“Why’s that?” Brad asked, turning back from airing out the fumes.
“Studio burned down before they finished it. Bronstein was in it. Supposedly an accident, but who knows?”
“Oh, yeah. There’s always a story with those Hollywood types,” Brad said.
“Right? I mean, the official report is that the studio office burned down and took the film with it. But then I read that working on the film unhinged Bronstein. Probably a lot of late hours for shitty pay and sniffing too much of the splicing glue they used to use. He started raving about the film, about how it was evil and should never be released.”
“Oh, man, cool,” Brad said. “Wonder what it was about?”
“Lots of people would love to know. Mind if I take a peek?” Carlos said, pointing to the film.
Brad nodded. “Go for it, man.”
He picked up the film can again and gently removed the reel of film stock within. The outermost film was white double-perforated Kodak leader. The same sort of leader stock Carlos had spooled up a thousand times in his career. He picked at the yellowing paper tape holding it down. It came up easily, the glue long since dried up to flakes. The white leader strip slid free and slowly he unrolled the first few feet of the film. Then he stopped. Scrawled on the thin white plastic were three words written in grease pencil: DON: WP—R1.
Carlos looked over at Brad whose back was to him. Brad was opening the rest of the windows, trying to get a cross-breeze going. Quickly Carlos spun the reel around, rolling the leader strip back onto it, and placing it back in the film can. He looked at the boxes of magnetic tape, and saw them labeled “DON1,” and “DON2.” Holy shit, he thought.
Brad walked back over to him. “You think any of this is worth anything?”
Carlos’ heart was beating hard in his chest. This could be worth a fortune, he was thinking, but what came out was, “Maybe a couple hundred bucks for the projector. The scripts aren’t anything special but might interest a collector.”
Brad nodded. “What about the film?”
Carlos paused. “Well, from the smell I can tell you it’s probably ruined. I’d have to have an expert check it out, though. Restoration’s really not my field.”
“Oh, yeah, okay,” Brad said, downcast. “So, do you want to buy any of this?”
Carlos breathed deep and slowly, pretending to think, but trying to calm his enthusiasm. “Yeah, I guess,” he said. “Tell you what. I’ll give you a hundred for it now, or we can split the fee if I can find anyone interested in any of it.”
“Only a hundred?” Brad said, disappointment obvious in his tone. He was looking at the projector. “I looked online and the projector’s worth a hundred fifty alone.”
“It could be,” Carlos said. “If you’re sure the motor’s working right, find a new bulb, clean it up a little.” He waved his hand over the rest of the collection. “This stuff? I have no idea if anyone would want it at all.” He watched Brad who was staring at the boxes. He could tell Brad was doing the mental math to see if half of maybe a hundred and fifty plus half of maybe nothing and not seeing any of that for a long time was worth more than a hundred bucks right now.
“Yeah, okay. Deal,” Brad said, and stuck out his hand again to shake on it.
“Okay,” Carlos replied and shook Brad’s hand. “I’ll probably end up tossing the film, but who knows?” He pulled his hand away, got out his wallet and handed over five rumpled twenty-dollar bills.
Fifteen minutes later he had tossed the projector in the trunk of his car along with the box of film scripts and photos. The film cans however, he kept in a box on the seat next to him where he could see them. No way was he letting those out of his sight.
Carlos blew through several stop signs on his way home. He had a few hours before he had to get to the theater for the evening shows. Carlos had lied to get out of Brad’s grungy apartment and didn’t have to work until later in the afternoon. Excitement was burbling in him to get that reel onto his own home projector and see what it was. Checking the film in the cans he’d found they seemed connected. The first reel’s leader was marked DON: WP—R1, and the second’s DON: WP—R2. Checking out the condition of the film he saw many bumps and ridges along the edge of the reel, the tell-tale signs of cement splices. From this he logically surmised the WP on the leader stood for “Work Print,” and “Reel 1 & 2” if his luck held out. Not a final release print, but the version of the film Bronstein was working on before the studio would send it to the negative cutter.
