I hear that the book the Orson Welles movie Touch of Evil is based on is pretty awful. I haven’t read it, but the movie has some superb moments.
I came in here to mention “The princess bride” (beat out by WhyNot) but add ‘but not by much.’ 
The book is great, but it rambles some, and Goldman did a great job of transforming it into an EXCELLENT screenplay. (Which makes since considering his experience in adapting other people’s work.)
The *concept * of the story was great, but in my opinion Mary Shelley’s execution of it was not very good. It was clumsily plotted, with key elements dependent on wild coincidences and implausibilities, and some dramatic moments clumsily handled. Mary was only about 20 when she wrote it, and it shows. Her other novels are little-read, I suspect with good reason. Frankenstein is famous because of its sensational theme, not because it was a well-written book.
Phantom of the Opera. Both Lon Chaney & the musical.
I though of another one. **Bell, Book and Candle ** the movie was better than the book.
Colibri: that is a fair critique. When I read it, I was still enjoying Piers Anthony, so maybe on rereading it, I would be more critical now.
Jim
Doctor Zhivago. Possibly the version I read was so bad only because it’s the English translation of the Italian translation of the original Russian. But I suspect it was just as bad in Russian.
I’ll agree with this. I’ve read Gaston Leroux’s book a couple of times*, and his hero and heroine are unbelievably stupid and naive. (Terry Pratchett rightly takes them to task in “Masquerade”). They’re better in the 1925 movie (although that still contains illogical and unexplained things) and in the musical. Ignore the intermediate films – the Claude Rains/Nelson Eddy Version, the Herbert Lom/Hammer version, and all the ones that came out in the wake of the Broadway show. There’s no composer-scarred-by-acid in the original!
*Gaston Leroux was listed as one of the most popular authors of fantastic fiction in a poll takenm in the 1920s or 1930s, but his astuff fell out of print for a long time. I spent years tracking down a copy of Phantom – it was a paperback published in connection with the release of the 1960s Lom film. When the Andrew Lloyd Webber stage version came out, though, suddenly it was in print everywhere, and even now it’s easy to get – people treat it as a “classic”. But for many years it was virtually impossible to find. If you are going to read it, I recommend The Essential Phantom of the Opera, with copious annotations by Leonard Wolf. It was just crepublished a couple of years ago.
H. G. Wells was a far superior writer in just about every respect than Mary Shelley.
I bought this book on your recommendation about a year ago, Cal. Very good reading, thank you very much.
Andrew Lloyd Webber had been asked about doing a stage version of Phantom, and later found a copy of the novel in an NYC used book store for a dollar. His thought was “this is a book that doesn’t know whether it’s a mystery, a horror story, or a love story,” He went with the love storty angle and made about $100,000,000 on it. Best return on a dollar in history!
It’s been years since I read it too, but wasn’t the blue goo edible and nutritious, even if it tasted like nothing on Earth? (ahem)
Anyone want to vote for Bonfire of the Vanities??
Nah, I didn’t think so.
ISTR that in 2010 (the book), it’s described as a bland bready stuff, because the aliens didn’t know what it was supposed to taste like (they may not have had a concept of what “taste” was), which is implied to be considered somewhat preferable to starving to death. I don’t recall if it was a blue goo or not (I never read 2001).
That said, IIRC, both the book and movie versions of 2001 were written at the same time, taking various cues from eachother, and I THINK both based on a previous ACC short story. The book and movie of 2010 both apparantly take off from the movie 2001 rather than the book, so when you read 2010, the Discovery never went anywhere near Saturn, nor did it have any particular plan to.
Oh, and another vote for Fight Club. It’s funny, but most of the stuff I loved about the movie, I hated in the book. The narrator just repeated himself too much, although the parafin line did pay off awesomely at the climax. As far as endings go, the book’s ending fell flat, although the book DID do a far better job making it clear just what whiny bitches the men of Project Mayhem were.
If groups of movies count, I think the Hornblower series of TV movies were collectively better than their source, the book Mr. Midshipman Hornblower, if just because the source book was a rather disjointed collection of rather good short stories, which were variously combined into four TV movies.
Huh. I always thought the most obvious answer to “better movie than book” was The Wizard of Oz.
I think every Stephen King book has been better than its movie counterpart, although Shawshank and Stand by Me were very worthy matches.
Misery and The Green Mile too.
The book “Who Killed Roger Rabbit” was absolute crap. Poorly written, poorly thought out, and with the ending being a complete deus ex machina. (“The killer - it’s an evil cartoon genie we’ve never met before!”)
The only thing good about it was the concept (“Hardboiled detective novel - but in a world where cartoon characters exist and intermingle with humans!”), and the movie took that it a much better, more interesting, more subtle, and more amusing direction.
Mary Poppins
Anyone else think if Puzo had left all the gynecology and elective surgery stuff out of the Godfather book, it would have been much closer to being as good as the movie?
I’m surprised nobody has mentioned MAS*H.
The book is okay, but the movie is outstanding. One of my favorites actually.
Has anybody read the book Dr. Strangelove was based on? Red Alert, I think it was called. I have a feeling that the movie is much better in that case, too.
Nawwww. The Godfather book is a classic in it’s own juicy pulpedness.
I have (I’ve got two copies of it). It’s pretty good, actually, but not at all like the satirical film (Look at the lineup of screenwriters – Kubrick and Terry Sothern contributed).
After the movie came out, the author, Peter Bryant, rewrote it to be closer to the movie, and it was rereleased as “Dr. Strangelove” by Peter George.