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Camp Ghoul Mountain Part VI: The Official Novelization
Camp Ghoul Mountain: Part VI is one of the most infamous slasher-movie sequels of the 1980s. Known for its over-the-top gore effects, bizarre and psychedelic campground killer plot—and its legacy as a lightning rod for conspiracy theories concerning everything from UFOs and alien abductions to 9/11 and a secret cabal at the heart of world power.
This book contains a complete, authorized adaptation of the infamous cult slasher movie as well as the secret history of the behind-the-scenes drama and high-strange events that inspired the filmmakers, complete with footnotes and autobiographical anecdotes.
Camp Ghoul Mountain: Part VI—The Official Novelization is a love letter to the horror movie boom of the 1980s and conspiracy theories of the 1990s—and, perhaps, a dire warning of the dark future to come. Who wants to go camping?
This book contains a complete, authorized adaptation of the infamous cult slasher movie as well as the secret history of the behind-the-scenes drama and high-strange events that inspired the filmmakers, complete with footnotes and autobiographical anecdotes.
Camp Ghoul Mountain: Part VI—The Official Novelization is a love letter to the horror movie boom of the 1980s and conspiracy theories of the 1990s—and, perhaps, a dire warning of the dark future to come. Who wants to go camping?
Paperback
First published November 1, 2018
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About the author
Jonathan Raab
31 books66 followersJonathan Raab is the author of The Secret Goatman Spookshow and Other Psychological Warfare Operations, The Crypt of Blood: A Halloween TV Special, Camp Ghoul Mountain Part VI: The Official Novelization, and more. He is also the editor of several anthologies from Muzzleland Press including Behold the Undead of Dracula: Lurid Tales of Cinematic Gothic Horror and Terror in 16-bits. You can find him on Twitter at @jonathanraab1.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews
March 10, 2019
Were you ever watching, say, a late-era Friday the 13th sequel only to find yourself thinking, “This could really use a lot more alien abductions/occult conspiracy theories/apocalyptic visions/nefarious cults/metafictional tangents”? Well, have I got a book for you!
The elevator pitch for Camp Ghoul Mountain Part VI by Jonathan Raab would probably sound something like, “What if Stephen Graham Jones was hired to write Cabin in the Woods but specifically for late-era slasher sequels?” But that logline, while descriptive enough, is also unnecessarily reductive. It leaves out the particular affinity that Raab has for high strange weirdness, for ufology, for apocalyptic conspiracy theories, dire warnings about the American Nightmare and “tragedy in Babylon.” Without that affinity, this could feel like a pastiche, but with it, the book transforms, sometimes subtly and sometimes not-so-subtly, into something else altogether.
If you don’t already know what high strange weirdness is, don’t worry, you will before you’re done reading Camp Ghoul Mountain. While nominally a novelization of the sixth installment in a fictitious (or is it?) slasher franchise, Camp Ghoul Mountain breaks up that flow with footnotes and intertextual chapters detailing the troubled production history of the film, the cast and crew’s odd encounters with strange lights in the Colorado sky, its unlikely success as a midnight movie mainstay, and Raab’s own struggles in adapting the film to novel format–all of which are, of course, as much a part of the story as anything that happens “on screen.”
If you come to Camp Ghoul Mountain looking for a straightforward narrative, there are plenty of opportunities to be disappointed. The stakes are suitably apocalyptic, but also necessarily uncertain, in keeping with the book’s chosen form. This may frustrate some, but for the book’s target audience, like myself, it’s a feature, not a bug.
Similarly, the writing, especially in the “novelization” chapters, is rarely showy, and often pedestrian. This works to help you feel like you really are reading an adaptation of a relatively formulaic slasher flick, and Raab is ready to break out into more evocative prose when things start to get really strange, such as this encounter in the dark woods midway through the book, “More movement ahead, darkness unfolding from upon itself, a great writhing mass of shadow as what could only be limbs moved through the night air with deliberate patience, followed by the soft impacts of great flesh-wrapped trunks of bone stomping along the ground.”
For those who can enjoy the bloody camp of a slasher flick but might enjoy it a little more if things got a whole lot weirder before all was said and done, Camp Ghoul Mountain Part VI: The Official Novelization is a ride like no other.
The elevator pitch for Camp Ghoul Mountain Part VI by Jonathan Raab would probably sound something like, “What if Stephen Graham Jones was hired to write Cabin in the Woods but specifically for late-era slasher sequels?” But that logline, while descriptive enough, is also unnecessarily reductive. It leaves out the particular affinity that Raab has for high strange weirdness, for ufology, for apocalyptic conspiracy theories, dire warnings about the American Nightmare and “tragedy in Babylon.” Without that affinity, this could feel like a pastiche, but with it, the book transforms, sometimes subtly and sometimes not-so-subtly, into something else altogether.
If you don’t already know what high strange weirdness is, don’t worry, you will before you’re done reading Camp Ghoul Mountain. While nominally a novelization of the sixth installment in a fictitious (or is it?) slasher franchise, Camp Ghoul Mountain breaks up that flow with footnotes and intertextual chapters detailing the troubled production history of the film, the cast and crew’s odd encounters with strange lights in the Colorado sky, its unlikely success as a midnight movie mainstay, and Raab’s own struggles in adapting the film to novel format–all of which are, of course, as much a part of the story as anything that happens “on screen.”
If you come to Camp Ghoul Mountain looking for a straightforward narrative, there are plenty of opportunities to be disappointed. The stakes are suitably apocalyptic, but also necessarily uncertain, in keeping with the book’s chosen form. This may frustrate some, but for the book’s target audience, like myself, it’s a feature, not a bug.
Similarly, the writing, especially in the “novelization” chapters, is rarely showy, and often pedestrian. This works to help you feel like you really are reading an adaptation of a relatively formulaic slasher flick, and Raab is ready to break out into more evocative prose when things start to get really strange, such as this encounter in the dark woods midway through the book, “More movement ahead, darkness unfolding from upon itself, a great writhing mass of shadow as what could only be limbs moved through the night air with deliberate patience, followed by the soft impacts of great flesh-wrapped trunks of bone stomping along the ground.”
For those who can enjoy the bloody camp of a slasher flick but might enjoy it a little more if things got a whole lot weirder before all was said and done, Camp Ghoul Mountain Part VI: The Official Novelization is a ride like no other.
February 10, 2019
This is the rare work of horror fiction capable of satisfying readers looking for provocative and thoughtful development in the genre as well as gorehounds who are just in it for the viscera and elaborate kills.
"Camp Ghoul Mountain" is Raab's stand-in for all those derivative 1980s slasher films whose lurid covers beckoned to you from the shelves of long-gone mom and pop video stores. This is, ostensibly, a (presumably faithful) novelization of the weird, unpopular sixth installment in the franchise, with copious kills of unwitting teen campers and various unfortunate yokels moving along at a rollicking clip.
But then the footnotes start mounting up, and you quickly realize this is something else. Soon, entire chapters detour from the film and relate an increasingly sinister story of the film itself, and how Raab came to be chosen to unleash its story on an unsuspecting world. Picture him as one of those old-fashioned TV horror hosts supplying banter between commercial-mandated breaks in the creature feature of the week, except, instead of groansome puns and Lugosi gags, Raab is trying to warn you about an impending doom even worse than a chainsaw decapitation courtesy of Ghoul Mountain's Henry the Horror.
