Greg Kihn - Horror Show

[dem bones]

Greg Kihn - Horror Show (Tor, Oct. 1997)

Photography: Waldo Tejada. Cover design: Shelley Eshkar

Blurb
"A wholly engrossing and original work by the man who once wrote, 'they don't write 'em like that anymore.' Kihngratulations are in order." —Joel Selvin, columnist,Son Francisco Chronicle

Hollywood, 1996. When Monster Magazine reporter Clint Stockbern sets out to interview the legendary '50s horror movie director Landis Woodley, he uncov­ers a bizarre story of real-life horror.

Flashback to Hollywood, 1957. Woodley is shooting his latest zombie movie, Cadaver, in a real morgue when he has a brainstorm that will help him pinch some pennies. But when zombie make-up effects are replaced by real corpses, a deadly curse begins to take its toll on those fool­ish enough to become involved with the filming of the soon-to-be cult classic, Cadaver.

"Rock star Kihn's talented debut novel [is] very entertaining .... Not to be missed." - Kirkus Reviews



Meet Landis Woodley, legendary horror film-maker responsible for such zero budget drive-in favourites as I Married A Vampire (featuring 'the Iron Lady', Blood Ghouls Of Malibu, Attack Of The Haunted Saucer ("The worst movie of all time" - The New Yorker), The Mummy's Brain, Slave To The Sadist, Satan's Daughter, Hot Rod Monster, Snuff Addict (did it contain a real murder?), Big Rock Beat (a flop) and late entry Cold Flesh Eaters ("rarely seen"). Bombed out of Hollywood following the Cadaver scandal, he's not made a movie in thirty years and now festers in his decrepit Hollywood Hills mansion with just his pet bats and a couple of owls for company. Everyone has forgotten about him. Everyone, that is, except Clint Stockbern.

Clint has been a horror movie fan since childhood. He began by collecting posters - "creatures carrying barely-clad women were his speciality" - before progressing to the more exotic memorabilia of props and original scripts. Hardly had his acne cleared than he landed the job of cub reporter on Monster Magazine and at just 22 years of age, he's already interviewed the majority of his heroes. But Woodley, grizzled and alcoholic, has proved his toughest challenge. The guy doesn't want to know unless there's cash up front. Clint pays him $600 from his own pocket. He sure hopes the belligerent old bastard will make worth it worth his while.

He does.

With a stash of foul-smelling cigars and industrial-strength whiskey to keep him lubricated, Landis Woodley opens up about the star turns and hangers-on during the salad days. There's something suspiciously Ed. Wood jnr. about the ensemble.

• His co-conspirator, special effects maestro Buzzy Haller, a fellow alcoholic who eventually committed suicide though his body was never found.
• Cross-dressing screen-writing genius Neil Bugmuir, the transvestite who dreamed up the plot-line for the notorious Cadaver.
• 'The Grand Master of Horror' Jonathon Luboff, an Eastern European superstar whose career nose-dived alarmingly after early successes in The Curse Of Nosferatu and Dr. Death. Luboff spent his final decades battling heroin addiction and prostituting his talent in sub-moronic creature features.
• Tad Kingston. Failed rock 'n roller turned matinee idol. No discernible acting ability but the teenagers dug his extraordinary blonde bouffant. Tad's "star quality hair" earned him the lead teenager parts in Hot Rod Monster, Blood Ghouls Of Malibu, and the under-appreciated Attack Of The Haunted Saucer
• Julia Greenly, better known to her fans as 'Devila', the impossibly glamorous Channel Two horror hostess.
• Fiery red-head Roberta Bachman, then a "cute little publicity girl for RKM, now Clint's formidable editor on Monster Magazine.

Best of all, Wooley finally comes clean about the Cadaver shoot in the LA County Morgue.

It was Buzzy who figured how to open the morgue drawers. Removing a particularly gamey corpse, he worked it like a marionette. Never again would Landis Woodley get to shoot such horrifying footage.

He still has a reel of out-takes. He still has a copy of all the material dropped at the censor's insistence.

