By MICHAEL GINGOLD
You’ll be able to reach out and re-experience 1970s and ’80s thrills later this year.
RUE MORGUE got the first word that Encyclopocalypse Publications will be reissuing three long-out-of-print novelizations based on screenplays by Michael Butler and the late Dennis Shryack: BELLS (better known as MURDER BY PHONE), THE GAUNTLET and PALE RIDER, the latter two filmed by director/star Clint Eastwood. The BELLS book, originally published as PHONE CALL and written by Jon Messman, is about a madman who kills people with lethal jolts of electricity over telephone lines. The movie, directed by Michael Anderson and starring Richard Chamberlain and John Houseman, is also a.k.a. THE CALLING. Encyclopocalypse will issue multiple editions of the novel with its different titles/poster art (see examples below) in October.
First up in June is THE GAUNTLET, written by Butler and Shryack themselves (see exclusive cover art for the mass market and trade editions below), and PALE RIDER, by novelization titan Alan Dean Foster (STAR WARS, ALIEN, etc.), in August. All three will include new introductions by Butler, and PALE RIDER will also include a chapter on the film from Foster’s THE DIRECTOR SHOULD’VE SHOT YOU: MEMOIRS OF THE FILM TRADE. Butler and Shryack’s other film credits include the 1977 cult action/horror film THE CAR and the Chuck Norris-starrer CODE OF SILENCE.
“Dennis and I had a rewarding partnership,” Butler says, “and we were fortunate enough to work with some of the industry’s greatest talents. Several of the films we wrote together have apparently stood the test of time. It’s been a genuine pleasure to revisit this trio of projects and hopefully reintroduce them to new audiences.”
“Michael Butler and Dennis Shryack helped define ’70s and ’80s American filmmaking,” says Encyclopocalypse’s Mark Alan Miller. “For Encyclopocalypse to reissue PALE RIDER, THE GAUNTLET and the cult gem MURDER BY PHONE is an honor, and working with Alan Dean Foster on this edition of PALE RIDER elevates it even further. These books deserve to be treated as the important cinematic artifacts they are.”
