by Greg Kihn
He walked slowly to the car, in character, high as a kite.
Landis Woodley’s house was lit up like a nightclub. Cars lined the street in front on both sides. Neighbors complained bitterly to the police, but nothing came of it. This, after all, was Hollywood on Halloween, a town and a holiday made for each other. People in costumes paraded past the gawkers. There were dozens of Draculas and Frankensteins, handfuls of mummies, and a small army of sexy witches.
The guest list included over a hundred names, many from the horror film business. The stars were Jonathon Luboff and Devila.
Landis stood by the front door and welcomed people by filming their arrival on 16 mm film. When Devila and Albert Beaumond drove up in their hearse, the flashbulbs popped.
Once inside, Devila played the room like the pro that she was, posing and vamping for the cameras. Most people didn’t know or recognize Albert. Devila herself knew that the delayed reaction to that would be worth its weight in gold. Wait until the world put two and two together! The Satanist and the horror show girl!
Luboff’s entrance came off a bit less splashy but every ounce as electric. The limo wheeled up to the house and ejected the fragile actor and his young cohort. Their arranged “dates” trailed behind. People rushed to greet them and get a closer glimpse at how bad Luboff looked. He drove them off with his eyes. One level stare, and they were repelled back into the faceless crowd.
Landis and Jonathon embraced, cigars puffing, and exchanged pleasantries. Woodley was pleased to see that the old man had controlled his dose to manageable proportions. Tad Kingston stood by impassively. His hair, of course, was perfect.
Landis had hired photographers to photograph the celebrities, knowing that some of the pictures would run in various newspapers and magazines and thereby promote his movies. In this way he could not only control the dissemination of information, but he would own the photos. Landis Woodley loved publicity.
Plus, he had a few surprises planned.
Buzzy Haller and Roberta Bachman entered arm in arm and went straight to the bar, where Buzzy began the night-long project of trying to get her drunk.
She thwarted his efforts by sipping a controlled amount of champagne, pacing herself and making Buzzy crazy. Roberta knew how to take care.
When Neal Cassidy arrived, the upstairs bedroom became the reefer room and guests came and went all night. Bongo music drifted into the hall along with the sweet scent of burning pot. Poetry was being recited, people were expressing themselves. Neal was a magnet for the beats. He spent hours pontificating about Kerouac’s real mission, the message of Zen. Everyone listened with the rapt attention of tea-heads.
Luboff himself spent at least an hour in there, inhaling marijuana and making small talk. His date, the actress Lillian Mansville, abandoned the old junkie five minutes after they arrived. The cigar smoke made her sick, she complained. Before she dumped him for a male fashion model from Santa Monica, though, she made sure that they had their pictures taken by every available photographer in the place.
Neil Bugmier, wearing a baby blue chiffon prom dress and white pumps, attracted as much attention as the celebrities. He laughed and danced, enjoying the limelight. Halloween meant a lot to him; it was a chance to show the world his most inventive side with total legitimacy.
He circulated freely, leaving a trail of astonished looks and rolled eyes. As per his instructions, he talked about the new script to anyone who would listen.
In the center of the house, next to the great spiral staircase where the ceiling stood as high as the structure would allow, was a twenty-foot-high guillotine. It dominated the wild landscape of the party like a huge antique curiosity. The blade, perched high above the crowd, gleamed mirrorlike and appeared razor-sharp.
In conversation, Landis explained to anyone who would listen that it was real, an original French Revolution model. He claimed that he’d purchased it from a broker in Paris for a movie he would eventually make about Marie Antoinette, Headless Beauty.
People looked up at the blade with ghoulish fascination. Landis explained that this particular guillotine had been in service for many years and had the blood of hundreds of victims soaked into it. This instrument of death, he declared, must be respected and feared. “It’s probably haunted.”
Partygoers stared up at it all night, wondering what happened when that heavy blade was loosed. They could almost see it in action, the headless bodies jerking spastically while the heads thumped into a bloody wicker basket.
In general, folks gave it a wide berth as they passed—but they couldn’t help but look. When the shivers ceased crawling up their backs, they edged closer, eyeing the blade poised above them, a graphic reminder of Landis’s monstrous imagination.
Buzzy introduced Roberta to Landis, and he promised to star her in his next movie if she would “go for a walk” with him around the grounds. She declined, but he persisted. At some point during the evening, he paid Buzzy one hundred dollars for the right to steal his date.
Her cigarette girl costume was drawing the wrong kind of attention, and she now felt uncomfortable. She draped her jacket over her shoulders to dampen the effect.
Roberta’s modesty made an impression on Landis, and his desire for her increased in direct proportion to her rejection of him.
“Come on, you’ve got to see the tree house,” he insisted. He pointed out the window to an elaborate building perched in an old oak tree.
“That’s the fourth time you’ve asked me,” Roberta replied, becoming annoyed.
“It’s a special place; you’ve got to see it.”
“You’re not going to leave me alone until I go out there and see your stupid tree house, are you?”
Landis smiled. “Nope.”
“All right, I guess I have to, but the only way I’m going out there is if my friend Laura goes.”
“Laura Grootna? The costume designer’s assistant? Sure, the more the merrier, I always say.”
“And Buzzy.”
“Why Buzzy?”
“Because he’s my date.”
They climbed the ladder and entered through a trapdoor in the floor. Buzzy made the girls go first so he could sneak a peek up their dresses as they ascended.
There were three windows in the tree house, all shuttered. Landis insisted on opening all three, the last one affording a beautiful panoramic view of the city.
The two girls watched as he unlatched the shutters and folded them back.
Framed in the window, backlit by the lights of the city below, was a body hanging by the neck. It pivoted slowly in the slight breeze. The face was discolored, the lips blue, and the tongue lolled grotesquely out of the mouth like a huge purple slug. As the body swung into view, Landis shone a flashlight in its face. Laura screamed.
“My God, it’s Fred, the key grip!” Landis shouted.
Roberta felt the champagne rise in her throat and knew she was going to be sick. She looked down at the trapdoor and the ladder below with trepidation. Her eyes went back to the dead man, his face now fully in view as Landis’s flashlight illuminated the terrible grimace there.
Then, Roberta’s legs turned to rubber as she saw something that scared her beyond reason.
The dead man’s eyes snapped open, the purple tongue curled back, and an ugly smile split his unearthly lips. The mouth opened, and a voice from the grave crackled, “Hey, baby. How about a little kiss?”
Roberta screamed again and bolted for the trapdoor. She was through it and down the ladder in a matter of seconds, Landis right behind. Buzzy stayed above in the tree house, laughing maniacally.
Roberta bent over in the bushes and vomited. