Book to Movie: Cirque du Freak

Out of purely morbid curiosity I picked up the movie Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant when a copy appeared at the library. Because of it's dark cover and darker plot I almost didn't watch it. Then, at the last minute, I popped it in and thought I'd give it a few minutes. I was surprised to find I watched it all.


Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant (2009)

I believe the movie is based on the first three Cirque du Freak books, told in narration by Darren Shan. He and his best friend Steve sneak into a cirque du freak to see fantastic beings of all kind, including a vampire and his spider assistant, Madam Octa. Determined to have Madam Octa, Darren steals her, only to get the bad karma back when she bites Steve. In exchange for Steve's life, Darren agrees to become the vampire's assistant, giving up his life as he knows it. But things are so simple when Steve finds out much more than he should about Darren's new life.

I was surprised to find a real story line here, and thrown off by a few twists that even I didn't suspect. The vampire is likable but not lovable, and while being a freak is shown as a lonely life, what I appreciated most is that it didn't try to glorify being a vampire. While this wasn't Academy Award material by any stretch, and I won't ever buy it, I thought it was an interesting view. I'm interested to find out if they'll continue making them.

Graded a B-.


Cirque du Freak
Young Adult, 1999

from fantasticfiction.co.uk:
Darren goes to a banned freak show with his best mate Steve. It's the wonderfully gothic Cirque du Freak where weird, frightening half human/half animals appear who interact terrifyingly with the audience. Darren -- a spider freak -- 'falls in love' with Madam Octa -- an enormous tarantala owned by the circus proprietor. Darren determines to steal the spider so that he can train it to perform amazing deeds. But his daring theft goes horrible wrong. The spider bites his best mate and Darren has to sell his soul to an evil vampire to get the antidote.

After watching the movie I decided the check out the book despite it's ugly and creepy cover. It's not only much thinner than expected, but less scary as well. This is one of those series that has a multitude (12) of books in order to milk readers for extra money - as short as these books are it would have been very easy to combine two or even 3 of them like the movie did. The differences were slight except for a couple things - first, in the book I felt there was no motivation for good guy Darren to all of a sudden steal Madam Octa, whereas the movie showed a few events leading up to that decision. Second, there's a girl in the movie adding a bit of a romantic intrigue. I'm not sure if in later books she shows up, but she's definitely not in the first.

Graded a C+.