Ken Johnson - Blue Sunshine

[dem bones]

Ken Johnson - Blue Sunshine (Sphere, 1977)

Blurb:
PSYCHOSIS...

It started off as a great party - just eight of them in a ski-lodge in upstate New York. But then the last guest, Frannie, arrived. There was something wrong with Frannie's hair. And something very wrong with his eyes. And what he did to three of the girls was too hideous for description....
That was just the start. After that, things began to happen all over New York - ugly things: psychosis, insanity, murder - and no one could find an explanation. The police were helpless - because they didn't know that behind all the grisly happenings lay a single, uncontrollable horror. A horror called
BLUE SUNSHINE...

Based on an original screenplay by Jeff Lieberman

Begins in a ward of Manhattan's Metropolitan Hospital. |Dr. David Blume, 30, a favourite with female patients of a certain age on account of his good looks and kindly manner, is perturbed that he is losing his hair at an alarming rate.

Wendy, 29, recently divorced from Senator Edward "that bullshitting bastard" Flemming - a strong Presidential candidate - is babysitting the Andretti children. Wendy loses a clump of hair playing Rapunzel to little Jason. "Jesus, she thought. I'm going bald."

Cop John O'Mally has taken to beating his wife since, well, his hair went weird.

Nine young people enjoy a country ski cottage on the slopes of Hillsdale, Upstate New York. Someone inadvertently removes Frannie Scott's hair-piece during his rendition of My Way, whereupon he flees into the snow storm. Once the guys have set out in search, he doubles back to the hut and slaughters three of the girls. Jerry Zipkin, saxophonist and college lecturer, returns to find the charred remains piled in the fireplace. The mad-eyed malevolent zombie that once was Frannie chases him back outside with a knife. Jerry fortuitously escapes slaughter by pushing the maniac before an oncoming truck. Ralphie the driver and buddy yell after Jerry, who ignores them, his mind of finding girlfriend, Alicia. Pray God she's still alive!

Redneck Ralphie follows Jerry to the cottage, creeps in, pistol drawn, to find him sobbing before the blackened corpses. "Don't you move, you sick m*th*rf**k*r ...Pete! Get some cops down here fast!" Aghast at his predicament, Jerry makes a break for it, taking two bullets in the shoulder as he pulls away in the jeep.

A fugitive from the law, Jerry calls an old friend at the Metropolitan, Dr. David Blume, to cleanse the wounded arm. They've not met in a few years. David looks great - or he would do, were he not afflicted by a bad case of Alopecia or something ...

John O'Malley is dead by his own hand. He shot himself having first killed the wife, two kids, the next door neighbour, and the next door neighbour's dogs. Jerry reads all about it in the The National Enquirer.

Wendy Flemming has Mrs. Andretti cut her hair short, though this has zero impact on her blinding headaches .....

What's happening, man?

To be continued ...

[dem bones]

Working on a tip from a dead man's macaw (will leave you to find out), Jerry Zipkin breaks into Frannie's studio. If he can only find a link between the psycho baldies ... He studies a photo of New Yorkers playing at San Francisco psychedelic freak outs, the Greenwich Village trendies encapsulating "a nightmarish world of decadent, over-fed, overpaid, bored drug generation." Among their number, a freaky bare-chested guy:

"His face was deathly pale as if he'd never seen the sun, almost like an albino, or a haemophiliac .... His eyes were staring staring like a madman, his face distorted, mouth opened wide as if he were screaming in the midst of some bad acid trip, trying to scare off the demons of his own drug-induced private hell.

There was a small printed caption at the base of the photograph. Jerry leaned forward to read it. It said.

BLUE SUNSHINE"

The fugitive recognises the acid freak as congressional candidate, Edward Flemming.

Zipkin calls Flemming on the eve of his epic Shopping World Mall rally, informs him of Frannie's death. The politician makes all the right sympathetic noises — until the dishevelled intruder mentions Blue Sunshine. Flemming comes over "I don't know what you're talking about!" angry, and asks Zippy to leave. Fine thing it would do his chances if the electorate were to learn of his Syracuse campus dealer past!

Wendy is babysitting the Andretti children again. With a meat carver.

Flemming's Mr. Fixit, Wayne Mulligan, another Syracuse Class of 1967 man, is suffering the most appalling headaches under that scary wig.

Otherwise, all eyes on the mall for the favoured candidate's make-or-break speech.

Not seen the film, can only hope it's as much macabre fun as this novelisation. Ken Johnson, the Zoltan: Hound of Dracula man, keeps it slick - everything done and dusted in under 140 pages. Portentous "we've only accounted for four of the hundred bad acid tabs" leaves things open for a sequel. Pop cult references include Barry White, the Beatles, Blue Cheer, Playgirl, The National Enquirer, Cosmopolitan, Sesame Street, Barbara Streisand, The Way We Were, My Way (as prelude to Psychotic episodes), and wearing flares. Lots of people wearing flares.

[Middoth]

I love this movie.

and perhaps you are the company I would watch it with.

[sadako]

I’d buy this if it wasn’t for the silly cover, a photo that isn’t from the movie.