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Post by dem bones on Dec 5, 2009 14:54:34 GMT
'Thomas Luke' (Graham Masterton) - Phobia (New English Library, March 1981) Blurb: PREPARE TO FACE THE THING YOU FEAR MOST
Dr Ross has a new kind of behaviour therapy for phobia patients - people paralyzed by an overwhelming irrational fear.
His guinea pigs are five convicted criminals each with an obsessive fear - of heights, of crowds, of animals, of enclosed spaces, or of men.
One by one they begin to die. Victims of the very thing that they feared most ....
Now a major film ....Opens with a nasty swimming pool accident. A little girl drowns without her brother realising until it's too late. Cut to Lakeshore hospital, the "Headcase Hilton", Cleveland, where, in the face of much opposition from the police, the prison services and even his own profession, Dr. Peter Ross, a specialist in behavioral psychology, has been funded to the tune of $2.3 million to develop his controversial, ethically dubious treatment of phobics. The beauty of 'The Ross Solution' lies in its brutal simplicity. As a child he feared water, but when his father chucked him in the deep end, little Peter found he could swim after all! If it worked for him ... Ross's five hand-picked volunteers are convicted one-off killers, lured by the promise of parole if he can cure them of the fears that drove them to manslaughter. In Bernard 'Bubba' King's case, for example, he was an armed robber who only killed when an old woman threw her necklace at him and he mistook it for a snake. Young Johnny Venuti is claustrophobic; Barbara Grey, in her late twenties, is agoraphobic; Henry Lawson, 56, has a morbid fear of heights; finally, gang-rape victim Laura Adams, 23, is understandably terrified of all men. So much for the patients, moving on to the complete maniacs, and it's evident from the first that not all is right with Ross and certain of his colleagues, one of whom, Dr. Alice Toland, has a very possessive crush on him though she promises she's over that now - she is, too, bar the stalking - and can't they still be friends? For his part, Ross has only the most tenuous hold on his temper, and his monstrous ego indicates we are likely dealing with the latest incarnation of our old friend, the mad doctor. And then there's whoever is responsible for wiring his filing cabinet with enough explosives to destroy a tank .... Fifty pages down and this is certainly shaping up well. Plenty of pop culture references, too - Dr. Toland gets mighty irked when Dr. Hook's dreaded Better Love Next Time Baby comes on the car radio: Ross's maid warbles along to Kiki Dee's I Got The Music In Me and i like that Mr. 'Luke' sneaks in a crafty reference to another of his novels. "Good night, Jack. What's the book?"
The guard took off his glasses and looked embarrassed. "It's nothing. Some story about the president getting possessed by the devil. The Hell Candidate"
Dr. Ross patted him on the back and grinned. "If it tells you how to perform an exorcism, let me know. I've got quite a few devils to chase out myself."Let's hope so.
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Post by franklinmarsh on Jan 18, 2010 8:58:59 GMT
Thought I'd read this - but longer ago than I thought - from the old board - with SPOILERS.
Phobia - A novel by Thomas Luke. NEL March 1981. First published in the USA in 1980 by Pocket Books.
Screenplay by Lew Lehman, Jimmy Sangster, Peter Bellwood. Story by Gary Sherman & Ronald Shusett.
A terrifying new screen chiller
Prepare to face the thing that you fear most...
Dr Ross has a new kind of behaviour therapy for phobia patients - people paralyzed by an overwhelming irrational fear.
His guinea pigs are five convicted criminals each with an obsessive fear- of heights, of crowds, of animals, of enclosed spaces, or of men.
One by one they begin to die. Victims of the very thing that they feared most...
Now a major film starring Paul Michael Glaser. Directed by John Huston.
*SPOILERS*
Some time in the past...
Same old boring Saturday morning, old man's out washing the car. Mom's in the kitchen, cooking Sat'day dinner...but this is California, not the Home Counties, and the kids are out by the pool. Little five year old Suzie wants to see if her dolly can swim. Her wiser, seven year old bro tells her not to be so stupid. And watches as first the doll, then his sister sink...