Imagine Mulder and Scully trying to explain what happened at Crystal Lake and you're partly there, but that's before getting into the Christian fundamentalist comic tract (included, along with several other wonderful examples of "real" ephemera related to the film), the mysterious UFO sightings near the film set, and the tragic FBI raid on the mountain compound of its troubled director.
This is, first and foremost, an enormously fun novel, with knowing (and affectionate) send-ups of 1980s slasher film tropes, but it's also a smart and unsettling meditation on the question asked by one of the film's characters toward the end: "Is this what it means to serve the gods?"
"Camp Ghoul Mountain" is Raab's stand-in for all those derivative 1980s slasher films whose lurid covers beckoned to you from the shelves of long-gone mom and pop video stores. This is, ostensibly, a (presumably faithful) novelization of the weird, unpopular sixth installment in the franchise, with copious kills of unwitting teen campers and various unfortunate yokels moving along at a rollicking clip.
But then the footnotes start mounting up, and you quickly realize this is something else. Soon, entire chapters detour from the film and relate an increasingly sinister story of the film itself, and how Raab came to be chosen to unleash its story on an unsuspecting world. Picture him as one of those old-fashioned TV horror hosts supplying banter between commercial-mandated breaks in the creature feature of the week, except, instead of groansome puns and Lugosi gags, Raab is trying to warn you about an impending doom even worse than a chainsaw decapitation courtesy of Ghoul Mountain's Henry the Horror.
Imagine Mulder and Scully trying to explain what happened at Crystal Lake and you're partly there, but that's before getting into the Christian fundamentalist comic tract (included, along with several other wonderful examples of "real" ephemera related to the film), the mysterious UFO sightings near the film set, and the tragic FBI raid on the mountain compound of its troubled director.
This is, first and foremost, an enormously fun novel, with knowing (and affectionate) send-ups of 1980s slasher film tropes, but it's also a smart and unsettling meditation on the question asked by one of the film's characters toward the end: "Is this what it means to serve the gods?"
May 2, 2022
5/5
CAMP GHOUL MOUNTAIN PART VI by Jonathan Raab is pretty much a book made just me. It is a book that celebrates slasher movies, the creators of them, conspiracy theories, UFOs, black magic cults, behind-the-scenes books, and the goofy world of B-movie cinema. If it sounds like a lot, it is. It is also utterly fantastic once you get into the strange weird groove that Jonathan Raab generates as he tells the story of a fictional movie franchise, its production staff, and the bizarre events surrounding both that never happened.
The premise is that Jonathan Raab, the actual author, has been hired to do a novelization of Camp Ghoul Mountain part VI. The Camp Ghoul Mountain series is a transparent riff on the Friday the 13th series where an animal-masked serial killer murders teens in a mountain summer camp. The book is thus divided in telling the story of the slasher movie franchise's most infamous entry as well as giving a bizarre backstory about its troubled production history.
The more you love slasher movies, the more you'll enjoy the bizarre crypto-history that Jonathan Raab has woven around the fictional movie. In real life, movies like Halloween III: Season of the Witch, Halloween: The Curse of Michael Meyers, Friday the 13th: A New Beginning, and a few other films deviated from their formulas to introduce bizarre new elements.These include introducing a cult to control Michael Meyers, an imposter Jason Voorhees, and entirely ditching the franchise formula as a whole.
In this universe, a mushroom-addicted auteur director is given control of a well-established derivative slasher movie franchise to tell his own bizarre story about Satanism in America's government as well as counter-culture protests against the Vietnam war. The production company is left with a movie they don't understand and can't sell that ends up becoming a cult classic despite itself. The movie gains notoriety for all drawing down the wrath of the moral guardians who unwittingly provide it all the publicity it needs to escape its bizarre plot as well as nonsensical twists.
In addition to the behind-the-scenes, we also get the actual plot of the movie that is a surprisingly well-written slasher. A bunch of campers are horny and wanting to enjoy each other's company on the supposedly haunted mountain. However, Henry the Horror is not the only thing stalking him. He's aided by a cult that has sinister designs on them all and may be the people controlling the monster.
The book has a humorous conversational style as Jonathan Raab makes very believable characters out of the staff who produced the movies, even when they're acting utterly insane. You sympathize with both the director who wanted to make genuine art out of a horror movie that satirized America in the Eighties as well as the producer who just wanted to put out another nudity-filled gorefest to entertain its teenage audience.
There's a lot of bizarre and amusing diversions like the discussion of the role that UFOs played in the production of the movie, the slow mental breakdown of certain staff due to the changing politics of the time, and the role of drugs in virtually every decision made by the cast. The annotations are almost as good as the articles themselves as Jonathan Raab struggles to talk about how deep and well-written the Camp Ghoul Mountain series is despite the fact he's conceived of it as objectively one of the stupidest movie series of all time. It's a wink and a nudge at the banality of strictly formula slasher films that the vast majority of fans want.
A strong recommendation for this novel. I'd actually watch Camp Ghoul Mountain Part VI and I enjoyed reading about it more. I've been a lifelong slasher fan and it's nice to see something that celebrates both the good as well as bad in the genre. Since I'm a fan of documentaries like Never Sleep Again and Crystal Lake Memories, I got extra joy about this. I also got an extra bit of an enjoyment from the fact its basically what would happen if you got John Milinus to direct a slasher flick.
CAMP GHOUL MOUNTAIN PART VI by Jonathan Raab is pretty much a book made just me. It is a book that celebrates slasher movies, the creators of them, conspiracy theories, UFOs, black magic cults, behind-the-scenes books, and the goofy world of B-movie cinema. If it sounds like a lot, it is. It is also utterly fantastic once you get into the strange weird groove that Jonathan Raab generates as he tells the story of a fictional movie franchise, its production staff, and the bizarre events surrounding both that never happened.
The premise is that Jonathan Raab, the actual author, has been hired to do a novelization of Camp Ghoul Mountain part VI. The Camp Ghoul Mountain series is a transparent riff on the Friday the 13th series where an animal-masked serial killer murders teens in a mountain summer camp. The book is thus divided in telling the story of the slasher movie franchise's most infamous entry as well as giving a bizarre backstory about its troubled production history.
The more you love slasher movies, the more you'll enjoy the bizarre crypto-history that Jonathan Raab has woven around the fictional movie. In real life, movies like Halloween III: Season of the Witch, Halloween: The Curse of Michael Meyers, Friday the 13th: A New Beginning, and a few other films deviated from their formulas to introduce bizarre new elements.These include introducing a cult to control Michael Meyers, an imposter Jason Voorhees, and entirely ditching the franchise formula as a whole.
In this universe, a mushroom-addicted auteur director is given control of a well-established derivative slasher movie franchise to tell his own bizarre story about Satanism in America's government as well as counter-culture protests against the Vietnam war. The production company is left with a movie they don't understand and can't sell that ends up becoming a cult classic despite itself. The movie gains notoriety for all drawing down the wrath of the moral guardians who unwittingly provide it all the publicity it needs to escape its bizarre plot as well as nonsensical twists.
In addition to the behind-the-scenes, we also get the actual plot of the movie that is a surprisingly well-written slasher. A bunch of campers are horny and wanting to enjoy each other's company on the supposedly haunted mountain. However, Henry the Horror is not the only thing stalking him. He's aided by a cult that has sinister designs on them all and may be the people controlling the monster.