Clint, well pleased, is packing up for the day when - YAAAAARGH!!!!!! A terrible howl, like that of a person in torment, from the crawl-space beneath Woodley's private basement cinema. Even the curmudgeonly old movie-maker seems shocked.

They creep down into the darkness to investigate ....

Horror Show is already looking like it's going to be a whole load of fun.

[dem bones]

Rewind to October 1957 and Landis Woodley's annual Halloween party. This years centrepiece, an authentic guillotine which you know will see some use before the night's out. All the gang are there, including, Phil 'The Great' Romaro (the Criswell the psychic of the piece), Hoyt Lovejoy (a macho, swashbuckling lead from the early talkies, now slumming it in Woodley productions), Deborah DeLux (a low-rent Annette Funicello to Tad's Poundland Frankie Avalon), and, somehow, Luboff, by now so wasted on junk he looks twice as terrifying as the rotting lead in The Mummy's Brain. Devila's hand-picked date for the evening is none other than Albert Beaumond, founder and leader of the First Satanic Church of America, recently returned from Peru with a pilfered fetish which resembles tuning forks but can transform a man into a snake demon (it's true: we've seen it in action). Woodley, sworn to "scare the shit" out of everyone he meets, doesn't disappoint with tonight's sick gag which sets everyone up for the imminent Cadaver shoot. A fist-fight, casual vomiting, a near OD and a small house-fire make for a swell occasion. It's only Roberta Bachman and her costume design assistant friend, Laura Grootna, who don't enjoy the evening (more of Landis and Buzzy's tasteless "fun" involving a "suicide" in the trees). Beaumond is both amused and impressed, but the guillotine tomfoolery isn't a patch on the demonstration he affords Devila when they arrive back at his Temple .....

Up to p.110 (of 274). We've just seen a few highlights from Neil's Cavader script and, although Woodley demands a fairly substantial rewrite, it looks very promising. The LA morgue really won't know what's hit it.

[pulphack]

This does sound rather good - I've read about Greg's books before and never hunted them down... Now might be the time to hit Amazon or Abe. I was a fan of his work on vinyl back in the day - his Berserkley albums are well worth a listen if you like Flamin' Groovies styled garage stuff. I think he still records - I know he plays live as a chum saw him when he was in SF a few years back.

[dem bones]

Oct 1, 2014 5:45:07 GMT pulphack said:

This does sound rather good - I've read about Greg's books before and never hunted them down... Now might be the time to hit Amazon or Abe. I was a fan of his work on vinyl back in the day - his Berserkley albums are well worth a listen if you like Flamin' Groovies styled garage stuff. I think he still records - I know he plays live as a chum saw him when he was in SF a few years back.

It's seriously brilliant! Strange thing is, friend Milan had a copy festering on the shelves at TYPE (RIP) for ever, but despite being very taken by the cover (the photo shoot must have been a lot of fun), I always passed in favour of something else (usually dreadful).

It ain't quite Glen or Glenda? but still Cadaver is Landis Woodley's most personal film. He intends it to say something about the misfits and outsiders who constitute Woodley Productions. Truly, the man is "a horror existentialist!"

"What about an ending?" Neil asked.
Landis smiled. Leaning back in his chair, he said. "Don't need one. There is no ending. The cadavers win. No explanation, no nothing. They win, period."
"Bleak. Fatalistic," Neil droned. "Horror show noir."
"Uh-huh," Landis concluded. "Just like life."

Meanwhile, Albert Beaumond has cause to regret showing off in front of Devila as now he has become the earthly receptacle of the snake-demon. Sincere Satanist he may be, but Albert loathes evil for its own sake as much as the next lapsed Catholic. He only got into this stuff seriously after the death of his beloved wife. Now he's terrified the fiend will claim Thora, his innocent teenage daughter. Devila, once she's recovered her composure - she's been liberally coated in snake saliva; that's another vamp costume ruined - sees $$$$ signs flashing before her eyes. She steals the tuning forks of terror .....

