Gorgo (In Print)

Having featured the 1960 novelisation of Konga (1961) the other day, I thought that I might as well take a look at another paperback novelisation of a British monster movie from publishers Monarch: Gorgo (1961).  Like the Konga novelisation, this one appeared some months in advance of the movie's release, bearing a publication date of 1960, in order to help create anticipation for the forthcoming film.  In contrast to the previous adaptation, this one eschews a cover painting bearing only a passing relationship with the film itself, for a tinted still from the movie, instead.  Clearly, the publishers felt that Gorgo presented a more convincing giant monster than Konga's man in a tatty ape suit.  Looking more closely at the cover, it is possible that it isn't a tinted still, (which would be odd, as the film was, as the cover boasts, in Technicolor), but rather taken from one of the climactic sequences where a half-demolished London is wreathed in red smoke.

I've never had the pleasure of reading this novelisation, (original editions are now expensively collectable), but according to those who have, it departs from the film's scenario at various points.  Most notably, it adds in a female character as love interest for one of the main male protagonists, in order to provide a number of 'racy' sequences.  These sorts of variations from the source material in movie novelisations isn't uncommon - the trashier the film, the greater the variations, as a rule.  In part this was because the books existed in a trash paperback market, jostling for attention with all manner of garishly covered titles promising all manner of sleaze and also because they were sometimes derived from early versions of the script.  This latter situation was particularly true of those novelisations released months in advance of the source films -  they wouldn't have been completed, let alone given a final edit when the writer assigned to the novelisation started work on the book, meaning that they hadn't actually seen any part of the film.  The credited author for 'Gorgo', Carson Bingham, was actually a pseudonym for prolific pulp writer Bruce Cassiday, who reused it for one of three Flash Gordon spin off novels he authored in the seventies.