Horror Show (2 page)

The answer came back disappointingly fast, “I don't do interviews.”

“I understand that, sir. The press hasn't exactly been kind to you over the years. I can relate to your attitude.”

Landis cleared his throat. Clint got the distinct feeling he was loading up for another loogie. “Speak English, punk!”

“I have a check for five hundred dollars here in my pocket. That's what my publication is willing to offer you for a three-hour interview.”

Silence.

He must be considering the offer
, thought Clint.
I'm home free
.

“You're not a cop?”

“No, sir.”

“IRS? Process server?”

“No, sir.”

More coughing. Clint saw a blue plume of dense cigar smoke billow and rise above him. A match fluttered in the wind.

Clint waited. He was prepared to wait all day. He'd been pursuing this story for too long to give up now. At least, now, his offer was on the table.

“Not enough,” came the brusque reply.

What? Where was this old shit coming from? Five hundred dollars was damn good money, nearly twice the going rate for this type of thing.

“All right, six hundred, that's as high as I can go. I'll put in the extra hundred from my own money.”

Clint hated to use his own meager resources, but a story was a story, and he'd already invested too much time in this one.

“My editor, Ms. Bachman, wants this story, sir, and I'm prepared to—”

“Wait a second. Roberta Bachman?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Roberta Louise Bachman from Melrose Avenue?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, I'll be damned.”

“You know her?” Clint smiled, squinting up at the old man, trying to be pleasant.

“Yeah, I knew her many years ago, 1957 or '58. She sent you over here to interview me?”

Clint was perplexed. Why hadn't she mentioned that when she approved the story? “Yes, sir,” he replied. “Then you'll do the interview?” he added hopefully.

“I didn't say that,” Woodley snapped.

“I wish you'd reconsider. There are lots of your fans out there who would love to hear what you have to say.”

The old man snorted. “Right. What are you smokin', kid? Nobody gives a fuck about me. I haven't made a film in over thirty years.”

“Nevertheless, there are people who remember.”

The old man spit again, this time in another direction, away from Clint. “Just how the hell do you expect to interview people by sneaking around their houses? You're a prowler, for Christ sake. You coulda got your head blown off! I should call the cops.”

“Sir, with all due respect, I've sent several letters outlining my proposal.”

The old man coughed again; more smoke billowed. Clint's neck began to hurt. He'd been staring straight up at Woodley, getting an unpleasant, distorted view of the jowly, downturned mouth and oversize nose. From where Clint stood, Woodley appeared to be all nasal hairs and eyebrows.

It was not a position from which he liked to negotiate. However, a level playing field was not a Landis Woodley characteristic. Clint got the distinct feeling that he'd been manipulated since he'd knocked on the front door.

He craned his neck back up and saw a glass of amber fluid in the old man's hand. Drinking? Before noon? Yeah, that fit the profile.

Woodley hadn't responded to Clint's comment about the letters. He seemed to be looking off into the sulfurous distance, deep in thought.

“She'd be about, what, fifty-five, sixty years old now?”

“Huh?”

“Still pretty? Still a redhead?”

Clint realized that Woodley was talking about his boss. That surprised him. He'd never thought of her as anything but an unyielding authority figure. With the vast age difference between them, he'd never been objective enough to wonder if she'd ever been considered attractive.

“Yeah, still red.”

“She's your boss?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You poor son of a bitch. I'll bet she's tough as nails.”

“You got that right.”

Landis Woodley, unconcerned about the passage of time, let some more of it pass. Clint noticed that the old man didn't seem to care about “flow” and “dialogue” when he spoke. He probably liked those big chunks of silence in his conversations, Clint realized. It put people off.

While he waited for Woodley to speak, Clint wondered if the old man had had the hots for Bachman back in the fifties. It presented one hell of a mental picture, and he stifled a laugh.

“Cash,” the old man said.

“Excuse me?”

“It's got to be cash.”

“I have a check from my magazine,” Clint stammered.