Years ago, Carlos had installed a pull-down screen on the ceiling over one wall of his living room. He didn’t own a TV, preferring to watch films projected on the screen via a digital projector from his laptop. Friends had long given up teasing him about being the consummate film snob, because he relished the label. He had covered the windows with blackout cloth and set his own little Victor-Kalart 16mm projector on a stand in the center of the room where his digital equipment normally roosted. If this was the film he thought it was, he would watch it in private. He was bursting with excitement that he’d be the first person to watch the film in maybe 60 years. Possibly the only other person to have ever seen it aside from George Bronstein. He’d worry about the restoration later. The vinegar smell was powerful, but he’d started to get used to it. Letting the can air out a bit seemed to have helped.
Carlos threaded the plastic leader through the aqua blue 16mm projector’s gate, wrapped it around the spindles inside, and closed off the covering door. He’d bought the projector years ago when the local elementary schools were getting rid of their antiquated multimedia equipment. It was the same kind he remembered from his own youth, watching strange science films in class, and then begging the teacher to play them backwards as the reel spun out. He rarely ever used it, owning 16mm prints of only a handful of movies. The projector was a single-system job, unable to handle the magnetic tape sound reels, so he’d have to figure out a way to listen to them later. But he could at least watch the film.
Finally, he thumbed the remote in his palm to lower the lights, and flicked on the projector. White light suffused the screen, the projector clattered to life, rattled for a moment, then subdued to a mechanical purr. Countdown numbers did their job. 5 … 4 … 3 … then 2 where Carlos imagined a phantom sync-beep.
And then on the screen a pink-tinged gothic castle, all spires and crenellations stood atop a ruddy hill, and faded pink dripping bold letters proclaimed, “The Dead of Night.”
“Holy shit,” Carlos whispered.
The film was definitely old stock. The print had lost all of its greens and blues, becoming a wash of red details and pinkish landscapes. The warmth of the projector bulb made the vinegar smell stronger. He watched enraptured for the next hour as the film unfolded. Without the soundtrack he couldn’t make out the exact details, but the story was fairly straightforward as near as he could tell.
The inhabitants of the castle were a pair of aristocratic-looking siblings or spouses; a man and a woman who seemed to hold some disdain for each other, so it could go either way. They were clearly evil, as the stark make-up, and occult imagery in their costumes and the decor of their abode showed. Silver thread stitched into their robes described runes and arcane symbols. Pentagrams woven into tapestries hung from the walls, and human and wolfish skulls with dripping, smoking candles affixed to them illuminated the stone corridors of their strange abode. The pair looked down from their balcony overseeing the valley below where distant torches marched toward them. Soon a torch-wielding mob breached the castle’s interior and put fire to it. It went up in a blaze, as the strange pair of inhabitants retreated to an underground lair via a clichéd secret door.
It transfixed Carlos. He sank into the sofa cushions, never taking his eyes off the screen. For the next hour he watched as time shifted a hundred years past the burning of the castle. A new owner bought the edifice, and had it moved brick by brick, all the furniture and trappings, to the United States, somewhere outside of New Orleans. Workme
n went missing, and the neighboring family grew frightened. The new owner was too focused on his business to heed the concerns of the workers. The neighboring mother tried to warn him that something was wrong, but he ignored her. The man became obsessed over the slightest detail of construction but seemed to take a special interest in the two large, long boxes which he kept in the basement.
Carlos smiled when he saw the two coffin-like shapes. He could see where this was all going and enjoyed it immensely. He didn’t recognize any of the actors, but with a little research he knew it wouldn’t be hard to figure out who most of the players were.
The neighbor children went missing one night, lured away by a pair of shadowy figures in the woods surrounding their bayou home. Their mother was distraught, shaking her finger in blame at the owner of the castle. The police dragged her away while the abode’s new owner shook his head and walked back into the castle, uninterested in her pleas.
