By ROB FREESE
For me, horror novelizations hold an allure over original horror paperbacks. They either ignite your imagination if you read them before watching the movie, or they complement the experience if you read them after you’ve seen the flick. (I have always thought of them as being the perfect melding of film and literature.)
In the case of the original Friday the 13th novelizations, Friday the 13th Part 3 3-D by Michael Avallone ( Leisure Books, 1982) and Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI by Simon Hawke (Signet, 1986) were published in conjunction with the films’ theatrical releases. I read the novelization to Part 3 before I saw it, so it set the story expectations in my mind beforehand, while I read the novelization to Part 6 after I saw it, and anything extra stuck out. (I’m looking at you, Elias Voorhees!)
One of my favorites is Dennis Etchison’s adaptation of Halloween II (Zebra, 1981, under the pen name Jack Martin). Etchison’s prologue sets the autumnal Halloween atmosphere quickly. You can’t help feeling goosepimples tingle your neck, reading about the shadows growing longer and the smell of the wet leaves in the gutters. It is perfect. Etchison’s next tie-in, Halloween III: Season 
of the Witch (Jove, 1982), also under the Jack Martin pen name, is just as good.
Of course, retro novelizations are currently very popular. Some of the earliest I remember reading were Simon Hawke’s adaptations for the first three Friday the 13th films. In recent years, authors Armando Munoz, Brad Carter, Christian Francis, Tim Waggoner and many others have been doing a fantastic job going back and breathing new life into films like Silent Night, Deadly Night, Rats: Night of Terror, Maniac Cop and X that did not get the book tie-in treatment the first time around.
Oddly, one of the strangest novelizations is the one released for the OG slasher itself, Halloween. For starters, it was not released before the movie’s 1978 premiere. It came out around the time of the movie’s re-release in 1979. Bantam Books did two printings in October 1979 and continued releasing it through at least ten printings.
The author of the book, Curtis Richards, is somewhat of a mystery, but we’ll delve deeper into that a little later. His task was to take the film’s simple premise and build it into a full-length novel. The novelization adds more story, particularly to the beginning, where it weaves in Celtic folklore and the details about the young Michael Myers in Smith’s Grove Sanitarium.
He are some highlights:
The six-page prologue begins, “The horror started on the eve of Samhain, in a foggy vale in Northern Ireland at the dawn of the Celtic race.” We are introduced to Deirdre, the beautiful young daughter of Druid king Gwynwyll, and young Enda, a simple peasant boy with deformities, who desires Deirdre. His uncle laughs at the notion, informing him that handsome Cullain will soon wed Deirdre.
Enda arrives at the Samhain festival drunk with an oversized butcher’s knife. He watches Deirdre and Cullain dance until he can stand it no longer, murdering the couple before the crowd of revelers. Enraged, the villagers rip Enda to pieces. The king orders the remains to be taken to the Hill of Fiends, directing the shaman to curse them. “Thy soul shall roam the earth till the end of time, reliving thy foul deed and thy foul punishment, and may the god Muck Olla visit every affliction upon thy spirit evermore.”
In Chapter One, we learn that six-year-old Michael Myers has been having violent dreams. He has also been fighting with his sister, Judy, and the kids at school. Showing his grandmother his store-bought clown costume (which includes a jester’s hat), she proceeds to tell him about the boogeyman. (She also reminds her daughter, Michael’s mother, that Grampa Nordstrom also suffered such bizarre dreams.)
Judy Myers is introduced in Chapter Two. All her energy is focused on her Halloween sex date with her boyfriend, Danny. With her parents gone for the night, preferring the movies to the constantly chiming doorbell, Judy has all the time she needs to enjoy some carnal “treats” with Danny. When Judy greets a group of trick-or-treaters and asks what they would do if she didn’t give them any candy, a masked Michael intones, “We’re going to kill you.”
Soon, Danny arrives. Judy plays a prank on him, scaring him with the carving knife and suggesting the entire Myers clan may wield a darker side. Their sex scene is quite descriptive for a novelization for a movie that didn’t have any graphic sex, bursting with an erect-this and a quivering-that before the chapter climaxes. (Carpenter has stated that Halloween co-writer and producer Debra Hill wrote a sex scene that was too hot to include in the movie.)
It is revealed that the night before killing his sister, Michael dreamed of Enda slaughtering Deirdre and Cullain.
In Chapter Four, a judge assigns Doctor Sam Loomis to Michael’s care. He states that if Michael is still in the custody of Smith’s Grove Sanitarium on his 21st birthday, he will be tried as an adult for the murder of his sister. (The judge also reveals Michael’s full name as “Michael Audrey Myers.”)
Months later, Loomis tells the judge of “unpleasant occurrences” at Smith’s Grove since Michael’s arrival, including how the older inmates are scared of him and that he was suspected of giving a trustee food poisoning.
