Shaun Hutson's Terminator

The fly crawled into the wound, feasting on the dark fluid within. Terminator ignored it as it nudged deep into the gash on his face. The skin was torn in many places, some of the cuts mottled green and blue where gangrene had begun to set in. The flies swarmed over the putrescent repast like gourmets. The cyborg could smell its own odour. The tiny hotel room was rank with it, a thick fetid stench which clogged the air and was made worse by the stifling heat...

Shaun Hutson, The Terminator

It seems an unlikely pairing, James Cameron’s stylish hi-tech sci-fi thriller and splatterpunk novelist Shaun Hutson, but back in 1984 UK publishers Star commissioned Hutson to write a novelization of Cameron’s film to tie in with its January 1985 release in the UK and Ireland. By all accounts neither party was terribly enthusiastic about the project. Hutson reportedly completed his assignment in just 15 days, and the novelization was not published in the US. Instead a more substantial, expansive and what might be best described as official novelization was penned by Randall Frakes and Bill Wisher and published in the US in November 1985. Of the two Terminator novelizations, the Frakes and Wisher book is probably the one best recommended for Terminator scholars. I've read in tandem with Hutson's novelization, a advanced draft of The Terminator screenplay, dated April 20th 1983 and the novelization closely follows, almost scene-for-scene, the screenplay, even dialogue in most cases remains unchanged. That’s not to say Hutson’s pass at the film should be disregarded. Before the advent of the 2001 Special Edition Terminator DVD, Hutson's novelization was one of the few sources of information on scenes that never made the final cut, and even today, with The Terminator mythos thoroughly explored in numerous books and websites, the novelization can still surprise with a few interesting diversions.

Two scenes that most likely were not filmed involve two supporting characters. Early in the novelization, readers are introduced to redhead Ginger Ventura and boyfriend Matt, when Sarah meets both at a gym. It's a minor, lightweight scene that no one would miss. The second lost scene is more substantial though and serves to introduce the character of the weary lieutenant Ed Traxler, first seen attending the home of the second murdered Sarah Connor:

Lying face down was a young woman, although it was hard to ascertain her age at first glance. Her upper body was a torn mess, a congealed puddle of blood having spread out around her. Part of the back of her skull had been blasted away revealing the sticky grey brain matter beneath.

‘Sarah Connor?’ he said. ‘That can’t be right. That’s the name of the one from Valley Division this afternoon.’

Vukovich shrugged and handed something to his superior

‘No doubt about the name. Here, we got her driver’s licence.’

‘You gotta be kidding me,’ Traxler said. ‘Jesus Christ. A one-day pattern killer. The newsboys will be short-stroking over this one.’ He looked down at the driver’s licence, hoping that there was some kind of mistake. There wasn’t.

Cameron judiciously transposed this bit of exposition to the police station for the film, but the scene as originally written lends Traxler a more profound connection to the unfolding events - when Sarah is later stalked by the Terminator in the police station, the critically injured Traxler hands Reece his gun and implores him to keep Sarah alive, suggesting that he believes what Reece had spoken about during his interrogation.

If the Frakes and Wisher book is now considered the definitive novelization of the film, Shaun Hutson's book has at least one important plot point not found in its US counterpart. After Sarah and Reece regroup at the Tikki motel, Sarah tries to convince Reece to destroy the Cyberdyne Systems plant which she locates in the phonebook. The plan is ultimately scotched when the Terminator resumes his pursuit but by a strange twist of fate, the climactic battle between Sarah and the Terminator takes places at the Cyberdyne manufacturing plant, where two of its personnel recover one of the cyborg chips. Interestingly there seems to have been some confusion on Hutson's part about what the computer system that waged war on humanity is actually called, referring to it as Skynet, but also as Titan. The word Titan eerily anticipates James Cameron's 1997 film Titanic but I could find no evidence that it sprang from an early Terminator screenplay draft. Perhaps Shaun Hutson was sneaking in a reference to Trident, the United Kingdom's nuclear missile programme established just a few years earlier in 1980.

