I believe I came across the novelization in the library back after the film first came out; I had a look at the opening pages (being intrigued by what I'd heard of the film), for some reason wasn't impressed, and hence paid no more attention at that point to either book or picture :-( It's just possible it might still be there, though the lifespan of movietie-in paperbacks on the shelves tends to be short...
Elements from early versions of scripts that were never actually used always occupy a rather questionable position in continuity for me (for example, the various deleted scenes used to pad out the DVD are mildly interesting, but the director definitely made the right call in excising them; they wouldn't have improved the finished film). There turns out to be a long and absolutely fascinating 'deleted scene' in the original newspaper serialisation of Leroux's "Phantom of the Opera", for instance, which settles some major fan controversies... but it didn't make it into the final edit of the novel (mainly, I suspect, because it really does make things too clear too early in the plot), so if I'm writing "Phantom" fan-fiction, from the perspective of my characters those revelations were never made!
I think it depends if it's unseen backstory that is compatible with what was eventually shown -- I've heard that del Toro apparently did distribute more detailed biographies of Thomas and Lucille -- or if it's a matter of elements that were superseded by something else during development (like the SF show where the telepath is described in the novelisation as having red-coloured irises, but where they subsequently dropped the idea from the script because it wasn't practical to film).
A interesting idea that Lucille actively picked unattractive women because she was worried about losing Thomas (although again, Eunice doesn't seem to fit that template any more than the 'isolated' one; I definitely got the impression she was pursuing Thomas rather than vice versa, and that before I knew there was anything questionable about the Sharpes at all!)
A couple more questions: if Carter Cushing is successful enough not to have done any manual labour for years (he's now a self-made businessman taking investment decisions rather than a common steel worker), how can his hands still be rough? A spell of a few months in hospital is normally enough to soften the horniest palms into vulnerability, never mind years of comfortable wealth -- has Cushing been moonlighting from the office on his construction sites for old times' sake? ;-) (And conversely, given that Thomas and Lucille apparently have no servants to do the labour of the house and that Thomas has a workshop full of manual tools and has been helping construct his inventions himself, it seems unlikely that they would have perfect aristocratic hands...)
The ghosts that appear in Allerdale Hall appear to be dripping red because their bodies have been dumped in the clay vats. (Edith's mother died of the 'black cholera' -- I don't know what we deduce about Lucille, unless that her body lies unburied and gradually withers to black...) But Lady Sharpe is the odd one out; her body can't have been taken down to hide in the clay, because its discovery in the bath is reported (with illustration!) in the newspapers. Unless it's a case of red water from the plumbing again.
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It's just possible it might still be there, though the lifespan of movietie-in paperbacks on the shelves tends to be short...
Elements from early versions of scripts that were never actually used always occupy a rather questionable position in continuity for me (for example, the various deleted scenes used to pad out the DVD are mildly interesting, but the director definitely made the right call in excising them; they wouldn't have improved the finished film). There turns out to be a long and absolutely fascinating 'deleted scene' in the original newspaper serialisation of Leroux's "Phantom of the Opera", for instance, which settles some major fan controversies... but it didn't make it into the final edit of the novel (mainly, I suspect, because it really does make things too clear too early in the plot), so if I'm writing "Phantom" fan-fiction, from the perspective of my characters those revelations were never made!
I think it depends if it's unseen backstory that is compatible with what was eventually shown -- I've heard that del Toro apparently did distribute more detailed biographies of Thomas and Lucille -- or if it's a matter of elements that were superseded by something else during development (like the SF show where the telepath is described in the novelisation as having red-coloured irises, but where they subsequently dropped the idea from the script because it wasn't practical to film).
A interesting idea that Lucille actively picked unattractive women because she was worried about losing Thomas (although again, Eunice doesn't seem to fit that template any more than the 'isolated' one; I definitely got the impression she was pursuing Thomas rather than vice versa, and that before I knew there was anything questionable about the Sharpes at all!)
A couple more questions: if Carter Cushing is successful enough not to have done any manual labour for years (he's now a self-made businessman taking investment decisions rather than a common steel worker), how can his hands still be rough? A spell of a few months in hospital is normally enough to soften the horniest palms into vulnerability, never mind years of comfortable wealth -- has Cushing been moonlighting from the office on his construction sites for old times' sake? ;-)
(And conversely, given that Thomas and Lucille apparently have no servants to do the labour of the house and that Thomas has a workshop full of manual tools and has been helping construct his inventions himself, it seems unlikely that they would have perfect aristocratic hands...)
The ghosts that appear in Allerdale Hall appear to be dripping red because their bodies have been dumped in the clay vats. (Edith's mother died of the 'black cholera' -- I don't know what we deduce about Lucille, unless that her body lies unburied and gradually withers to black...)
But Lady Sharpe is the odd one out; her body can't have been taken down to hide in the clay, because its discovery in the bath is reported (with illustration!) in the newspapers. Unless it's a case of red water from the plumbing again.