[dem bones]

Up until now, Horror Show has been less full-on 'horror' novel than love letter to berserker 'fifties B-movie producers and their impossible loyal, long-suffering misfit entourage, but once filming is under way, things get proper nasty. No wish to spoil it, but I will mention that one particular episode actually shocked me - could be that i'm getting squeamish in my dotage, but can't remember when last a macabre novel did that. Also, unlike the cast of, say, The Medusa Horror, the characters, even the relatively minor ones, are given opportunity to shine, and I didn't want to lose any of them -not even the ever so sleazy mortician - but lose them we do. Who, if anyone will be left standing? And who exactly is 'Johnny D.', the true star of Cadaver?

Very very recommended!

[pulphack]

I'll second that. I picked up a copy off Amazon, along with Mr K's Big Rock Beat and Mojo Hand for twelve quid inc p&p, and have just finished Horror Show, which is superb. Some genuinely nasty moments, an ending that has so many red and rotten herrings that I didn't quite see it coming, and some great characterisation that actually makes you like the likes of Woody and Buzzy even though they are basically assholes - they do have reasons for being like that...

While it's true that in some ways it is a love letter to B horrors, I would add that the references and setting add to the book, rather than overwhelm it (it would have been easy to rely on those to carry it, but Mr K avoids this). I think that even if you knew little about the Hollywood drive-in movie makers, you would still enjoy this as a horror thriller, as the setting in no way swamps the story.

There appears to be some running themes: this is set in '57, while Big Rock Beat is set in '67, and Mojo Hand in '77; Woody and Neil Bugemier are also in BRB (I've flicked), and a character introduced in this book seems central to Mojo Hand, in which it appears Robert Johnson is back from the dead (I flicked again).

I suspect that I won't be able to keep away from them for long...

[dem bones]

Mar 13, 2015 8:55:01 GMT pulphack said:

. While it's true that in some ways it is a love letter to B horrors, I would add that the references and setting add to the book, rather than overwhelm it (it would have been easy to rely on those to carry it, but Mr K avoids this). I think that even if you knew little about the Hollywood drive-in movie makers, you would still enjoy this as a horror thriller, as the setting in no way swamps the story.

This is so true.

Am well pleased Horror Show lived up to expectation, Mr. Hack. I knew of Big Rock Beat but had no idea there was a punk era sequel-to-the-sequel - yet another addition to bastard wants list.

[pulphack]

I'd hold off on putting Mojo Hand on the wants list yet, Dem - for a start, 1977 deep south bluesmen would have ignored the punk era (seeing as the books appears to be about the return of Robert Johnson from the grave) and also I have some reservations about Beau Young as a central figure. I can report in more detail fairly soon as I have only three books on my unread pile now (my ambition is to clear it for the first time in 27 years), so it won't be long before I get to it.

Having registered that concern, I have to say that Big Rock Beat is bloody marvellous - read it in two days and it's superb. It's painted on a broader canvas than Horror Show, and basically features two narratives that converge towards the final third. It's a must have if you liked the first book.

Landis Woodley and his crew of misfits are making his first movie for ten years, a beach rock musical funded by a consortium headed up by a sleazy indie label owner and producer, and featuring Jayne Mansfield clone Yvette Love. And, surprisingly, Bela-clone Jonathon Luboff who didn't die of an overdose in 1958 as stated in Horror Show. No, he ends up doing it in 1967 instead (though still films for three days after. How? Buy the book!). Because Love wants an extra fifty grand, Woody's producer ends up doing a deal with a Mexican gangster called El Diabolo (uh-oh, plot alert!) who insists on putting his nephew in charge - the same nephew who's dating Love, quelle surprise - and insists that James Dean's death car, now rebuilt, is included in the movie.

And so people start dropping dead, including the aforementioned producer, Luboff (eventually), and a stunt driver who is spectacularly decapitated. There's a lot of fun to be had with movies, rock'n'roll, and the Hollyweird twilight zone chums of Woody, who regrets not taking that offer to go to Tokyo and do second unit work on a monster picture.