The book has a humorous conversational style as Jonathan Raab makes very believable characters out of the staff who produced the movies, even when they're acting utterly insane. You sympathize with both the director who wanted to make genuine art out of a horror movie that satirized America in the Eighties as well as the producer who just wanted to put out another nudity-filled gorefest to entertain its teenage audience.
There's a lot of bizarre and amusing diversions like the discussion of the role that UFOs played in the production of the movie, the slow mental breakdown of certain staff due to the changing politics of the time, and the role of drugs in virtually every decision made by the cast. The annotations are almost as good as the articles themselves as Jonathan Raab struggles to talk about how deep and well-written the Camp Ghoul Mountain series is despite the fact he's conceived of it as objectively one of the stupidest movie series of all time. It's a wink and a nudge at the banality of strictly formula slasher films that the vast majority of fans want.
A strong recommendation for this novel. I'd actually watch Camp Ghoul Mountain Part VI and I enjoyed reading about it more. I've been a lifelong slasher fan and it's nice to see something that celebrates both the good as well as bad in the genre. Since I'm a fan of documentaries like Never Sleep Again and Crystal Lake Memories, I got extra joy about this. I also got an extra bit of an enjoyment from the fact its basically what would happen if you got John Milinus to direct a slasher flick.
March 9, 2019
You might look at this book and think it’s a slasher horror, adaptation or maybe some kind of parody. It turns out to be so much more than that, it’s a tribute to slasher movies that plays with the tropes; it's a fictionalised account of how the book was made and it's also an investigation into the film which the book with based on… which is also fictional.
Conspiracies, prophecies, shadowy cabals and strange happenings imbue this book to create a complex and fascinating tale. Trying to explain the book makes it sound very confusing however it’s an utter joy to read, I had so much fun with this book and found it to be remarkably clever and innovative.
I’ll give this my highest recommendation!
Conspiracies, prophecies, shadowy cabals and strange happenings imbue this book to create a complex and fascinating tale. Trying to explain the book makes it sound very confusing however it’s an utter joy to read, I had so much fun with this book and found it to be remarkably clever and innovative.
I’ll give this my highest recommendation!
September 6, 2021
PSA to anyone confused, this book is a FAKE movie novelization. There is no movie called Camp Ghoul Mountain Part VI. This is also a standalone novel, so no need to look for the five books that precede it. Like the movie, they don't exist. You're welcome.
Damn I wanted to like this book so much more than I did!
Jonathan Raab's Camp Ghoul Mountain Part VI: The Official Novelization is one of those love letters to horror films that probably should have been a film instead of a book. I've read a few books this year that are obviously heavily influenced by film (The Last Final Girl by Stephen Graham Jones and Survive the Night by Riley Sager) and I have to say... this blend of medias just doesn't work for me.
First of all, I need to admit that I always thought people were speaking figuratively when they said reading was like watching a movie in their mind. When I found out people actually imagine a movie in their minds when they read, I was shocked. My brain doesn't work that way, but if yours does, there's a good chance you might like this book a lot more than I did.
So what is this about?
Well... like I said, this is a "novelization" of a movie that doesn't exist. That movie is titled Camp Ghoul Mountain Part VI, and it is your standard 80's summer camp slasher... except it isn't. Because the director of this sixth installment, Monty Blackwood, decides to add a bit of spice to it in the form of UFO's and cults and paranormal occurrences and conspiracy theories, thus tarnishing the franchise's classic slasher roots.
Oh, and the director and the producer butted heads during the production of the film like babies and may or may not have faked some stuff to regain interest in the franchise after the film bombed at the box offices... so yeah.
This is one of those meta-horror books except it doesn't have anything clever to say and instead, attempts to make a novelty out of... well, a novel. And to an extent, it succeeds. I like the idea of some guy writing a novelization of a divisive film while adding his own input and facts about the production and the spooky things that happened plus some interviews and whatnot. It was interesting.
But was it good?
Let me work this out by complaining about what I didn't like before answering that question.
First of all, reading a self-aware book about a fictional movie fucking sucks. By nature, none of the deaths matter, nothing that happens in the movie matters, there are no stakes, and nothing is real. And yeah, all fiction is fake, but I've never had that fact rubbed in my face as hard as it is in Camp Ghoul Mountain Part VI: The Official Novelization.
I found myself not caring about the movie narrative in this book because, well, it wasn't real. I then found myself irritated with Raab as a narrator because this story seemed to forget the reader.
Movies are different from books for a reason and mixing the two leads to, in this case, something rather disappointing and silly. Movies are a visual art and books are words that, when put together, tell stories that only some people can see in their minds. Yeah, the end product of both is a story, but when you actually think about it, movies and books are two entirely different things because they are consumed entirely different ways.
Just think about how many times you hear "the book is better" and how often people complain about the differences between movies and the books they are based on.
Honestly, Raab made a fabulous attempt to blend books and movies here, but I think this book needed a lot more editing and a clearer focus. Too many plot threads are tangled together and I ended up finding both the novelization and the commentary about the movie to be subpar because of it.
Also, this book commits the grievous crime of spoiling itself the entire way through. Because we are getting little footnotes from Raab (who is not only the author of the book, but the author of the fake novelization in the book) and these frequent aside chapters where he explains Blackwood's reasoning and all the ins and outs of the movie, it's actors, etc. we are constantly being told of what is to come next.
And, as someone who avoids reading even the back of the book because they think it spoils too much, I found this endlessly frustrating.
For example, there are a lot of characters that show up for a scene only to die by the end. Which isn't really my problem. My problem is when Raab writes a footnote about the death at the end of the scene within the first sentence or two, thus spoiling the entire scene.
I mean, imagine watching a horror movie with someone who tells you who is going to die as soon as the character comes on screen. That's what the first half of this book felt like.
Not gonna lie, I stopped reading some of these scenes because why do I care? I'm not here for the kills like I am when I watch Friday the 13th and can see the guts and glory. I'm reading a book and I'm here for the story.
It almost feels like Raab wrote this narrative based on the premise that the reader is also a huge fan of the film and the Camp Ghoul Mountain franchise AND THEN FORGOT THAT NEITHER OF THOSE THINGS ACTUALLY EXIST.
The footnotes are the worst of this and I give you permission to skip them all. Like, why do I care about comments on Foley sound work or special effects or shots or what was cut from the film and what wasn't??
It's not a real movie and I personally can't see one in my mind while I read, so all this meta stuff fell incredibly flat for me. People who can visualize this kind of thing might like this book more, but for me it was as much of a waste of time as the death scenes that are spoiled right from the start.
It didn't take me long to decide that I would rather have watched the movie that doesn't exist instead of being described the movie that doesn't exist in book form. It was kinda painful!
Also, there a ton of grammar errors and typos in this book. So many in fact, that it was very distracting. I know Raab is an editor from his author bio and no editor is credited in this book, so I assume he edited this himself. And I just... like, dude. You really needed someone else to look at this!!
Here's one that made me chuckle:
But this on p.284 made me chuckle even more and might be my favorite thing about this book other than the cover:
No you did not just publish a book with a ton of grammar mistakes and typos while also commenting that you fixed such things in a fictional memoir within said book!! BahhaAhahaAhahHAA!!
Maybe Raab was trying to be extra meta with this, but I think the truth of the matter is that both he and this book got a bit too big for their britches.