So far so Don't Look Now...
Let's whizz on to 1980, and a meeting of Docs at the Lakeshore Hospital (or the 'Headcase Hilton' as some call it). Dr Ross is trying to convince Drs Clegg, Toland and Clemens that his phobia patients are getting better. The Doc's (an Ethics Committee) are not convinced. They've seen Dr Ross's patients after a therapy session - looking as though they've been trampled by a herd of buffalo. Dr Ross is a professional succeeder - good at everything he does - especially ice hockey. He graduated as the star of his behavioral psychology class and published a landmark paper on irrational responses to external stimuli ,at a ludicrously young age.
After a mention in Time magazine, the Townsend Cereal Foundation (I kid you not) gave him 2.3 million bucks to perfect a treatment for phobias - that had led their sufferers to commit serious crimes.
Half a million has been pissed away on The Box - a square structure in which the patient sits. Ross then bombards them with films of their fear, and bellows things like 'Open your eyes, damn you!' and 'It's your fear and you've got to face it!' as his subject turns to jelly.
Implosion therapy - all something to do with Ross's dad chucking him in the deep end so he'd learn to swim.
A lot of people don't like this form of treatment, such as the patients - although they like Ross, and especially police Captain Barnes who wants the facility closed down. He's outraged that Ross is wasting money trying to cure convicted murderers by mollycoddling them.
Dr Clemens thinks Ross's methods are unsound and dangerous. Dr Toland is an ex- of Ross's and still has the hots for him, although he's now dating a female sculptor.
One of Ross's more successful patients is Barbara, an agoraphobe. The doc is convinced she's making good progress, so ferries her across town to the other side of a park. All she has to do is walk back to the hospital, through those wide open spaces. If it proves too much, she can drop into his apartment, where he'll be working.
Babs starts off well but soon gets the heebie-jeebies, and has to get a cab to Ross's apartment.
The cleaning lady lets her in to an empty apartment, Ross having completely lost track of time and hightailed it to an ice hockey game.
As she begins to calm down, Barbara notices a filing cabinet with five drawers and the names of the five patients on them. She moseys over for a quick peek, but fails to spot the plastic explosive wired to the cabinet. Boom!
So begins the bumping off of each patient, and the discrediting of Ross' scheme. Jimmy
Sangster's name on the cover should scream 'bloody obvious unguessable twist ending' but I found it an engrossing enough story.
Apart from the cereal company (does this really happen?) some stupidities abound - how does the claustrophobe cope inside The Box? One killer is a woman who hacked a man to death - her phobia is men, brought upon by a multiple rape in her youth. Ross' therapy? Lock her in The Box, show her a porn film, and keep shouting 'Open your eyes!!!"
into his microphone.
Love that cover though - shame it's uncredited.
'Thomas Luke'? A character in the story is reading a book called The Hell Candidate.
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Post by dem bones on Jan 18, 2010 9:37:31 GMT
well done, FM, now that's much more like it!
finished Phobia shortly after the first post, but couldn't really think of anything much to say about it. i thought it was a good old fashioned page-turner of a horror whodunnit, but .... a bit flat. Even the sessions in the box aren't quite as horrible as they should be. According To Masterton, it took him all of four days to write, and, i've not seen the film (anyone?), but I'm guessing he didn't stray too far from the screenplay because, given his head, he can never be accused of scrimping on excruciating pain and graphic horror, whereas here, a dramatic "will he, won't he?" plunge from a girder high atop a construction site and an equally squelchy crushing in a lift shaft apart, the murders are disappointingly mundane. Also, for the first time in history, i guessed who did it. Best character from a largely unsympathetic bunch is the liberal-hating, psychiatrist-loathing old school cop Captain Barnes who might have been flown in from the pages of Men Of Violence!
i found a copy of Burial on Friday, but that one may have to wait a while.
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