Then the screen went white, and a rhythmic slapping behind him alerted him to the fact that the first reel had run out. Carlos rose to turn off the projector’s motor and load up the second reel. As he did so, a pain stung his hand and he recoiled from the projector. A line of blood welled up along the back of his hand, where the film’s end leader had spun around and slapped him, slicing a shallow wound.
He shut off the projector entirely, then raised the lights in the living room. Carlos went into the bathroom and gently washed his hands in the tap. He rinsed the wound with lukewarm water and shook it to get most of the moisture off. Opening the medicine chest behind the bathroom mirror, he got out some antiseptic ointment and a box of plastic bandages. When he used his injured hand to open the tube of ointment, he saw that the wound wasn’t as bad as he’d originally thought. It was only a scratch, really. A pink weal, just an inflammation, no blood. He caught a whiff of vinegar coming from the scratch and thought that it must have rubbed off on him from the film. He washed it again with soap and water and returned to the living room.
As Carlos began threading the second reel onto the projector, he yawned. A deep, stretching yawn. His eyes were dry, and he was feeling tired. He must not have gotten enough sleep last night. Got up too early to go visit Brad and collect these treasures. He decided to watch the second reel and then take a nap before work.
The second reel picked up with the children’s mother distraught, in jail. The police offered no succor as she took her place on the cot in the cold stone cell and went to sleep. But then she began acting strangely. Leaning up and craning her head around as if listening to distant sounds or voices. She removed a cloth belt from around her waist, placed it around her neck, tied one end to a cell bar and slid limp against it, choking herself to death.
Pretty dark for a ’50s movie, Carlos thought. The story continued through the ruby haze of the decaying film print. The strange couple returned and led a dark ritual of Satanic splendor in the swamp beyond the castle. The dead rose from their graves and rampaged across the countryside. In time, they assaulted the castle itself, taking the new owner prisoner and dragging him off into the swamp. In the end, the awful pair reclaimed their home, and the dead sank back into the boggy earth. A final lingering shot of the bayou, fog drifting along the swamp, breezing between banyan trees as the lurching dead shambled into darkness. Then from out of frame the ex-new owner of the castle lurched into view, dead white eyes and ghastly pale skin. He shuffled along, and the film faded to darkness as he receded into the swamp.
Carlos’s eyes were tired and heavy, his limbs sluggish. Looking at his watch, he found he still had a few hours before work. He reached over to the projector and flicked the switch to turn it off. The room went dark immediately, only a thin trace of ghostly blue light peeking around the edges of the blackout curtains covering the windows.
I’ll take a nap, he thought. Head in after that. Pick up some coffee on the way in, too.
Carlos was too tired to get up and shuffle off to his bedroom. He turned over into the back of the sofa, drifting asleep instantly.
Later that evening, Carlos dragged himself in to the Coronet. The Saturday Night Feature was a repeat performance of Dead on Arrival, and the same could be said for him. Mary Barnes who ran the concession stand called out to him as he was climbing the stairs to the projection booth, “Feeling okay, Carlos? You look a little pale.”
Carlos stopped and turned to her. He felt sluggish, dazed. “Yeah,” he said, blinking. “Just tired is all. Didn’t get enough sleep last night.”
Mary nodded and then poured a measure of corn kernels into the popcorn machine. “I’ll run you up a Coke in a few,” she said. “Little sugar and caffeine will help you right out. Better get to steppin’, though,” she said, waving him off. “Showtime’s in an hour.”
Carlos smiled and waved to her. “Thanks, Mary. Appreciate it.” He turned back to the stairway.
“Hey,” Mary said as he turned away. “You smell something funny?”
He climbed the stairs, ignoring her and the art deco movie palace decoration that used to impress him so. He crossed a small lobby and went into the upstairs men’s room to splash some water on his face. When he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, he noticed that he was looking a little pale. As he rubbed a wet paper towel over his face, he also noticed that his shirt was faded. The normal vibrant crimson was a dull, rusty red. It looked washed out, faded. He looked down and noticed the same about his jeans. “Weird,” he said to no one. Must’ve over-bleached them last time I did laundry, he thought.
