The Novel.

For the longest time I kept hearing “You’ve got to read the novel, you’ve got to read the novel! It’s soooooo much better & explains a lot more, etc”. Ok well I just recently did. It was ok, I mean there are some characters in the novel that aren’t in the film but nothing major to detract from the movie overall. What characters that there are aren’t used as extensively in the movie as they are in the novel.

The chapters that have to do with Kinderman are a bore & I found I had to trudge through. Yeah I get it, they made him out to be “Columbo”. Probably before that show ever aired. As far as Damien goes, you learn a few details about him but nothing major that the movie didn’t cover or that you would miss if it didn’t.

What I still don’t learn is how was his mother left alone for so long before she died? What I learned from the novel is that his uncles without asking him committed her to an asylum. Don’t think the movie covers that aspect of her, at least I don’t think it does. So when she or the demon taunts him by saying in his mother’s voice, “Dimmy, Dimmy, why you do this to me? Why?” You’re not going to understand what it is she’s referencing if you don’t know how the book goes.

In the book it blames Regan’s use of an Ouija board as the vehicle that leads to her possession. She has one in her playroom & her mother Chris finds out she was playing with it for a while.
As i’m sure there must be tons of people worldwide that are doing that, I’d say that was bloody bad luck that she got into hot water for it but ok.

The ending is the main thing I have a problem with because flat out I think in the novel it sucks. It doesn’t have the same emotional impact that the movie has & that’s saying a lot since it’s only a minute or so in the film anyway.


The dialogue between the demon & everyone else I didn’t enjoy as much as the people who touted the novel said they did. It was alright but nothing worth the price of admission to read.

Not to be blasphemous but I thought in the book it’ was rather funny because I found it stupid. It goes something like this. He finds Merrin dead, then after some dialogue he says “You SOB!” THEN he stands up & even though I’m making fun of it, what I’m saying IS the gist of it. He says “Ok tough guy, you wanna mess with me? You WANNA MESS WITH ME?! OK try ME on for size why don’t you? Pick on someone your own size!” Again this is NOT! verbatim as to what he says to it but again it’s me mocking what he does say. The gist of what he says you can infer from what I wrote.

So it looks at him & does as he challenges it to. You hear (Again me making fun). “Uhh..eee, ohh….NO!” & then jumps out the window. Totally anti-climatic, unlike the film where he actually assaults Regan/it & wails on her/it & in the heat of the moment when he has his hands around her/it’s throat he demands it come into him.

MUCH more effective than the novel because the movie succeeded better as that is something that it visualizes better than the book ever did. Again even then the whole ending played out in what? Under a minute or so?

The side story with Chris’s manservant Karl didn’t really go nowhere so I don’t know how or why it was pertinent to the novel at large but alright I guess.