The Boys from Brazil by Ira Levin

☆☆☆☆This review contains spoilers☆☆☆☆

The Boys From Brazil is a phenomenal film from the early eighties, and now to find the movie is based on a book by the notable author Ira Levin surprised me immensely.

Before launching myself into the horror I knew would be ahead of me, I contemplated on the quality of the storyteller, would I feel saddened by the inferiority of the book compared to the film or would I believe the book was at least equal or superior to the adaptation?

The film, starring Gregory Peck and Laurence Olivier, brought the story of future Hitlers to the screen that is spellbinding. Except for a few editing problems and the obligatory sex scene, the story works in a way that is driven by dread in a delightful way.

The flow of the book is effortless, and I'm sure every writer would wish to possess the talent of Levin, who weaves a story that guides us where he wishes the reader to blindly follow, and we follow willingly. 

Cloning is a chilling prospect to think of, and consistent in books and movies, it's shown as someone's despair--frequently the cloned being whose body parts may be desired.

Levin chooses to make the cloned beings as living Gods to nazis and living monsters to the rest of the world. 

The thought of Mengele's success in cloning ninety-four Hitlers by his vile and inhuman experiments during WWII on innocent children creates a story filled with an unfairness that is hard to fathom.

The atrocities of Mengele and all the other monsters, from Hitler down to the lowest echelon, should be told. Every human on earth should know the stories of the innocent in hopes this will never happen again. I'm one of those persons that shy away from the stories of the horror-filled lives so many endured--the pain is too overwhelming sometimes to bear, especially when children are involved.

The Boys From Brazil tells the horror yet also tells an interesting tale of madness, that we feel safe in knowing will never come true. Though somewhere in a secret vault of evil beings, is there a vial of Hitler's DNA waiting patiently for science to catch up?

Who Goes There by John W. Campbell Jr.

From the moment I commenced reading this story, memories of another story stirred around in my brain.
Men living on a base in Antarctica and a being so evil that it can duplicate itself into any existing living cell structures.
Voila, I knew it appeared similar to the movie called The Thing, which is a terrifyingly wonderful movie starring Kurt Russel. In fact, the movie's based on the book.

Who Goes There was published in 1938. That boggles the mind to understand the mind of the man who had the intelligence to write such a brilliant book. Reading it today, I felt the concepts were way before their time in the same manner of Jules Verne or H. G. Wells. The story showed such insight that a movie made fifty years later would thrill audiences with anxiety filled horror.

Even though I liked the book, this is one of those instances where the film is superior. The book had several of the same elements, yet the movie took those elements to a higher playing field and added a fresh new story line causing more terror filled moments.

To be stuck in Antarctica with the "being" on the loose would be terrifying, and never knowing if a friend is still a human, would be agonizing. Plus they're in Antarctica with no place to run. The weather outside shows 40 below--until aid arrives, there's no place to hide.
There's also the added fear of spreading the evil off the base and into the world.

I still feel that feeling of wonderful creepiness rolling off my shoulders.