Fade To Black - the novel
Not that long ago I posted about Fright Night the novel. Last spring while VHS hunting I stumbled upon a pretty cool collection of movie tie-in novels that were pretty big in the 1980's and 1990's as a promotional tool. I have all ready a pretty cool collection so far but one of these titles that I couldn't believe that I found was one based off Fade To Black, the 1980 thriller. This is a VERY rare item that I'm still stunned over finding. What was even more awesome than grabbing this along with several other titles was the fact that the novel was in pretty great condition. Just few weeks ago I decided to put it in my car as a quick read whenever I had down time, and I really have to say this was a very enjoyable read!
PLOT - A shy, lonely, film geek goes on a killing spree, dressing up as some of the most iconic movie characters in Hollywood against those who bully
and browbeat him, while at the same time, he stalks his idol; a Marilyn
Monroe look-alike.
LOWDOWN - I remember back in early 2011 when I was still back at school I was in my last semester and it was right before HorrorHound that I decided to finally watch the 1980 film after reading and hearing all the hype about it. Finding the movie on some random site, I remember sitting in my apartment back at school and found myself pretty blown away by the story. This isn't exactly what I would want to call a "slasher". This movie is a tragic thriller about a young man's mind who takes his session one step too far and spirals down into a dark and twisted world he's created for himself.
I found Fade To Black to be a very interesting movie. Just the idea of a film geek dressing up as his favorite movie characters and literally transforming into them to do their killing is mind blowing. I mean I'm sure I speak for many people, movies are a huge part of our life's. We find our selfs with our favorites, collecting posters, lobby cards, and any information we can find based off them. We can quote every line and spend a very large portion of our time whenever we want to unwind or relax watching them...
For Eric sadly, this became his entire life. He didn't know when to stop and sadly took his love for movies one step too far.
I find this movie very original and very ahead of it's time. When I read the book, which ended up taking me on and off about two weeks, I found myself very surprised with how much I loved it. Released the same time as the film, Fade To Black the novel was written by Ron Renaud is is roughly 215 pages. What I liked about this book that yes it's based exactly off the movie, but they added little things that gave the audience/reader better sight into Eric's twisted world. I liked the background on the shrink's brother and how he felt he needed to save Eric. I loved showing more detail of Eric's obsession with Marilyn, and how he slowly begins to transform and get lost into this world of film. I loved how it shows that Eric was in fact human and maybe even suffered from a medical condition. I loved the insight we got on him as a character and exactly what he was thinking right up until the very end. In fact I loved the very last page of the book as the men are washing the blood off the stars in front of the theater.
This is a great book based off a very awesome movie. If you ever get the chance to snag one of these puppies do it!