Because the last like 75 pages of this book are outrageous.
Raab tries to insert some additional meta commentary at the end while also trying to connect this fictional movie to Bush and 9/11 and conspiracy theories and alien abductions and some other horseshit that didn't need to be here. I wanted things to get crazy IN THE MOVIE, but the end of the movie was so predictable and anticlimactic that I really just felt sad about it all.
My final complaints:
There's nothing about any of these characters that I liked or even cared about. None of the characters in the movie were fleshed out or very interesting, so I was rooting for the bad guy the whole way through. The director, the producer, and Raab as the author of the fictional book were all asshats, so I didn't care about them either.
There's an oddly forced pro-drug agenda in this book that was silly and distracting. Despite the fact that I enjoy drugs, way too much time was wasted on the subject. Raab spent more time describing scenes were kids were smoking weed than he did on character development and I have a problem with that.
I'm not buying that the content here made up a full-length, theatrical movie. The opening scene is excellent, but things fall apart quickly after that. There really is no main character at the center of this narrative, so it was a struggle to connect with anyone and anything.
This "movie" ends up being a string of kill sequences that might have been cool to see on the big screen. The obvious problem being, once again, that the movie DOESN'T EXIST, so those of us who struggle to visualize things and left with virtually nothing to hang on to.
And that, sadly, is how I felt about this book.
So was it good??
I mean, it was creative and unique and it tried something new... but I was ready to call it quits halfway through. I don't want to outright say this was bad, because I think it could have been a lot better if it was restructured and if the characters were better. I also acknowledge that my inability to "see" movies in my mind when I read negatively impacted my reading experience.
I rated Jonathan Raab's Camp Ghoul Mountain Part VI: The Official Novelization 3 out of 5 stars.
This book wasn't bad... but it should have been a movie.
Damn I wanted to like this book so much more than I did!
Jonathan Raab's Camp Ghoul Mountain Part VI: The Official Novelization is one of those love letters to horror films that probably should have been a film instead of a book. I've read a few books this year that are obviously heavily influenced by film (The Last Final Girl by Stephen Graham Jones and Survive the Night by Riley Sager) and I have to say... this blend of medias just doesn't work for me.
First of all, I need to admit that I always thought people were speaking figuratively when they said reading was like watching a movie in their mind. When I found out people actually imagine a movie in their minds when they read, I was shocked. My brain doesn't work that way, but if yours does, there's a good chance you might like this book a lot more than I did.
So what is this about?
Well... like I said, this is a "novelization" of a movie that doesn't exist. That movie is titled Camp Ghoul Mountain Part VI, and it is your standard 80's summer camp slasher... except it isn't. Because the director of this sixth installment, Monty Blackwood, decides to add a bit of spice to it in the form of UFO's and cults and paranormal occurrences and conspiracy theories, thus tarnishing the franchise's classic slasher roots.
Oh, and the director and the producer butted heads during the production of the film like babies and may or may not have faked some stuff to regain interest in the franchise after the film bombed at the box offices... so yeah.
This is one of those meta-horror books except it doesn't have anything clever to say and instead, attempts to make a novelty out of... well, a novel. And to an extent, it succeeds. I like the idea of some guy writing a novelization of a divisive film while adding his own input and facts about the production and the spooky things that happened plus some interviews and whatnot. It was interesting.
But was it good?
Let me work this out by complaining about what I didn't like before answering that question.
First of all, reading a self-aware book about a fictional movie fucking sucks. By nature, none of the deaths matter, nothing that happens in the movie matters, there are no stakes, and nothing is real. And yeah, all fiction is fake, but I've never had that fact rubbed in my face as hard as it is in Camp Ghoul Mountain Part VI: The Official Novelization.
I found myself not caring about the movie narrative in this book because, well, it wasn't real. I then found myself irritated with Raab as a narrator because this story seemed to forget the reader.
Movies are different from books for a reason and mixing the two leads to, in this case, something rather disappointing and silly. Movies are a visual art and books are words that, when put together, tell stories that only some people can see in their minds. Yeah, the end product of both is a story, but when you actually think about it, movies and books are two entirely different things because they are consumed entirely different ways.
Just think about how many times you hear "the book is better" and how often people complain about the differences between movies and the books they are based on.
Honestly, Raab made a fabulous attempt to blend books and movies here, but I think this book needed a lot more editing and a clearer focus. Too many plot threads are tangled together and I ended up finding both the novelization and the commentary about the movie to be subpar because of it.
Also, this book commits the grievous crime of spoiling itself the entire way through. Because we are getting little footnotes from Raab (who is not only the author of the book, but the author of the fake novelization in the book) and these frequent aside chapters where he explains Blackwood's reasoning and all the ins and outs of the movie, it's actors, etc. we are constantly being told of what is to come next.
And, as someone who avoids reading even the back of the book because they think it spoils too much, I found this endlessly frustrating.
For example, there are a lot of characters that show up for a scene only to die by the end. Which isn't really my problem. My problem is when Raab writes a footnote about the death at the end of the scene within the first sentence or two, thus spoiling the entire scene.
I mean, imagine watching a horror movie with someone who tells you who is going to die as soon as the character comes on screen. That's what the first half of this book felt like.
Not gonna lie, I stopped reading some of these scenes because why do I care? I'm not here for the kills like I am when I watch Friday the 13th and can see the guts and glory. I'm reading a book and I'm here for the story.
It almost feels like Raab wrote this narrative based on the premise that the reader is also a huge fan of the film and the Camp Ghoul Mountain franchise AND THEN FORGOT THAT NEITHER OF THOSE THINGS ACTUALLY EXIST.
The footnotes are the worst of this and I give you permission to skip them all. Like, why do I care about comments on Foley sound work or special effects or shots or what was cut from the film and what wasn't??
It's not a real movie and I personally can't see one in my mind while I read, so all this meta stuff fell incredibly flat for me. People who can visualize this kind of thing might like this book more, but for me it was as much of a waste of time as the death scenes that are spoiled right from the start.
It didn't take me long to decide that I would rather have watched the movie that doesn't exist instead of being described the movie that doesn't exist in book form. It was kinda painful!
Also, there a ton of grammar errors and typos in this book. So many in fact, that it was very distracting. I know Raab is an editor from his author bio and no editor is credited in this book, so I assume he edited this himself. And I just... like, dude. You really needed someone else to look at this!!
Here's one that made me chuckle:
He breathed deep, inhaling the cool, mountain hair and exhaling with satisfaction. (p. 76)
But this on p.284 made me chuckle even more and might be my favorite thing about this book other than the cover:
In his unpublished memoirs, Tracy Higgins describes receiving a frantic phone call from Blackwood around mid-February 1991 (please note that I have made some minor edits for clarity and grammar):
No you did not just publish a book with a ton of grammar mistakes and typos while also commenting that you fixed such things in a fictional memoir within said book!! BahhaAhahaAhahHAA!!
Maybe Raab was trying to be extra meta with this, but I think the truth of the matter is that both he and this book got a bit too big for their britches.
Because the last like 75 pages of this book are outrageous.
Raab tries to insert some additional meta commentary at the end while also trying to connect this fictional movie to Bush and 9/11 and conspiracy theories and alien abductions and some other horseshit that didn't need to be here. I wanted things to get crazy IN THE MOVIE, but the end of the movie was so predictable and anticlimactic that I really just felt sad about it all.