Concurrent with this, Woody's cousin Beau Young is jamming with his band in San Francisco and being a hippy. He goes to Monterey and sees Janis and Jimi, and talks to Brian Jones. He drifts to California, meets a psychic who tels him that in this life he will do something wonderful and that he is special, and ends up in his cousin's movie, becoming a minor rock star, and boffing Love before ending up with Gayle Mimi, the sweet and innocent ingenue from the movie. Now, here's the only thing that I can criticise: Beau comes over as drippy, which fits the time and his character, but by the end the thing about his destiny is kind of ignored and fizzles out, and frankly he's still a bit of a knob, which is why I'm iffy about Mojo Hand being carried by him. Having said that, Kihn is ace on rock writing, and so you can forgive that small flaw.

Of course, boffing Love means Beau gets strung up in a closet with a knife against his sac, and Woody has to raise $100,000 to save him (I would have left the little shit, actually), which he does by borrowing it from El Diabolo and basically selling his soul with a seven day payback clause (Luboff, the dead producer, and possible the sleazy label meister already have sold and lost theirs) which he meets by stealing film, fleeing to Tokyo and splicing an out-take fest of monsters and beach bunnies which he sells outright and trades for a samurai sword on which he makes a profit before banging the cash on El Diabolo's table and baffling El Diabolo, being possibly the only man in history to beat the devil (he's good at this shit, as reading Horror Show has already revealed). He has the chump change to get Beau a flying V, which the little git doesn't deserve, though it does save his life when the nephew of Satan comes after him again and gets impaled on it...

There are some great jokes, references to the previous book, and minor characters such as a priest called Fr MacCammon and a tv reporter called Peter Straub (...). It's not as focused a novel as Horror Show, and sprawls a bit, but the sheer exuberance and storytelling carries it over those humps. Hell, I haven't even mentioned Omar And The Apostles, who are like a supercharged Sam The Sham And The Pharoahs with satanic smack on board their bus (oh, I just did!).

Thoroughly recommended. Hopefully, Beau will have matured a little in the ten years between this and Mojo Hand. We'll see...

[dem bones]

Many thanks for that very thorough review, Mr. Hack. Honest, I enjoyed Horror Show so much that I'd be prepared to give both of these a go whether or not they had any horror/ supernatural content whatsoever. On the evidence of his début and your comments re Big Rock Beat, the man sure knows his trash pop culture. I'm still gutted about what happened to 'Devila' though.

[pulphack]

Mojo Hand... put it back on the list, Dem, as my reservations regarding Beau Young were thankfully unfounded.

MH is a gem of a novel, with several plot strands that interweave together well and come together towards the end for some surprising revelations and a neat little twist at the end - a couple of them, actually. It's on a tighter frame and smaller canvas than Big Rock Beat, and much as I loved that I would note that it was 350pp while both this and Horror Show are a hundred pages shorter, and reined in like this Mr K tends to be more focused.

Vincent Shives is an albino who is a breathtaking blues guitarist. Of course, no one knows this except him, as he has kept his talent secret. Only King Washington, blues label owner and rip-off artist who is in hock to the mob for $100,000, has heard him, and only on tape. As Vince is a psychotic loon, it may be he's shite - but Washington knows money when he sniffs it. So when blues greats start dropping like flies, then it's odds on that there's foul play afoot. Clue - it's all in the rights acquisitions...

Beau Young, meanwhile, is playing guitar for Oakland Slim, harp player extraordinary. Beau has indeed matured, and has been through the mill - coke and booze, his band breaking up after years of road slog, and his marriage crumbling under the pressure (he has a son named Woody, after his cousin the maverick film maker). Cleaned up, he's rediscovered his mojo. Hell, when the going gets tough he even digs out the 1958 flying V that Woody the elder got for him, and which is proven to slay the devil (or the devil's nephew, at least).

