Guy Adams on Hands of the Ripper

As his new novelisation of the classic Hammer film Hands of the Ripper appears, Guy Adams describes the challenges of capturing the Hammer style on the page…

Some would say that novelizing a movie is like trying to sing a crossword. A film is not a book, you simply cannot capture it on the page. 

I think there’s a degree of truth to that — and hopefully I’ve learned some lessons between my first and second attempt for Hammer Books.  

My first novelization, Kronos, based on the movie written and directed by Brian Clemens stuck rather closely to the original. I went off piste towards the end (sword fights are not satisfying on paper so I built towards a different climax) but followed the narrative closely for the most part. My second book, Hands of the Ripper, much less so. Strangely, I suspect I may have managed to retain more of the latter film’s spirit.  

Hammer Books decided it would be interesting for a number of their planned novelizations to be updated to the present day. When this was first suggested to me I admit I laughed. ‘You do realize that means we’ll lose Jack the Ripper? Does that matter?’ Actually, no, it really didn’t. 

A story is not its setting in the same way that characters are not the clothes they wear. In stripping away the Victoriana of Hands of the Ripper we’re left with the important stuff: a story about haunted people in general and two in particular. A man and a woman who are broken and want nothing more than to be fixed.

Oh… and killing, let’s not fool ourselves, it’s not a book for the squeamish. Whenever the heart’s involved things tend to get brutal.

Is it still recognizably Hands of the Ripper? Certainly, you will find familiar characters doing familiar things, they may just do them in a slightly different way. 

I am a huge devotee of Hammer and I know how important it is to be faithful to the original movie. It’s also important to be faithful to the reader. You can watch the film any time (and you should, it’s one of their best) so why should you need me to tell you the story once more unless I’m willing to bring something interesting to it? Hopefully, if I’ve done my job right it will not only bring the spirit of the film to life — like that of a long-dead serial-killer, say — it may also make you look at the original slightly differently.  

What’s next? Oh, more revisionism… In January, Countess Dracula will be reborn, not in an eastern European castle but in a Los Angeles mansion. Because where better to tell a story about aging than Hollywood? They forgive you anything there but getting old. 

But at the heart of it — the slick, pulsing heart — it will still be the Countess Dracula just as this is still Hands of the Ripper. 

Hammer always was about taking a fresh look at old stories, how right that it continues to be so. 

Hands of the Ripper by Guy Adams, Hammer Books, £6.99