My final complaints:
There's nothing about any of these characters that I liked or even cared about. None of the characters in the movie were fleshed out or very interesting, so I was rooting for the bad guy the whole way through. The director, the producer, and Raab as the author of the fictional book were all asshats, so I didn't care about them either.
There's an oddly forced pro-drug agenda in this book that was silly and distracting. Despite the fact that I enjoy drugs, way too much time was wasted on the subject. Raab spent more time describing scenes were kids were smoking weed than he did on character development and I have a problem with that.
I'm not buying that the content here made up a full-length, theatrical movie. The opening scene is excellent, but things fall apart quickly after that. There really is no main character at the center of this narrative, so it was a struggle to connect with anyone and anything.
This "movie" ends up being a string of kill sequences that might have been cool to see on the big screen. The obvious problem being, once again, that the movie DOESN'T EXIST, so those of us who struggle to visualize things and left with virtually nothing to hang on to.
And that, sadly, is how I felt about this book.
So was it good??
I mean, it was creative and unique and it tried something new... but I was ready to call it quits halfway through. I don't want to outright say this was bad, because I think it could have been a lot better if it was restructured and if the characters were better. I also acknowledge that my inability to "see" movies in my mind when I read negatively impacted my reading experience.
I rated Jonathan Raab's Camp Ghoul Mountain Part VI: The Official Novelization 3 out of 5 stars.
This book wasn't bad... but it should have been a movie.
March 14, 2019
***this review originally appeared on The Ginger Nuts of Horror website***
If Camp Ghoul Mountain Part VI: The Official Novelization presented “only” the narrative of a nonexistent slasher movie, that itself would be a hell of a hook. The fact that it turns out to be something more complex elevates author Jonathan Raab’s latest work beyond what might appear at first glance to be just a gimmick. Indeed, for genre fans with a taste for tongue-in-cheek metafiction, this may well be the first must-read small-press horror novel of 2019.
Taking a footnote-flooded page out of Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves, Camp Ghoul Mountain interweaves multiple independent narratives, each one taking place within its own separate, but not entirely self-contained, reality.
To wit, what appears to be the main plot of the book (at least at first) is the story of the titular slasher flick itself: despite a long history of tragedy and violence, Camp Goose Mountain (known to locals by a decidedly more lurid nickname) is all set to reopen for the summer with a new batch of teenage counsellors, including good girl Penny, her hard-partying BFF Rhonda, and dreamboat jock Terry. They’ve all heard the legend of Henry the Horror, the bloodthirsty bogeyman who prowls the forest in search of victims, but only when the bodies start piling up do they realize there’s more to Henry than just whispers around a campfire.
That’s just part of the larger story, however, and one that exists in a completely different reality from that occupied by Raab himself. Yes, even the book’s own author becomes a character within it, addressing the reader directly via both copious annotations appearing throughout and full-fledged chapters which periodically interrupt Henry the Horror’s stalk-and-slash antics to provide a “non-fictional” (wink, wink) behind-the-scenes look into the film’s troubled production, as well as into the conspiracy theories regarding secret messages encoded into the picture by director/stoner Monty Blackwood (shades of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining and its attendant documentary, Room 237).
Both narratives only get stranger the longer they go on. It turns out the Henry the Horror’s seventh outing is the black sheep of the Ghoul Mountain franchise, a puzzling retcon of previously established series lore similar to Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers or Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation. What starts out as a straightforward Friday the 13th clone quickly spirals out into a chaotic, hallucinatory mindfuck full of faceless black-robed zealots, flying saucers, police cover-ups, and talking animal heads.
What’s more, the protagonists occasionally seem dimly aware that they are fictional characters and that many of their actions are not choices of their own, but rather necessitated by genre tropes (if Camp Ghoul Mountain VI was a real movie, it would’ve beaten Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, Scream, The Cabin in the Woods, and Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon to the punch by more than a decade).
Meanwhile, in the “real world,” Raab uncovers obscure newspaper clippings, magazine interviews, censored YouTube videos, transcripts of convention Q&A panels, pages from a hand-scribbled New Age pamphlet, and even a Satanic Panic religious tract (all lovingly recreated within the book’s pages). Through these, he gradually pieces together the full scope of Henry the Horror’s cinematic legacy.
Maybe not everything Blackwood filmed was special effects. Maybe he just happened to be pointing his camera in the right place at the right time. Maybe Camp Ghoul Mountain VI, or at least some of it, was real.
Granted, Raab’s style might come off as too heavy-handed for some, even outright campy (no pun intended). He eschews the more straight-faced and subtle approach to horror that Danielewski employed in House of Leaves for something far more gleeful and pulpy. This is, however, perfectly in keeping with the subject matter; aside from a few notable exceptions, a large part of the charm of most slasher films comes from their utter disregard for restraint, elegance, or good taste.
This is not the kind of humorless horror that quietly creeps under your skin after lulling you into a false sense of security. This is HORROR in all caps, one million-point font, blazing red neon lights, visible from space.
Likewise, Raab’s choice to insert himself into the narrative might be off-putting to certain readers, especially as he delves deeper into the book’s more esoteric themes, not to mention their political implications. How much, one wonders, does the Raab on the page accurately represent the Raab of real life? This blurring of the lines is arguably Camp Ghoul Mountain’s most enticing element, but it may also be its most divisive. Even with the novel’s winking tone, one may begin to question how seriously audiences are meant to take it.
The best answer may be “As seriously as you want to.”
To quote Raab himself at the start of chapter 7, “Horror is fun.” Indeed, Camp Ghoul Mountain is a lot of things: a slasher film love letter, a paranoid conspiracy meta-thriller, a personal manifesto about the power of the horror genre as a whole. But what it is above and beyond all else is fun.
Where House of Leaves sought to convey the dread and confusion that comes with slowly losing one’s grip on reality, Camp Ghoul Mountain Part VI captures the liberating joy that comes with willingly letting go, with rejecting consensus reality (if only temporarily) in favor of something more outrageous, more imaginative. If the horror genre can be compared to a roller coaster ride, as it often is, then this book is the equivalent of that moment when you put your hands in the air; a thrilling flirtation with the danger of being thrown to certain death, even as the safety bar holds you firmly in place.
If Camp Ghoul Mountain Part VI: The Official Novelization presented “only” the narrative of a nonexistent slasher movie, that itself would be a hell of a hook. The fact that it turns out to be something more complex elevates author Jonathan Raab’s latest work beyond what might appear at first glance to be just a gimmick. Indeed, for genre fans with a taste for tongue-in-cheek metafiction, this may well be the first must-read small-press horror novel of 2019.
Taking a footnote-flooded page out of Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves, Camp Ghoul Mountain interweaves multiple independent narratives, each one taking place within its own separate, but not entirely self-contained, reality.
To wit, what appears to be the main plot of the book (at least at first) is the story of the titular slasher flick itself: despite a long history of tragedy and violence, Camp Goose Mountain (known to locals by a decidedly more lurid nickname) is all set to reopen for the summer with a new batch of teenage counsellors, including good girl Penny, her hard-partying BFF Rhonda, and dreamboat jock Terry. They’ve all heard the legend of Henry the Horror, the bloodthirsty bogeyman who prowls the forest in search of victims, but only when the bodies start piling up do they realize there’s more to Henry than just whispers around a campfire.
