on that book and movie start with a breakdown of every book chapter. Then we get a comparison / contrast with the finished film, some notes about the production and other observations. Each chapter reproduces a paperback cover or two (my crumbling 1964 copy is represented), and adds an unusual still or two, in this case, some BTS shots of the Triffid creatures. The extra kick in the Triffids chapter are two drafts of what read like early treatments for the movie, each of which presents ideas left undeveloped in the finished film.
The well-read Gary Teetzel may know all of the books that Weaver covers, but most are new to me. I forgot that The Maze was sourced from a book; Tom includes Salvador Dali illustrations from an early print edition. A piece on Donovan’s Brain has production back stories, establishing that actor Lew Ayres tried his best to slink out of the movie, just before the cameras rolled.
Tom goes in for some ‘quality’ titles, diving into Anya Seton’s Dragonwyck. He uses his book breakdown to make a case for the movie as Vincent Price’s first go at the kind of characterization he perfected for Roger Corman’s later Poe series.
There’s a lot to learn here, even, as I said, with books I’ve already read. The authors covered include Richard Matheson, Sax Rohmer, Arthur Conan Doyle, Curt Siodmak, Edgar Wallace, J.B. Priestley, Fritz Leiber, Marie Belloc Lowndes and Raymond F. Jones. With Tom’s extra goodies, it’s an entertaining read that allows one to pop about from one interesting title to the next. I never liked the movie The 27th Day but the coverage of it here allows me to learn more about John Mantley’s source book, at arms’s length.
The book makes an impressive quiz for know-it-all genre fans: what Boris Karloff mad doctor movie is based on a book called The Edge of Running Water? That eliminates this Savant from the know-it-all bench.
– 21 Novels That Became Horror and Sci-Fi Movie Favorites
Today we take a break from Matt Rovner’s ongoing CineSavant articles on the radio and film writer-director Arch Oboler, to see some reportage on Matt’s continuing research on the man.
The link is to Matt’s Library of Congress blog article on some of the things he has been uncovering from the LoC’s massive holdings on Oboler. Among the items Matt has examined are Oboler’s home movies, and a wealth of film footage he shot in Africa. Also described are film elements from This Precious Freedom, a film he shot for General Motors in 1940, that was never released. In it Claude Rains returns from a vacation to find that America has been taken over by a Fascist conspiracy. The show was eventually adapted into the very odd 1945 feature Strange Holiday.
The article also covers a TV pilot that wasn’t picked up, and home movies of the house that Frank Lloyd Wright built for Oboler in Malibu, the one featured in Oboler’s Science fiction feature Five.
Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson