Douglas Soesbe - Scream Play

[dem bones]

Douglas Soesbe - Scream Play (Charter/ Diamond, 1990)

Blurb:
IT’S ONLY A MOVIE

The Odeon Theatre is scheduled for demolition. There's only one problem: The movie house,born of a dark and evil ritual, refuses to die.

IT’S ONLY A MOVIE

The light dim. The terror begins. Flesh-hungry rats scurry after human prey. Zombies stalk a moonlit graveyard. A chain saw buzzes to life.

IT’S ONLY A MOVIE

Tonight the curtain rises for one final screening. The audience is held captive by blood-curdling horror. But this time, the blood is their own, the horror is real.

SCREAM PLAY

THERE WILL BE NO INTERMISSION.
AND NO ESCAPE.


First read this maybe fifteen-twenty years ago, having picked up a copy from the bargain box in a Plaistow newsagent. Seem to recall being modestly entertained by it at time, but nothing, as yet is striking a chord.

Prologue. The grand opening night of the Odeon Theatre, Wallensberg, August 1931, is the most exciting of sixteen-year-old Jack McGruger's life. Jack has been hired as an usher by Mr. Peabody, been issued with a smart grey uniform and everything. Jack loves the movies. What he doesn't love is having to keep his back to the screen throughout, though there'll be opportunity to desert his post and grab a seat when Peabody's back is turned. Except he gets caught and is dismissed on the spot. Changing back into his civvies in the toilet, Jack notes a pool of sticky red fluid streaming from inside a cubicle. He climbs the door to be confronted by a horrible sight - Edith Wallenberg, the mayor's beautiful trophy wife, is slumped very naked, very bloody, and very dead across the lavatory bowl! On leaving to raise the alarm, the lad is intercepted by a tall, cadaverous figure, Forbes Carleton, the architect who designed and built the Odeon, carrying a dripping carpet bag. Carleton insists Jack take a look inside and "know the hell of love!"
What lies within is left to our collective imagination, but it's enough to set young McGruger screaming.

Cut to the present day. Jack MacGruger now runs the Odeon, though it is but a rat-infested tragedy of its former self. The Mayor is all for tearing it down to build a mini-mall and Jack, who has received a lucrative bid for the property, is on the verge of conceding defeat and selling up. There's no way a traditional theatre can complete with these new-fangled multiplex abominations. Jack's staff currently runs to Roy, his alcoholic brother as projectionist, and a crippled hunchback, Carl Irving as janitor. Carl despises Odeon, regularly smears food waste on the seats to encourage yet more vermin.

Meanwhile in LA, Karen Webster, 33, is impatiently auditioning Bela Lugosi clones to appear in a soap commercial. This afternoon's appointment at the adoption agency is the most important of her life. Karen ruined her lower body by performing an impromptu abortion at seventeen when she was raped in a cinema over Wallensberg way. She has set her heart on becoming a single parent. Will the powers that be overlook her troubled mental history? More to the point, has a burglar made off with, then returned, her plastic kitchen utensils or is she losing her mind again?

Paul Chesney makes an emergency dash to the hospital to be with his son, Kenny, who has suffered another violent schizophrenic episode. Since his divorce from Rita, now remarried, Paul has enrolled with Alcoholics Anonymous, written a book on the films of Roger Corman, and opened a video store in Silver Lake. It breaks his heart that by court ruling, he only has access to his son for one measly day in fourteen. Rita is mystified that recently miscellaneous fairly insignificant items have gone missing around the house. "Stuff from the kitchen. A mixing spoon, a fork, a ladle."

What can it all mean. And why has Billy Burnside, a.k.a that "creepy f**k*r," (© Sherif Bradley) taken to digging weird holes along North Post Road at all hours?

To be continued.

[dem bones]

It's coming back to me now Amy Bradley, the sheriff's seventeen year old daughter, has appeared on the scene. Amy's been going steady with moody Mike Barnes, who is getting mighty frustrated that they ain't "done it" yet. Tonight Mike's treating them to the Kung Fu triple-bill at the Odeon, after which he's gonna give her one in the Men's room once Old Man MacGruger's locked up. Amy doesn't fancy any of this, and to make matters worse, there's that cretin Billy Burnside in the cinema queue with the inevitable paper bag full of dead animal or whatever. The creep is a huge fan of Willard, which figures.

