Blue Sunshine

by Ken Johnson

Now a major motion picture : Blue Sunshine is the Edgar Lansbury/Joseph Beruh production starring Alice Ghostley, Zalman King, Deborah Winters and Mark Goddard based on an original screenplay by Jeff Lieberman.

Genres: Horror, Fiction

156 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published December 15, 1977

Reviews

[Horror DNA · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading the novelization so many years after the film’s release in 1977 inevitably ties the experience back to memories of the movie, especially the creepy and captivating images of frenzied bald men and women. I remember the movie as a post-Manson commentary on ‘60s subcultures, drenched in the candy-colored world of L.A. On rewatch, I found the film’s style is closer to David Cronenberg’s 1970s Toronto than the color-drenched psychedelic mayhem I misremembered. While criticisms of the counterculture show up, the novelization, based on the original screenplay, shifts the action to New York. This change injects a '70s paranoid thriller quality mixed with pulp detective novel flair. The book opens with a third-person omniscient voice reminiscent of classic film noir. If the narrator said, “This is the Naked City,” it wouldn’t feel out of place. The novel gains a lean, mean, pulpish quality that's enjoyable. Unfortunately, it loses character development, with plotting and an authorial voice often overshadowing the characters.

You can read Stephen McClurg's full review at Horror DNA by clicking here.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pretty barebones novelization that adds certain elements that I was really hoping to get follow-up with.

Did the surgery of the first lady we are introduced to go well? It happens but we have no idea how it goes.

The prose was pretty solid, I just wanted a little more and there were avenues that I felt just didn't get explored.

[Jesse Bollinger · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was given this book in exchange for an honest review. I was really intrigued by this story. However, I found it to be slow and honestly not very interesting. I was expecting something a lot more action packed. It just felt like it was missing something.

[Mark Kosobucki · Rating 4 out of 5]

I saw this movie years ago and loved it. The book is fun and kept my attention despite not being very long. Once this gets going it's hard to put down.

[Ross Armstrong · Rating 3 out of 5]

Novelization of a strange little movie. It starts with a group of friends getting together at an upstate New York ski lodge which ends in the horrific deaths of three of the girls. Then random people all over the state of New York start showing signs of psychosis, insanity and murder. There doesn't seem to be any link between the perpetrators. They are all from different backgrounds and different segments of society.
Only one man, Jerry Ziplin, starts to put the pieces together and discovers that behind every act of horror is one single, uncontrollable terror, Blue Sunshine.

I kind of got a kick out of both the novelization and the movie. I stumbled upon both the movie on video and a copy of the book around the same time. Not a great movie but the concept of the lingering effects of a type of LSD staying in the body and changing the drug users into psychopaths was ahead of its time.

[Fishface · Rating 4 out of 5]

A precious jewel of a book! While it's clearly one of those "American" novels written by a Brit, I found the writing pretty engaging. The story drew me in deeper and deeper, and I kept turning the pages to see how it would all come out. Good mayhem, good mystery, good period-specific references to all the things that were absolutely new in the Seventies, like indoor shopping malls and Barry White albums.

[Beauregard Shagnasty · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rather underwhelming. Weak story. Not the author's fault. The script is tepid, so the adaptation is too.