That’s just part of the larger story, however, and one that exists in a completely different reality from that occupied by Raab himself. Yes, even the book’s own author becomes a character within it, addressing the reader directly via both copious annotations appearing throughout and full-fledged chapters which periodically interrupt Henry the Horror’s stalk-and-slash antics to provide a “non-fictional” (wink, wink) behind-the-scenes look into the film’s troubled production, as well as into the conspiracy theories regarding secret messages encoded into the picture by director/stoner Monty Blackwood (shades of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining and its attendant documentary, Room 237).
Both narratives only get stranger the longer they go on. It turns out the Henry the Horror’s seventh outing is the black sheep of the Ghoul Mountain franchise, a puzzling retcon of previously established series lore similar to Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers or Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation. What starts out as a straightforward Friday the 13th clone quickly spirals out into a chaotic, hallucinatory mindfuck full of faceless black-robed zealots, flying saucers, police cover-ups, and talking animal heads.
What’s more, the protagonists occasionally seem dimly aware that they are fictional characters and that many of their actions are not choices of their own, but rather necessitated by genre tropes (if Camp Ghoul Mountain VI was a real movie, it would’ve beaten Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, Scream, The Cabin in the Woods, and Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon to the punch by more than a decade).
Meanwhile, in the “real world,” Raab uncovers obscure newspaper clippings, magazine interviews, censored YouTube videos, transcripts of convention Q&A panels, pages from a hand-scribbled New Age pamphlet, and even a Satanic Panic religious tract (all lovingly recreated within the book’s pages). Through these, he gradually pieces together the full scope of Henry the Horror’s cinematic legacy.
Maybe not everything Blackwood filmed was special effects. Maybe he just happened to be pointing his camera in the right place at the right time. Maybe Camp Ghoul Mountain VI, or at least some of it, was real.
Granted, Raab’s style might come off as too heavy-handed for some, even outright campy (no pun intended). He eschews the more straight-faced and subtle approach to horror that Danielewski employed in House of Leaves for something far more gleeful and pulpy. This is, however, perfectly in keeping with the subject matter; aside from a few notable exceptions, a large part of the charm of most slasher films comes from their utter disregard for restraint, elegance, or good taste.
This is not the kind of humorless horror that quietly creeps under your skin after lulling you into a false sense of security. This is HORROR in all caps, one million-point font, blazing red neon lights, visible from space.
Likewise, Raab’s choice to insert himself into the narrative might be off-putting to certain readers, especially as he delves deeper into the book’s more esoteric themes, not to mention their political implications. How much, one wonders, does the Raab on the page accurately represent the Raab of real life? This blurring of the lines is arguably Camp Ghoul Mountain’s most enticing element, but it may also be its most divisive. Even with the novel’s winking tone, one may begin to question how seriously audiences are meant to take it.
The best answer may be “As seriously as you want to.”
To quote Raab himself at the start of chapter 7, “Horror is fun.” Indeed, Camp Ghoul Mountain is a lot of things: a slasher film love letter, a paranoid conspiracy meta-thriller, a personal manifesto about the power of the horror genre as a whole. But what it is above and beyond all else is fun.
Where House of Leaves sought to convey the dread and confusion that comes with slowly losing one’s grip on reality, Camp Ghoul Mountain Part VI captures the liberating joy that comes with willingly letting go, with rejecting consensus reality (if only temporarily) in favor of something more outrageous, more imaginative. If the horror genre can be compared to a roller coaster ride, as it often is, then this book is the equivalent of that moment when you put your hands in the air; a thrilling flirtation with the danger of being thrown to certain death, even as the safety bar holds you firmly in place.
March 31, 2019
So, I first came to Raab by way of Turn to Ash Vol. 2 and the Kotto stories. He has a way of hitting you with horror and absurdism at once. What begins as a standard novelization of a slasher film turns into several more things. A commentary on splatter cinema, the story of an obsessed director. Alien intervention from the sky. An autobiography of Raab himself, albeit a version who is himself fictionalized. And then there is an underlying thread and theme beneath all of this, a deeper conspiracy still.
This is an ambitious piece of work, sure to be award winning.
This is an ambitious piece of work, sure to be award winning.
Read
March 1, 2019DNF
This just wasn’t for me.
This just wasn’t for me.
March 15, 2019
Movie novelizations are making a bit of a resurgence(or maybe they've always been big and I'm just noticing it now) recently and they are the perfect way to dig a little deeper into the world you saw on screen. Jonathan Raab took this concept and twisted it into a novelization on a fake movie that I now want to see on the big screen.
Camp Ghoul Mountain Part VI is part of a fictional series of 1980s summer camp slashers. There's a masked killer, a campground, and lots of killing(Friday the 13th, Sleepaway Camp). Part VI is the black sheep of the family, interjecting cults, aliens, mystical powers. There is also this pesky thing where the director might have added clues to a secret cabal in the real world, might have predicted 9/11, and possibly other tragedies. Mix it all together and you have this really fascinating book that elevates the typical slasher into something much more sinister.
Raab perfectly captures the vibe of campy 80's serial killer movies. You could truly believe this movie existed in the real world. All of the tropes are there and theoretically it follows the same formula. However, what Raab does is sprinkle in these little scenes and lines that make it fresh and new. The characters make self referential comments about how they don't know why they feel like they should run off alone or have sex even if they know it would be wrong. Or he adds in this cult that seems to be controlling the serial killer, and how they need him to kill every year to fulfill a pact. These things deepen the usually pretty thin story lines of these movies.
Then there are the chapters that go behind the scenes, which are absolutely brilliant. We get to see that maybe the set was really visited by aliens and that the director did everything he could to capture it on film. We find out how the director became a mushroom cult leader. Raab adds in the very real challenges that come with releasing a new movie in a series that veers far from what the fans expect. These challenges were obviously pointing toward Halloween III and how at first fans hated it yet now people appreciate what it did. I loved that Raab added this stuff in, it does a great job of blurring the line between this being fictional and this being a series of movies I missed.
If you are at all a fan of campy slasher movies or conspiracy theories put this book on your list. And if you are not, you can at least appreciate the creativity that came into making this. I'm actually really surprised at how blown away I am from this book. I thought it would be just a fun thing to read, but there is a lot of skill and craft that went into creating this. Hands down this is on my top 10 list of 2019.
Camp Ghoul Mountain Part VI is part of a fictional series of 1980s summer camp slashers. There's a masked killer, a campground, and lots of killing(Friday the 13th, Sleepaway Camp). Part VI is the black sheep of the family, interjecting cults, aliens, mystical powers. There is also this pesky thing where the director might have added clues to a secret cabal in the real world, might have predicted 9/11, and possibly other tragedies. Mix it all together and you have this really fascinating book that elevates the typical slasher into something much more sinister.
Raab perfectly captures the vibe of campy 80's serial killer movies. You could truly believe this movie existed in the real world. All of the tropes are there and theoretically it follows the same formula. However, what Raab does is sprinkle in these little scenes and lines that make it fresh and new. The characters make self referential comments about how they don't know why they feel like they should run off alone or have sex even if they know it would be wrong. Or he adds in this cult that seems to be controlling the serial killer, and how they need him to kill every year to fulfill a pact. These things deepen the usually pretty thin story lines of these movies.