“No checks, cash.” Woodley was as blunt as an old sword. He had a marvelous voice, and he used it to great advantage. Clint, with his community college degree in journalism and two years on the job, was no match.

He thought about it. The old man gave him all the time he needed.

“Yeah, I can do cash, if you insist, but I'd rather not.”

Shit
, Clint thought.
I'll have to go down to the ATM for my hundred, back to the office, then over to the publication's bank to cash their check
. He glanced at his watch.
With traffic it's a couple of hours. Damn. Half the day wasted, then I have to drive all the way back here
.

Woodley spit again. “Well, I'd rather not waste my time talkin' to you.”

Clint watched the gob sail past him. “Okay, I'll get the cash.”

“Go get it now. I'll be here.”

“But—”

“Take it or leave it.”

“I'll take it.”

The old man went back inside. Clint heard the door close.

“Thanks a lot, you old turd.”

Clint Stockbern had grown
up with monsters and parlayed his knowledge of all things creepy into a job writing for his favorite publication,
Monster Magazine
.

As a youth, he'd built plastic models of the Wolf Man, Frankenstein, and Dracula. The walls of his room were adorned with lurid movie posters and lobby cards, the stranger the better. Creatures carrying half-clad women were his specialty.

A robot holding a woman in a skintight space suit, a werewolf carrying a blond bombshell back into the swamp, a look of utter depravity on his face—these were the things Clint cherished. The inference was always the same. These monsters were going to
do it
with the women.

Those horrible claws were going to caress her breasts, those fangs were going to … It didn't matter. He loved the come-on, the promise of mystery. The movies were never as good as the posters, of course. Usually the scene depicted never occurred in the film. His imagination always created a better story than the one up on the screen, anyway.

In the end he was usually disappointed.

He graduated from posters to other, more advanced items of memorabilia. At a shop in Burbank he bought props, old scripts, and pictures of his favorites.

He studied journalism in junior college and took his share of film courses. His beloved creatures were never far behind. When he applied to
Monster Magazine
, he had no idea that he'd be hired just six weeks later, and sent out on one great assignment after another. He'd done profiles on all his favorite filmmakers: Tod Browning, Ray Harryhausen, William Castle, Roger Corman, and more.

The enthusiasm of writers like Clint kept the magazine afloat.

The Landis Woodley story was Clint's idea. Roberta gave him her blessing and sent him on his way. She never said anything about having actually known the old man.

Later that day Clint
stood at the front door of Woodley's house. This time his response came much quicker. Once again the view window opened, once again the bloodshot eyes.

“Yeah?” the old man growled.

He's not making this easy
, Clint thought.
He can't have forgotten already, it's only been a few hours
.

“It's me, sir, Clint Stockbern.”

“What do you want?”

“I've got the money.”

“Let me see it.”

Clint held up the packet of cash to the view plate. “Six hundred dollars.”

The view plate slammed shut, the locks began to turn, and a half minute later the big door groaned open. Clint got the feeling that the old arch-topped entry hated to be used. It shrieked and moaned with an almost-human quality.

Landis stood in the doorway, a smaller man than Clint had expected, but every bit as feisty and unpleasant.

“Give it.” Clint passed him the packet. Woodley shoved it in a pocket without comment. Clint watched and waited, his reporter's senses taking in everything.

Woodley clutched a spit-soaked cigar and a cheap ballpoint pen, giving each equal physical attention.
What is he writing
, Clint wondered.
A new screenplay
? The afternoon came alive with possibilities.

The old man wore a maroon fifties-style, racetrack flash sport shirt and a pair of wrinkled gray pants. Everything he wore was shiny and threadbare, just like most of the upholstered furniture in the house.

The frown never left his aged, television face. Lines, almost too many for one lifetime, crisscrossed that landscape in angry vectors. He'd combed what little hair he had left from the sides of his head across the top, giving it a thin, greasy blanket of yellowish-white thatch. It seemed an ill-advised hairstyle for Landis, one that only made him appear even more cheap and depraved. His eyes were deep-set in his pale face, ruthlessly scanning for carrion, two red wet spots in a gaunt mask.

