Cahiers Classiques d'Horreur

Image recycled from previous article owing to obscurity of subject matter

Way, way back in the first ever post I wrote for the blog, nearly two years ago, I reviewed the short-lived Horror Classic Gamebooks series by J.H. Brennan.

I have recently discovered several references on the Internet (primarily on TV Tropes) to an unofficial third book in this series. It appears that the two books in the original series were hugely popular in France, to the point that a fan wrote their own entry in the series and managed to get it officially printed. (One wonders if J.H. Brennan was ever aware of the existence of this; I suspect not.)

The book was entitled La Malédiction des Baskerville, which translates as "Curse of the Baskerville", and allows you to play as either Sherlock Holmes or... the Hound of the Baskervilles. (One presumes the author felt the 'villain' character should be a monster of some kind, following the lead of the two 'official' books, hence why it isn't Moriarty.)

If you happen to have any more information on this (especially if you know any way I could get an English translation of it), I would welcome it.

The Tell-Tale Edit

BART: And if you still want to tear apart this young Sunday School student as he stands on the brink of salvation, I await your wrath.
[The mob sounds moved.]
KRUSTY: Somehow, I don't feel like killing any more.

If you happen to watch the Complete First Season DVD's copy of the Simpsons episode "The Telltale Head", you will find those lines in the final scene. However, that is not how the episode was originally broadcast. But just what was aired, and when, and why were the changes made? We can reasonably confidently answer two of those three questions.

The Author of This Blog is a Common Thief

I have posted this elsewhere on the internet today, but thought I'd stick it here for anyone interested - a promotional stand I stole from an A Series of Unfortunate Events promotional event circa 2006, around the time the final book in the series, The End, was released.

The event in question was part of the Cheltenham Festival of Literature, and featured an actor portraying Count Olaf, who then proceeded to run a quiz with a few children chosen from the audience. (I recall thinking he wasn't particularly familiar with the series, as he struggled to come up with a convincing answer when a few children informed him he was dead...)

House of Hellish Difficulty

1984's House of Hell, then. An early entry in the Fighting Fantasy series, penned by the range's co-creator Steve Jackson, the only book in the series to feature a contemporary setting (a title it would hold until 2012, when Ian Livingstone's Blood of the Zombies was unleashed upon the world), and surely responsible for many a nightmare given to unsuspecting young children who read it. It was also easily the hardest book in the series up to that point, and remains well-known for its high difficulty level.

The Rewrite Stuff

We already have one ongoing Diamond Brothers mystery on the blog, so let's add a second one. In 2007, a new entry in the series, the novella The Greek Who Stole Christmas was published...

So what's all this, then? A new four-part mystery read by Harry Enfield (according to the listing of part 2), aired as part of a Radio 4 childrens' show, of the same name... in 2002? Was it originally a Diamond Brothers story, or was it rewritten to include them? (I suspect the latter, as this would explain why its title isn't parodying a crime movie like all the other books in the series are.)

There is a precedent for this - Horowitz's Power of Five series was an updated rewrite of Pentagram, a series he originally wrote in the eighties. (Note that Pentagram only had four books written and for some reason the fifth was never published, meaning the finale of PoF had no counterpart in the original series.) Still, if anyone happened to hear the original broadcasts of these and could contribute more information, I'd be grateful...

There are plenty of other interesting things you can find out by searching for Horowitz's name on the Genome; a Radio 3 play in 1985 and a fully-dramatised adaptation of Groosham Grange for Radio 5 Live in 1992, for example.

Edit Wars #8

As mentioned previously in one of these articles, in 2001, not one but two series of Robot Wars were filmed: the regular series, and Extreme, a series featuring a variety of different mini-tournaments, as well as all the roboteers being told to act like jerks and a blatantly faked case of a roboteer pretending to sabotage his opponent's machine, in an apparent homage to the artifical nature of pro wrestling. But it's the filming dates we're interested in here.

Have I Got Major Political Upheaval for You

28 September 1990: The first ever episode of Have I Got News for You is broadcast on BBC Two.
28 November 1990: Margaret Thatcher leaves office, twelve days after the first series of HIGNFY has finished its run. The show's official board game later invites fans to "draw their own conclusions".

Broken Gamebooks #10: Spellbreaker / Curse of the Mummy

 

Here're two curious ones, and no mistake. These two Fighting Fantasy books were both written by Jonathan Green, and both published by Puffin towards the end of the original series' life. They're also agreed to be two of the more challenging entries in the series, not least because of the large number of extremely difficult combats they both contain. Green is one of the few non-Jackson/Livingstone authors to have had his books reprinted by Wizard for the revived series, and these books were felt to be so difficult that a few changes were made to them in an attempt to make them easier, principally in reducing the stats for some of the enemies you face. However, in doing so, a few new errors are introduced!