Then there are the chapters that go behind the scenes, which are absolutely brilliant. We get to see that maybe the set was really visited by aliens and that the director did everything he could to capture it on film. We find out how the director became a mushroom cult leader. Raab adds in the very real challenges that come with releasing a new movie in a series that veers far from what the fans expect. These challenges were obviously pointing toward Halloween III and how at first fans hated it yet now people appreciate what it did. I loved that Raab added this stuff in, it does a great job of blurring the line between this being fictional and this being a series of movies I missed.
If you are at all a fan of campy slasher movies or conspiracy theories put this book on your list. And if you are not, you can at least appreciate the creativity that came into making this. I'm actually really surprised at how blown away I am from this book. I thought it would be just a fun thing to read, but there is a lot of skill and craft that went into creating this. Hands down this is on my top 10 list of 2019.
May 19, 2022
Every slasher series has that one movie that doesn’t quite fit with the others. Maybe it takes place away from the familiar killing grounds. Maybe it’s a little more politically bent. Maybe there’s witches now and our masked murderer never shows up.
Camp Ghoul Mountain Part VI: The Official Novelization is about that movie in the series you maybe hate on initial release, but grows to be a cult classic.
I’d classify this as in the realm of experimental fiction, but it’s not a difficult read. There are footnotes and supplemental “documents,” which add such a fun element to the book.
This is a homage to slashers with so many references and winks for fans of the genre. But it also fully embraces the weird. There are cults and aliens and a talking rams head and that’s not spoiling anything.
It’s such a blast and now I’m craving a revisit to some of my favourite series.
Camp Ghoul Mountain Part VI: The Official Novelization is about that movie in the series you maybe hate on initial release, but grows to be a cult classic.
I’d classify this as in the realm of experimental fiction, but it’s not a difficult read. There are footnotes and supplemental “documents,” which add such a fun element to the book.
This is a homage to slashers with so many references and winks for fans of the genre. But it also fully embraces the weird. There are cults and aliens and a talking rams head and that’s not spoiling anything.
It’s such a blast and now I’m craving a revisit to some of my favourite series.
November 4, 2022
2022 Horror Reading Challenge: Slasher
Do you like slashers, aliens, cults, partying teenagers, conspiracy theories, novelizations of movies that don’t exist and behind the scenes of movie making? If so this book is for you. It’s the novelization of the sixth entry of the fictional Camp Ghoul Mountain series. This book was such a big swing, and for my it’s a success. It really is such a love letter to slasher films. As a fan of that sub genre, the authors love really shows through. It’s a bonkers read, all while being so entertaining. I would love to see this movie, and hope one day this will be adapted into a film. It was so cool when the book went from the movies story, to the crazy fictional telling of the behind the scene drama of the film. The film’s director, was one of the most fascinating characters. It was a big W for me. Side note, the cover art is absolute fire.
Do you like slashers, aliens, cults, partying teenagers, conspiracy theories, novelizations of movies that don’t exist and behind the scenes of movie making? If so this book is for you. It’s the novelization of the sixth entry of the fictional Camp Ghoul Mountain series. This book was such a big swing, and for my it’s a success. It really is such a love letter to slasher films. As a fan of that sub genre, the authors love really shows through. It’s a bonkers read, all while being so entertaining. I would love to see this movie, and hope one day this will be adapted into a film. It was so cool when the book went from the movies story, to the crazy fictional telling of the behind the scene drama of the film. The film’s director, was one of the most fascinating characters. It was a big W for me. Side note, the cover art is absolute fire.
October 10, 2020
Friday the 13th vs. Cabin in the Woods vs. House of Leaves should be a banger but the writing is so boring and bad. A premise like this needs to hit hard and fast and yet most of this book is comprised of giant run-on sentences describing trees. Good grief.
April 21, 2019
Layered and a perfect horror deep dive!
Raab managed to pull off a multi layered deep dive into the texture and troupes of the genre while dragging you into a hellish modern paranoid trip. Buy this right now.
Raab managed to pull off a multi layered deep dive into the texture and troupes of the genre while dragging you into a hellish modern paranoid trip. Buy this right now.
May 13, 2020
I found this book to be a bit of a slog. I enjoyed reading it a little at a time when I was in the mood, but I never found it compelling and it sat for long periods between reading sessions. In my Kindle edition, there were many grammatical errors throughout, as well as several typos here and there. Additionally, there are several pamphlets, letters, or other documents reproduced as primary source materials that were impossible to read on the Kindle (this is a problem with the Kindle format, and I don't hold this against the book).
The plot threads of the book are mostly told through three devices: the novelization of the fictional Camp Ghoul Mountain VI movie, footnotes depicting how various shots in the movie appeared on-screen (as opposed to their novelization), and sections of commentary on the movie and American society. I thought the footnotes were a little distracting and didn't add much to the book, while the commentary parts could be a little ham-fisted at times. The narrative depicting the fictional movie was bizarre and a lot of fun to read. Maybe this book will grow on me like Camp Ghoul Mountain VI was said to grow on moviegoers as time went on; right now, I'm a little baffled.
The plot threads of the book are mostly told through three devices: the novelization of the fictional Camp Ghoul Mountain VI movie, footnotes depicting how various shots in the movie appeared on-screen (as opposed to their novelization), and sections of commentary on the movie and American society. I thought the footnotes were a little distracting and didn't add much to the book, while the commentary parts could be a little ham-fisted at times. The narrative depicting the fictional movie was bizarre and a lot of fun to read. Maybe this book will grow on me like Camp Ghoul Mountain VI was said to grow on moviegoers as time went on; right now, I'm a little baffled.
July 14, 2020
Why?
A fictionalized novelization of a movie never made? Why the hell not?
What I thought?
I have never read anything quite like this, and although it did not go as far into the weirdness that I wanted it to, it was unique and read like it was supposed to. The great thing about this it that Raab explores all the familiar tropes of Slasher style film, and does an alarmingly great job of it! I could really see this movie, and the writing made the plot familiar, and that was fun!
Is this a great book? No, but Raab has done something here that I have never run into before and he did a great job of it. And layered on top of the novelization, is commentary that helps readers see differing elements of the world of horror movies, and beyond.
If you like slasher movies, then this is worth a pick up. Probably not if you are not into that sort of thing, which is a mild shame IMHO.
A fictionalized novelization of a movie never made? Why the hell not?
What I thought?
I have never read anything quite like this, and although it did not go as far into the weirdness that I wanted it to, it was unique and read like it was supposed to. The great thing about this it that Raab explores all the familiar tropes of Slasher style film, and does an alarmingly great job of it! I could really see this movie, and the writing made the plot familiar, and that was fun!
Is this a great book? No, but Raab has done something here that I have never run into before and he did a great job of it. And layered on top of the novelization, is commentary that helps readers see differing elements of the world of horror movies, and beyond.
If you like slasher movies, then this is worth a pick up. Probably not if you are not into that sort of thing, which is a mild shame IMHO.
September 26, 2020
Camp Ghoul Mountain Part VI: The Official Novelization by Jonathan Raab is not just a well written novelization of the classic 8os slasher film, Camp Ghoul Mountain Part VI, but a behind the scenes look at the making of this controversial movie, as well as the writing of the book itself.
