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"Who
will stop the vampires stalking L.A.?" asks the cover of
the novelisation of Joss Whedon's script for the Buffy
movie. I think I'll have to get back to you on that one...
Okay,
so we all know the plot: teenager Buffy Summers is more interested
in cheerleading at Hemery High than in fulfilling her destiny
as the Chosen One, blah blah blah...
If
you're a Doctor Who fan like me, then straightforward
novelisations that just add "he said" and "she
said" to the script probably already take up a huge chunk
of shelf space. Sadly, Richie Tankersley Cusick's novelisation
doesn't really stand-out from most of the Who ones that
Terrance Dicks churned out on a monthly basis for much of the
eighties.
The
main advantage any novelisation of the Buffy movie has
is the absence of some of the more slapstick elements of the
film - notably Amilyn's "hilarious" death sequence.
The characters of Merrick and Lothos also appear marginally
more alive on the page than on screen, although given the comatose
acting from Donald Sutherland and Rutger Hauer that's not much
of a surprise. Buffy and Pike fare less well; in particular,
the scene where Buffy slices Pike's hot dog seems a bit ridiculous
on the page.
On
the downside, there's still some truly terrible lines: e.g.
knight walks into bar and says "Some plague we're having,
huh?" Like it's the weather he's talking about and
not the Black Death or something. Argh!
The
whole thing lopes along at a reasonable pace without ever breaking
into a sweat, but then you don't expect much from a movie novelisation
that is aimed pretty squarely at kids. It's not too bad,
but it's nothing to write home about either. BACK
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