In a message dated 4/26/00 10:00:03 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
billha@ionet.net writes:
<< And just to muddy this river some more, is acclaim
sometimes due as much to a
film embodiment as to the innate worth of the fiction?
Contrary, are some
"just-
as-great" titles underappreciated because they're not
viddied? >>
Fredric Brown's amazing The Screaming Mimi was adapted
(rather badly, I hear) in the 1960s. In this adaptation,
starring Anita Eckberg (well it has two things going for it)
the killer leaves a Screaming Mimi statuette at the scene of
each crime. In Brown's novel, the killer had bought a
statuette from the first victim. Sweeny looks at it, (a kind
of female version of Munch's "The Scream") and realizes that
this must have somehow triggered the psychopath. Much subtler
and infinitely more sinister. In the seventies, Italian
goremeister Dario Argento makes Bird With the Crystal
Plumage, which credits Brown's book, but actually uses the
more cliched plot devise of the movie. I wonder if they even
read the book!
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