The Classic Novelizations of the Halloween Films
As you may or may not know, there were novelizations printed for each of the Halloween films up to (and including) the fourth entry. I have had pages about them on this website in the past, but they were just lists of the books and it was very bland. What follows will be a discussion of sorts.
First off there is the original novelization of the first film by Curtis Richards, released by Bantam Books in 1979. This is pretty rare to find, and it took me a long time of looking, and I happened onto it by chance in a local used bookstore. It is a pretty good expansion of the movie. Richards actually takes the character and the story seriously and tries to put more backbone into the Myers character. He does reference cults and Druids in the first couple of chapters while trying to explain why Myers does evil things. I think this is what the writers of HALLOWEEN 5 as well as Farrands on HALLOWEEN 6 looked to when they were relating the "Thorn" rune stone to Myers. Anyway it's a pretty good book.
Next you have the lackluster adaptation of Halloween II by Jack Martin. Martin simply transcribes the film, adding a few thoughts here and there. He starts at a point that was three-fourths into the first film, which is strange, but was probably jsut meant to make the book thicker, though it is still pretty thin. There are some scenes in there that aren't in the movie but were probably in the shooting script and the rough cut, before Carpenter had to come in and re-shoot things. It does have some pictures in it, one before every chapter, I believe. I picked it up for sheer nostalgic value.
Martin also did a novelization of HALLOWEEN III that is actually pretty thick. Thicker than the books for the first and second entry. I've run into this one several times but never picked it up because I never really felt the need to. Although Halloween III is an interesting Carpenter-esque film to watch, I didn't feel like reading through a book of it and I saw no nostalgic value in having such a book.
The novelization of Halloween IV (as the book is simply titled) is almost as hard to find, if not harder, than the novelization of the first film. Nevertheless, I eventually found it locally and bought it. It is written by Nicholas Grabowsky. It is definitely thicker than the Halloween II novel, and might add more to the story, though I've never read it all the way through.
Of course, circa 1997, Boulevard Books began a "young adult" horror series based on the Halloween films. I bought the first installment, and I think there was only one other installment released. This was licensed by Compass International Pictures (yes, it somehow still exists, or at least it did in '97) and thus continued the story from only the first film (pre-H20, mind you). I don't recall being particularly impressed, but I believe it did feature the actual Michael Myers, as opposed to the faux-Jason present in the young adult horror books based on the Friday the 13th franchise.
Scanned images of books referenced may be coming soon.