He tossed the wet paper towel into the trash bin, left the bathroom and crossed to the projection booth door. There was another flight of stairs behind that and Carlos groaned when he saw it. By the time he’d reached the top, his legs were tired and achy, his hands weak from holding the railing. He turned on the overhead light and then collapsed into one of the worn-out office chairs in the little room.
“Okay,” he said to the empty room. “Just one show and I can go home.”
Carlos came home with all the intentions in the world just to go to bed. But after he kicked off his shoes and sorted through the mail, he began to wonder if maybe watching the film one more time wouldn’t be a bad idea. Soon he would have to look into finding a film restoration facility, and then he wouldn’t be the only person on Earth who’d seen it in living memory. Besides, something about the film just intrigued him. Maybe it was the thrill of knowing he’d discovered something unimaginable. Or just plain old human greed of wanting to keep this treasure for himself.
Either way, he threw a frozen pizza in the oven, grabbed two cold bottles of beer, and sat down to watch the film again. He dimmed the lights but didn’t bother closing the curtains this time. It was dark enough outside that no ambient light would disrupt the image. He cracked the windows a little to get some fresh air in the apartment as the vinegar smell had returned. He’d been smelling it all evening, actually. A few of his coworkers at the Coronet had even commented on it. Carlos assumed that the smell of the decaying film stock must’ve gotten in his clothes while he was watching the film or handling the boxes.
He set both reels to rewind on the projector while his pizza warmed up. By the time the oven was beeping for his attention, the film was ready to go. After replacing the first reel he wasted no time in turning it on. The projector hummed to life and it filled the screen against the far wall with light.
Carlos had a mouthful of pizza and was swigging from a cold bottle of pilsner when the titles came up. “The Dead of Night” in dripping blood-red letters against a cobalt blue sky, and a ghostly green castle on a hill. Funny, he remembered the colors being completely washed out, faded and pink when he watched it earlier. There must’ve been more light coming through the cracks in the curtains than he remembered.
This is great, he thought. Doesn’t need nearly as much restoration as I thought. The film churned along just as he’d remembered, but the colors were much more vibrant, closer to the dreamlike glow of vintage Technicolor. As he watched, his eyes
drooped, and he thought he couldn’t remember ever having seen a 16mm film this old with color this good. The splices were a hassle, but a competent post production lab could deal with those in making a release print. This was about the best print possible short of miraculously stumbling across the original negative somewhere.
The weird couple lurked about the castle again. The villagers burned it down, and the workmen transported it to Louisiana. Everything progressed the way it had earlier, and Carlos decided that this was a film that was worth preserving. A little cleanup, and get the soundtrack married to it, and he could have the world premier at the Coronet in a month or two.
The dead rose, the swamp burbled, and the story marched to its inevitable conclusion. Carlos’ head was lolling on his neck and he felt a headache simmering behind his eyes. He could barely keep his eyes open he was so tired. He reached for the beer on the floor by his foot and raised his hand to drink as the castle’s new owner walked in from out of the frame.
Light shone through his hand. His skin was glass, translucent, shimmering in the light of the movie screen. He dropped the bottle in his lap, looked down and saw that his clothes and legs were vanishing. On-screen, the dead owner of the castle turned away from the swamp, and walked toward the camera. Then the strange original owners of the castle joined him, slinking in from off-screen. Their dark robes embroidered in shimmering, strangely shifting occult sigils. The ghastly trio’s eyes glowed with dead, pale light. Like the glow of alien stars seen from a distant world.
They turned and walked toward the camera. Carlos tried to scream but no sound came. He tried to rise, but his muscles betrayed him. The three came closer, hands outstretched, eyes glowing, pulsing rhythmically. In unison they opened their mouths and took deep breaths. Every time they sucked in, Carlos felt a wave of fatigue, like whatever life remained in him was being drawn away. Streamers of color drew forth from Carlos and floated toward the sinister trio on screen like shimmering ribbons of light.
Monsters, Movies & Mayhem Page 25