His mojo but not, you note, his Mojo Hand - this strange object is possessed by Vince and came from houngan Ida John. Vince believes that if the blues greats die, he will absorb their greatness and become the king of the blues. Only, is it really Vince behind their deaths? Anyway, this becomes academic when Robert Johnson appears: the legendary bluesman has been discovered by Annie Sweeny, journalist and daughter of a blues collector and dealer who bequeathed his daughter his love of the music. Robert was poisoned, pronounced dead, and ran away from a fate far worse to hide for the next forty years. He fears the devil is after him, as is the family of the woman responsible for his death. He just wants to be left alone, except he has a one-armed son who craves some cash, and oh look, here comes King Washington...

This is part psychological horror, part supernatural voodoo horror (what is real and what is drug induced hallucination? Did Robert really meet the devil? Does Ida really possess powers?), and part whodunnit with a side order of great writing about the blues and San Francisco - Mr K's hometown, where he briefly namechecks hisself and fellow Beserkley artists Earthquake - where the author's love of both shines through. As with Horror Show, you don't need to be a fan of the form to enjoy the book, though if you are you can have fun spotting who the fictional composite blues musos are based on.

As with the other two books, all the characters come alive (I love that Oakland Slim persuades Beau to help him investigate the deaths as he's a big Travis McGee fan, and is even seen at one point buying a pile of second hand paperback; George Jones, the detective from Marin County Sheriff's office investigating the last killing has a great back story and becomes a blues convert; and Beau makes a chum of Stu Kweeder from the Coroner's Office, who turns out to be a fan of Beau And The Savages from back in the day), and there are some genuinely shocking moments. The last eighteen pages turn a few things on their head when you think it's all done, too.

I haven't wanted to give too much away here, but it's well worth the effort of searching out on Amazon (my copy is ex-library from Napa County). Thank you Dem for picking up Horror Show and enthusing me to do what I'd diled over for so long.

[pulphack]

Idled, even. My typing never gets any better...

[dem bones]

Really thrilled you enjoyed 'em, Mr. Bugg! there's always that nagging fear that the author might just be a one hit wonder (so to speak) so am delighted to have it confirmed that Mr. Kihn does not fall into that category. Stupid question probably, but is it essential that the books be read in sequence, because I'm very tempted to go for Mojo Hand and may not be able to manage both for time being.

[pulphack]

Not a stupid question at all - I read 'em in publication order under exactly that assumption! In truth, each book stands alone. Whenever he refers back to something in a character's life that occurred in a previous book, he fills in a little detail that stops the reference being baffling. I suspect that he assumed that someone picking up one of his books may do so in complete ignorance of the others, which is always a useful attitude. I think you'll like Big Rock Beat as it has a more horror bent, but will find Mojo Hand a more satisfying story as a whole. Anyway, it's got a dead man's hand as a central motif - what's not to like? Do it - go for the hand!

[dem bones]

Greg Kihn - Mojo Hand (Forge/ Tom Doherty, 1999)

Waldo Tejada & Shelley Eshkar

Blurb:
“Clever, funny, fast-moving...Everything, including the corpses, is ready to stand up and boogie until well past sunrise.“- Peter Straub

It's I971, ten years after Big Rock Beat, and Beau Young is back. Now he's playin' the blues —literally. As he tours smoky dives with blues legend Oakland Slim, he uncovers an evil voodoo plot to assassinate the remaining blues masters. But disco rules, so who cares about a few dead blues greats?
Then legendary blues martyr Robert Johnson turns up alive forty-three years after his reported death, a victim of a New Orleans witch's zombie poison, not a jealous husband as originally reported. Beau knows Johnson could be the key to the murders. But Robert Johnson sold his sou! to the devil decades ago.
With Beau’s help he must return to the infamous crossroads of fate and seize his destiny. And both of them must confront the awesome power of the Mojo Hand.

Always good to see out the year with a couple of new additions to the shelf that died of shame, and have been looking forward to this one for ages. Can it possibly top Horror Show? Mr. Hack seems to think so, and he's no bad judge.