Karen is delivering an address to mark her promotion when something clutches her leg from within the lectern. A hideous, multi-tendril monstrosity waves the new dress she'd intended to wear tonight before it was stolen from her wardrobe. The thing is identical to the creature in the movie screening back home the night she was raped. It is all too much. She screams, carries on, passes out - and blows her chances with the adoption agency. Suspended on sick leave and with no prospect of motherhood, there is nothing to keep her in LA. Karen heads home for Wallenberg to try find out whatever happened to her lost love, "the boy with green eyes?

On Kenny's release from hospital, Paul takes him to the movies to see The Tingler, after which, back to the room above the video shop where the kid can watch the movie of his choice. Much to his father's dismay, Kenny selects a video of Night of the Blood Beast, a film for which Paul has a dead loathing after what happened that terrible night at Odeon. Kenny takes it up with him to bed and slots it in the VCR. Something terrible happens again. The Beast emerges out of the screen, which explodes showering the child in slivers of glass .. ...

Mike persuades Amy into the Men's room and out of her blouse, but that's as good as he's going to get. Rats swarm from the toilet bowl and drag him to the floor. Amy, spared their attention, batters on the locked door for help. Carl ushers her to safety. The grisly remains of what once was Mike are way beyond anyone's assistance.

TBC

[dem bones]

THEETUR EVILL. THHEETUR WANTS TO KILL YOUR BABEE!!

Roy the projectionist, aka Emma Burnside's fancy man, resolves to burn down Odeon for the insurance pay out. Dragging two cans of Kerosene through Wall Park, he's confronted by Laurel & Hardy who "accidentally" douse the poor wretch in petrol and set him ablaze.

Karen, now back in Wallenberg calls in at the surgery. Dr. Matheus is clearly displeased to see her and insists her medical records were lost. The receptionist assures her otherwise. Why should he lie? She has no better luck with her once friend, Sheriff Bradley who, fiercely protective of his daughter, insists she leave Amy alone.

The Mayor invites prominent locals to debate Jack McGruger's petition for the reopening of the theatre to allow a final performance. Bradley is vehemently opposed, what with Mike's gnawed bones barely cold in the grave. He's outvoted.

The prodigal returns to Odeon to confront her demons. Karen is especially determined to discover what happened to her first love, "the boy with green eyes," once she left town following the abortion. It is the most harrowing experience. The toilet cubicle is haunted by her dead - or is it? - child. Meanwhile a phantom projectionist screens a maliciously skewed re-enactment of her assault casting her "green eyes" - Carl Irving - as the rapist. A crazed Karen collapses into the arms of Paul Chesney who has likewise been lured back to the condemned theatre. As is Billy Burnside, enticed inside on the promise of a private screening. As he stuffs his face with popcorn, the town cretin bursts open, birthing something resembling a blonde seventeen year old Adonis which calls itself 'The Kid.'

Carl goes into hiding, unable to face a reunion with the woman he loved. We now learn from Paul that the janitor sustained brain and spinal injuries in a suicide bid, throwing himself from a balcony at Odeon. He couldn't get over the break up letter Karen sent him. "What letter? I didn't send Carl a letter." Karen's mother has much to answer for.

As requested, Karen's lapdog, Tyler Briggs, acquires a videotape of Night of the Blood Beast and drives from LA to Wallenberg to deliver it in person. "Of course she loves me. She just doesn't know it yet." Tyler stops for a hitcher - the Adonis - who introduces him to a horror movie icon of legendary status. Leatherface fillets Tyler with his trusty chainsaw.

Carl leaves Karen a misspelt warning and a folder full of cuttings at the hotel reception desk, and at last we have some inkling of what's going on. One sheet, torn from a book on the occult, includes details of alleged Black Magic ceremonies involving child and animal sacrifice as conducted by Forbes Carleton prior to opening Odeon. Could it be he intends the old place to go out with a Hell of a bang?

TBC.