Filled with author commentary, interviews, and pictures of some of the behind the scenes material, this is meta-horror at it's finest. You could just read the "novelization" parts, and enjoy a over-the-top slasher story, but the "behind the scenes" stuff adds so many layers of mystery, conspiracy, and craziness. Aliens, 9/11, the American war machine. Who knew a low budget slasher movie form decades past could have so many layers? Jonathan Raab did; and he shares it with us, in this amazing piece of meta-fiction.
Filled with author commentary, interviews, and pictures of some of the behind the scenes material, this is meta-horror at it's finest. You could just read the "novelization" parts, and enjoy a over-the-top slasher story, but the "behind the scenes" stuff adds so many layers of mystery, conspiracy, and craziness. Aliens, 9/11, the American war machine. Who knew a low budget slasher movie form decades past could have so many layers? Jonathan Raab did; and he shares it with us, in this amazing piece of meta-fiction.
January 22, 2020
This is a "novelization" of the infamous sixth entry in the (fictional, natch) "Henry the Horror" series of 80s slasher films. On that level, it's mindless popcorn entertainment with plenty of great kills and cheesy thrills. On another level, it's a web of UFOs, satanic cultists, and government conspiracies, with footnotes sprinkled throughout to further immerse the reader in this world, along with material such as interviews with the film's eccentric director, producer, and other worthies. It's a self-proclaimed love letter to the genre and Raab's respect for the artform of horror shines through on every page. It may not truly deliver on its promise, but is a must-read for horror fanatics! "TRAGEDY IN BABYLON."
October 31, 2021
I had fun with this one. It's a unique take on the genre, and I love the elements of meta-horror. I really wish I could watch the actual film.
The main reason this didn't rate higher is that I felt like the story outside of the novelization never really built to anything, at least nothing surprising. That was a missed opportunity, in my opinion. It contributed to a sense at the end that all of it was filler. I was especially disappointed that the novel never continued with the thread of the creepy call to the author. What great potential there was in that as a story around a story!
In any case, I'd recommend this for fans of slasher cinema looking for something a little different. Give it a shot.
The main reason this didn't rate higher is that I felt like the story outside of the novelization never really built to anything, at least nothing surprising. That was a missed opportunity, in my opinion. It contributed to a sense at the end that all of it was filler. I was especially disappointed that the novel never continued with the thread of the creepy call to the author. What great potential there was in that as a story around a story!
In any case, I'd recommend this for fans of slasher cinema looking for something a little different. Give it a shot.
January 21, 2022
This book was fun! It's the official novelization of the movie Camp Ghoul Mountain part VI, however CGM6 is a fictional movie. Why write a novelization of a movie that doesn't exist? It gives the author, Johnathan Raab, the freedom to tell a story within a story by letting him put in little essays, behind the scenes stuff, and background information on the director and producer of the film between each scene of the movie. The movie itself is a typical 80s slasher, a chainsaw wielding maniac terrorizing a bunch of summer camp counselors. It was surprisingly brutal for a book, and I was shocked at how quickly the bodies piled up. However mix in aliens, cults, government conspiracy, mystery, and tons of pop culture references, and suddenly this old genre becomes something new and fresh.
September 28, 2019
My rating might be a bit biased as I'm a sucker for this sort of conceit: novelization of a fictional '80s slasher movie with footnotes and chapters that go behind the scenes.
I'm not even a longtime fan of slasher movies. Didn't grow up watching them, and really only came to appreciate them because of Stephen Graham Jones' passionate defense of them and their tropes.
Raab's novelization works as a love letter to campground slashers without being derivative; honestly sounds like it'd make a great movie, especially the Director's Cut. The peek behind the scenes rings true. And it all comes together to tell a gory, heady tale of cosmic conspiracy and horror.
Highly recommended!
I'm not even a longtime fan of slasher movies. Didn't grow up watching them, and really only came to appreciate them because of Stephen Graham Jones' passionate defense of them and their tropes.
Raab's novelization works as a love letter to campground slashers without being derivative; honestly sounds like it'd make a great movie, especially the Director's Cut. The peek behind the scenes rings true. And it all comes together to tell a gory, heady tale of cosmic conspiracy and horror.
Highly recommended!
January 12, 2025
Camp Ghoul Mountain is an amazing book, though difficult to describe briefly. Horror novel, novelization of an 80s style slasher franchise movie that never was with alternating chapters of analysis and documentary style background context of the said film very much like what Orrin Grey gives us about real world horror films. But we've also got anti-capitalist american system messaging, aliens, the overall embrace of the high strange and fortean as one familiar with Raab's work might expect...and a whole lot of weed smoking. My father would have loved everything about this novel, and I can think of nothing better I could have chosen to read on the weekend that is the anniversary of his loss.
June 4, 2019
A blood-splattered tale of summer camp horror, Hollywood maneuverings, and psychedelic American nightmare-reality. Camp Ghoul Mountain part VI's impressive body count is rivaled only by it's intense examination of conspiracy. Yes, it's a slasher flick brought to the page. It's also something more. Like a rare steak with a side of psychotropic veggies, the "making of" CGM VI is as insane (and nearly as violent) as the campground killings themselves. The kills are shocking good fun. The rest of the book heads toward darker depths, both real-world and cosmic, and is often more disturbing.
June 18, 2022
What do slashers, aliens, cults, the New World Order, the Illuminati, and 9/11 have in common? This book! An absolutely bonkers take on the slasher book, Camp Ghoul Mountain VI is such a fun combination of ideas that there’s few horror fans who can’t find at least one thing in this novel that’ll make them smile.
Side note, multiple leafs of this book just fell out while reading it, check it in store before purchase to make sure all the pages are there.
Side note, multiple leafs of this book just fell out while reading it, check it in store before purchase to make sure all the pages are there.
February 28, 2023
The “novelization” of a fictional Mid-80’s, mid-franchise slasher movie complete with production commentary and history of the film and series by the novelization’s author. A metafictional look at slasher’s and 80’s paranoia. It would make a nice double bill with Stephen Graham Jones’ Demon Theory. Slashers, cults, UFOs, alien abduction, Illuminati, what more can you ask for in a fun read.
August 12, 2023
This claims to be a novelization of a cult slasher movie, but in fact it's a nested story about an incongruously artistic horror sequel that became the center of conspiracy theories about aliens and 9/11, and the bizarre stories of those who worked on it and reinvented it as a midnight movie. A great book for the waning days of summer, especially if you live anywhere with trees!
March 19, 2020
Raab is fantastic!
I started reading Camp Ghoul Mountain, and found myself searching Google to make sure I had not missed the horror movie series, I was just that convinced! And I grew up in the 80s!
I started reading Camp Ghoul Mountain, and found myself searching Google to make sure I had not missed the horror movie series, I was just that convinced! And I grew up in the 80s!
January 11, 2020
Good clean slasher fun with a twist of WTF.
Good fun and creepy when needed as I was reading I felt a deep sense of unease and dread but also light hatred 80s shenanigans.
Good fun and creepy when needed as I was reading I felt a deep sense of unease and dread but also light hatred 80s shenanigans.
October 28, 2020
Too many threads that went nowhere
The book had way too many threads that just hung there. Not a well crafted story. Got realy weird and oddly preachy.
The book had way too many threads that just hung there. Not a well crafted story. Got realy weird and oddly preachy.
November 2, 2020
Fun idea for a book, and good twists and layers!
April 13, 2021
What a fun read! Weird, gross, funny, self-referential, scary at times, and surprisingly deep.
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