A noteworthy aspect of the book is the naming convention used for the cyborg assassin. For the bulk of the novelization, Hutson refers to the T-800 as simply Terminator, without the definite article, which is not restored until the story's climax. This initially threw me off, thinking it was an ill-advised idiosyncrasy of the author, but the inconsistency is explained in the April 1983 screenplay which contains this bit of action:

The last flakes of flesh are falling from him like burning leaves. His gleaming structure is revealed in all its intricacy. No longer a 'He', but an 'It'. It looks like Death rendered in steel.

And for the remainder of the screenplay, the cyborg is referred to as The Terminator, which Hutson duly follows for the rest of the novelization.

Reading Martin

"The young man seemed normal to him, but he particularly noticed his pallor and his greenish hazel eyes. “The eyes gave him away,” Tati Cuda thought. They were not the vibrant, dancing eyes of youth, but those of a tired old man"...

I've just spent a pleasant couple of hours reading George Romero and Susan Sparrow's 1977 novelization of Martin. Not quite the missing link between Romero's great film and the lost 3-hour cut that's mentioned on the DVD commentary, the novel more or less follows the same trajectory as the film with a little loosening of the belt here and there. The opening sequence, set on the sleeper train is extended to include an awkward encounter between Martin and a fellow passenger alarmed by Martin's withdrawal symptoms from lack of blood. Elsewhere there are some interesting tweaks to Martin's character - in the home invasion scene, Martin repeatedly punches his lady victim in the face, enraged by the unexpected presence of her illicit lover - a shocking bit of violence that doesn't quite chime with John Amplas' sensitive portrayal of the troubled young man. Ultimately, no great revelations but an enjoyable read all the same...

Penguin Horror

For sale ! Two rare Penguin paperback novelizations from the 70’s, slight wear to covers and pages, stored in a smoke-free house, open to offers…. These are faux-Penguins of course, I whipped these together earlier in MSPaint and will not stand up to close scrutiny, but you get the idea. There are plentiful examples of Penguin fakery on the web, but it was this page which inspired my fabrications...

Reading Videodrome

“It has a title now, by the way,” called Harlan.
Max stopped in his tracks.
“It’s supered for a few seconds at the end of this transmission. No credits. Just one word. VIDEODROME.”

More novelization reading and this weekend it was the turn of Dennis Etchison's adaptation of David Cronenberg's Videodrome screenplay. I was particularly keen to read this novel (written under Etchison's Jack Martin pseudonym) on foot of the interview with the author on Arrow's Videodrome Blu-Ray, and was surprised to discover the novel pretty much sticks to the same narrative trajectory as the film despite the numerous revisions the screenplay underwent. Still, there are some surprises. The novel opens with Max Renn awaking from a dream where he is about to be ritually executed, and there are special effects set pieces that fell by the wayside where Cronenberg's ideas perhaps outran Rick Baker's wizardry - at one point a television in a store window smashes thru the glass and slithers across the sidewalk to deliver Max a warning message from Brian O'Blivion. Still, Etchison's writing is vivid and powerful - his Max Renn is often a more engaging character than Cronenberg's, the novel frequently switching to Renn's own perspective to chart his increasingly perilous state from the Videodrome mutation, and in this respect neatly anticipates Seth Brundle's decline in The Fly. Recommended reading.

Reading Escape From New York

"He had less than eighteen hours to find a man in the largest city in America with only three million maniacs to get in his way"

I spent a very enjoyable few hours today reading Mike McQuay's 1981 novelization of Escape From New York. A brisk and breezy read, McQuay's book is based on John Carpenter and Nick Castle's screenplay and is interesting for its additions and omissions - the biggest departure from the film is the book's retention of the bank robbery sequence (which would have opened the film), and there's lots of additional color, the book even more bleak and dystopian than the film - I particularly liked the sequence where the sewer-dwelling "Crazies", complete with oozing sores and dripping with infernal slime, emerge to hunt for human flesh. What's noticeably absent from the book is the laconic Eastwood-flavored Snake Pliskin - I suspect the character was more fully realized with Kurt Russell's contribution. Incidentally, two minor characters in the book are given the names Cronenberg and Romero and not having seen the film recently I'm trying to remember if this tip of the hat appears in the film ?