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Thanks, I must have missed that somehow (and practically a Hammer Film as well - how remiss of me!).Mars Mug wrote:The Last Man On Earth (1964), Vincent Price, is the first of the adaptions of the book. Like I have said, I have not read the book, but from the descriptions people have given here this sounds like the closest of the three films with Vincent Price being more dark and tragic than the stars of the other two films.
I think that is what bothers me. . . . they could quite easily have made almost exactly the same film and not referenced the book in anyway. In Star Trek, Data has a positronic brain. . . . yet they don't put "Based on the work of Isaac Asimov" in the credits do they, because the rest of it bears no relation to his work. Same here.DrCBVI wrote: The problem with a film adaptation failing to resemble the book at all (as Abyss mentions, the point of the book is completely missed in the film) is simply... why bother? Why bother buying the rights to the movie-of-the-book if you're just going to brush it aside? Why not just come up with your own story? An obvious answer is that they do it just to cash in on any popularity the book has and that, I imagine, is what irks a lot of people.
I wonder about this as well. I had not heard about the book until the film was first being written (see below). I just wonder if the amount they paid for the rights to the book was really in line with how many people they thought would go and see it based on the name.Bishop149 wrote:I think that is what bothers me. . . . they could quite easily have made almost exactly the same film and not referenced the book in anyway.DrCBVI wrote: The problem with a film adaptation failing to resemble the book at all (as Abyss mentions, the point of the book is completely missed in the film) is simply... why bother? Why bother buying the rights to the movie-of-the-book if you're just going to brush it aside? Why not just come up with your own story? An obvious answer is that they do it just to cash in on any popularity the book has and that, I imagine, is what irks a lot of people.
i was about to say, 'think you may have got mixed up there, dont you mean the Fog?' then, with the aid of IMDB managed not to make an arse of myself by saying that!The_Abyss wrote:It Another recent example was Stephen King's The Mist. I first read this years ago, and went through periods of excitement and dread when I found out it was finally being made into a movie - after all let's face it - Stephen King adaptions have normally either been terrible or excellent - Christine, Carrie, Shawshank Redemption on the positive, most other stuff on the negative. The Mist proceeded on a relatively low budget to virtually mirror the story word for word, scene for scene, and for me managed to translate the book pretty effectively to the scren. Until the last 10 minutes, where clearly in a fit of Hollywood "you can't end a film like this" re-writing, they added an additional part which totally took the ending away from the imagination of the viewer / reader, and handed it to you on a plate, although admittedly not the normal "everything is ok now" ending normally scene.
hmmn, i read the Cell, and actually thought it wasnt one of his best works.. Mainly because there was nothing left to my imagination, a book's Joker Card.. i remember thinking that it may actually come over better as a film, although in reality would probably end up, just another zombie flick with a new (mobile phone) twist..More recent Stephen King works are now also in production - From a Buick 8 and the truly excellent Cell - I am left with the same mixture of anticipation and dread for these.
