Christopher Wood brings us the novelisation of his screenplay for 007’s adventure in Moonraker, here titles James Bond and Moonraker so as not to be confused with the original Ian Fleming tale. Once again, Wood makes efforts to find a happy balance between the literary version of the spy and his silver screen incarnation. And…
Tag: 1979
Moonraker (1979) – Lewis Gilbert
Oh Moonraker. Sigh. When I was first getting into Bond films, at the age of twelve, I thought Moonraker was great – I didn’t see it during its original release in ’79, but I remember seeing images, and some of the toys and cards – because space, and lasers, gadgets and James Bond! Coming to…
The Amityville Horror (1979) – Stuart Rosenberg
The next film to haunt the ghost chapter of DK Canada’s Monsters in the Movies is the granddaddy of the modern ghost/haunted house movie The Amityville Horror. Based on the non-fiction(?) book by Jay Anson. When a house comes up for sale (at a cheap price – a now recognizable horror staple), the Lutz family…
Zombie (1979) – Lucio Fulci
The next zombie movie to be featured in DK Canada’s highly enjoyable (and bloody) Monsters in the Movies book has been on the periphery of my life for a long time, though I had never seen it. I remember seeing the poster for Zombie aka Zombie Flesh Eaters aka Zombi 2 on the theater sheet…
Han Solo’s Revenge (1979) – Brian Daley
A year before we were given the second installment in the Skywalker Saga, Brian Daley gave us the second book in his Han Solo trilogy. Remember, this was long before the film series took off. When this book came out, there was no internet, and as a kid I had no way of knowing that…
Star Wars: Han Solo at Star’s End (1979) – Brian Daley
Back in 1979 there wasn’t a lot in the way of Star Wars stories, there definitely wasn’t the Expanded Universe (now the Legends series) or the new canon series of novels. There were Marvel comics which were hokey but still fun, and before The Empire Strikes Back came along we had to use our imagination…
Being There (1979) – Hal Ashby
DK Canada’s The Movie Book continues to expand my cinematic knowledge, and today helps me fill in a glaring error in my viewing history, as I settle in for the Peter Sellers classic dramedy Being There. Featuring a screenplay by Jerzy Kosinski, who also penned the original novel, the story follows Sellers (in an Oscar…
The Warriors (1979) – Walter Hill
Set in an indefinable point sometime in the Near Future (when 70s fashions come back in style), Walter Hill’s classic The Warriors is the title up for review on the What Else to Watch list following my screening of Rebel Without a Cause for DK Canada’s The Movie Book. Micheal Beck and James Remar play…
Alien Vault: The Definitive Story Behind the Film (2011) – Ian Nathan
I remember the summer that Alien opened, 1979, two years after Star Wars rocked the world. The Force stayed with me all through my childhood, and through to this very day. But Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, and a little magazine called Starlog, got me very interested in genre film and television. I wasn’t…
The Long Walk (1979) – Stephen King as Richard Bachman
King’s first novel, written, not published, is a gripping thriller that terrifies and captivates, from the first page to it’s haunting conclusion. Writing under his pseudonym of Richard Bachman, the story follows Ray Garraty a young teen in an alternate timeline where a totalitarian government has assumed control, and all of it is overseen by…
The Black Hole (1979) – Alan Dean Foster
I remember having this novel as a child. In fact, the soundtrack, the first recorded digitally, was one of the first albums I ever bought with my own money as a child. The film has been a favourite of mine for some time, flaws and all, so when I came cross the novel at a…
Apocalypse Now (1979) – Francis Ford Coppola
The brilliant, Vietnam epic, an update on the Joseph Conrad novel Heart of Darkness, is the next stop in the War genre as I continue my cinematic journey with the Great Movies – 100 Years of Film book. The story behind the film is almost as incredible as the film itself. Boasting a cast that…