He stepped aside and drew his arm across his chest, “Come in, kid,” he mumbled.

Clint followed him into another world. As Woodley shuffled a few paces ahead of Clint, the young man could see that Woodley was wearing battered bedroom slippers instead of shoes.

Once inside, the first thing Clint noticed was the smell.

An oppressive atmosphere of mustiness and decay permeated the high-ceilinged rooms. Air had been denied circulation here for a long time. Clint had been in old people's houses before, and they all had that peculiar, closed-in odor. His grandmother's house smelled like that, except that hers had the subtle bouquet of mothballs in addition to the dusty stillness. Here, in Woodley's horror hotel, the mothballs had been replaced by the sour scent of cheap cigars and rotgut whiskey. And something else, too, something unclean and animal, a fetid, corporeal stench. Clint guessed the place hadn't been cleaned in years.

The interior of Woodley's house resembled a Gothic rummage sale furnished primarily from film sets: oversize wooden chairs, a standing suit of armor, a Styrofoam coat of arms, some faded plastic plants. Like the movies he'd made, the mansion was a low-budget, fright night turkey, the second feature at a drive-in in some dismal town where there was nothing better to do on Saturday night.

It reminded Clint of the old man's cinematic visions, and his own earliest memories.

He had learned something about himself watching that twisted crap, something that would stay with him for the rest of his life. He discovered that he loved to be scared.

“Isn't that the Iron Lady from
I Married a Vampire
?” Clint asked. Fake blood, now the color of dried chocolate, flowed down the side of it in gaudy patterns.

“Yeah, I used it in
Attack of the Haunted Saucer
, too,” Landis said through phlegm-clogged vocal cords. Clint could hear the old man wheeze. He sounded like he had emphysema. “Buzzy Haller built it. We loved it so much we tried to use it in every damn picture. The thing photographed great. It's made of plywood and polyurethane foam.”

“
Attack of the Haunted Saucer
is one of my all-time favorites,” Clint said.

“Yeah,” Landis coughed. “A real piece of work. Did you read what
The New Yorker
said? They called it the worst movie of all time, can you imagine that?”

“Yeah, I've heard it called that, but I don't see it that way. I recently saw it at a festival of fifties horror films, and the audience loved it.”

Landis rummaged through some papers and ignored him. He picked up a clipping and read, “Woodley's trashy production is a depressing, hopelessly conducted farce. The acting, sets, plot, camera work, and laughable special effects all bear his indelible stamp of ugly cheapness. He makes Ed Wood look like Kurosawa. A big fat piece of crap!” He looked up at Clint and scowled. “Worst movie of all time? Fuck them. What do they know?”

Clint was about to answer when Woodley continued.

“What these guys don't realize is that
Attack of the Haunted Saucer
was a quickie. I don't argue that, but I defy anybody to make a feature-length movie for five thousand dollars in three days and have it show a profit. Even in 1956, which was a great year for low budgets, that was a record.”

Landis's rage kept like bottled steam. Clint knew it was a ponderous cross for the retired filmmaker to bear, and he decided to keep the interview light … until the end.

They sat facing each other on an ancient sofa that belched and farted when Clint eased his slim frame into it. The old man collapsed into a battered, vinyl Universal-Lounger. A half-full bottle of generic whiskey dominated the tiny end table next to him. Woodley made no attempt to hide the fact that he enjoyed drinking the world's cheapest booze in the middle of the afternoon.

“Want some?” he wheezed.

Clint shook his head.

“I guess you want to hear about
Saucer
, the so-called worst movie of all time,” Landis blurted out to Clint's surprise.

“Yeah, among other things. How do you feel about that?” Clint asked, getting his notebook out and depressing the “RECORD” button on his cassette machine.

“Well, you gotta understand, making movies was different in those days.”

A flutter of wings and a high-pitched shriek interrupted Woodley and drove Clint from his chair in a burst of panic.