At this point, the novel starts following the movie more closely, with Loomis arriving at Smith’s Grove to pick Michael up for his court appearance. When he finds the inmates roaming free, one tells him, “It’s all right now. He’s gone. The evil’s gone.” Loomis finds a guard in the guard shack, neck broken, with his head twisted all the way around. In Chapter Seven, when Loomis pulls over to use the phone to call his wife, the dead man in the pick-up truck also has a broken neck.
One quirk of Laurie’s in the book is her morbid fascination with death. At one point, she even shares her macabre thoughts on death with little Tommy Doyle.
Chapter Eleven gets strange. We enter Michael’s head while he’s cruising around Haddonfield. He remembers little details about the night he killed Judy. Later, he gets horny watching Annie and Bob have sex.
In Chapter Fifteen, Loomis hands off a hysterical Tommy Doyle and Lindsey Wallace to a neighbor. Reluctant to take two screaming kids, he asks, “Mister, is this no joke? I mean, I’ve been trick-or-treated to death tonight,” to which Loomis responds, “You don’t know what death is.” From here, the novelization follows the movie to the end.
I’ve been unable to locate any other books by Curtis Richards, novelizations or otherwise. However, Richard Curtis wrote the novelization of Squirm three years earlier. (Squirm has recently been rereleased by Encyclopocalypse Publications.) Although he has been mentioned as the author, that never made sense to me. Why would he just swap his name around?
Another popular, persistent rumor was that Dennis Etchison wrote it. I think many Halloween fans made this connection because he wrote the Halloween II and Halloween III: Season of the Witch tie-ins. Etchison also wrote a proposed screenplay for Halloween IV when Carpenter and Hill were still attached to the series, giving him strong ties to the early part of the series.
I had long suspected that John Carpenter and Debra Hill collaborated on it, or maybe Carpenter wrote it himself. I based this assumption on little details in the novel that popped up later in the film series, such as Michael’s middle name, Audrey. The only time “Audrey” was ever used in the films was in a scene Carpenter wrote and directed for the TV version of Halloween, when Loomis is assigned to the case.
Halloween II credits Carpenter and Hill for writing the screenplay, and we know Carpenter reluctantly wrote it. It has always made sense to me that Carpenter remembered the line written in the tie-in near the end, when the neighbor tells Loomis he’d been “trick or treated to death tonight.” When Loomis responds, “You don’t know what death is!” in the sequel, it comes at a pivotal point in the opening that definitely lets the audience know the movie is off and running.
Talk of Samhain pops up again in Halloween II, and the early Celtic race and their superstitions and customs are major plot points in Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Both films were produced by Carpenter and Hill, and Carpenter had a hand in both screenplays.
So, with this much circumstantial evidence pointing fingers in every direction, it is quite clear who the real author of the Halloween novelization is… drumroll please… Richard Curtis!
Yes, Richard Curtis did, in fact, write the Halloween novelization as Curtis Richards. I caught up with Mr. Curtis, who is still active as a writer and literary agent, in early October. He graciously answered some questions about his involvement with the adaptation.
The book went through at least ten printings, correct?
I was engaged by the publisher, Bantam, as a writer for hire, meaning the copyright to the book was not owned by me but rather by the producer. Therefore, I wasn’t entitled to updates on the book’s performance and was not privy to sales or printing information.
Do you remember when you were commissioned to write the novelization?
The movie was released in October 1978, and the book was released one year later. I was given a screenplay, but I also saw the movie and took notes in the theater in the dark. Given my handwriting, it’s a miracle I accurately recorded any of it!
Did you have any contact with Debra Hill or John Carpenter prior to adapting their script?
I had no contact with the producers, only with the publisher. No one told me what to write. But it was clear that the events in the movie were inadequate to fill in a full-length novel, so I had to invent stuff, particularly the Samhain origin of the Halloween holiday, and the supernatural nature of Michael’s character.
So, it was your idea to add the prologue set in Ireland and the incidents surrounding young Michael at the hospital…
Yes, I had to make all that stuff up. For instance, if he was just a boy, how did he learn to drive a car as a hospital inmate? Movie-goers may not have wondered, but book readers would, so I needed to make up scenes in the hospital.
Was there a reason for the pen name?
I had serious literary ambitions and didn’t want a movie tie-in to be associated with my real name. Ironically, Halloween turned out to be the book I was best known for – among some 50 others.
Were you aware that little details from your novel ended up in the movies?
I never saw the sequel movies, so until very recently, I did not know that the Samhain story I invented was used in Halloween II. I don’t know what other details from my book ended up in subsequent movies, but I’m proud to know that the producers felt my details were good enough to use in sequels.
Were you surprised when the Halloween novelization came back into print after more than 40 years?
Yes indeed, and I am grateful to publisher Printed in Blood for persuading the producer to reissue the book and engage me to write an introduction. And by the way, the introduction provides a more detailed explanation.
Get your hands on the new, illustrated limited edition of Halloween at the Printed in Blood website, and be sure to check out Richard Curtis’ Tales from the Creepery: 13 Strange and Disturbing Dramas.
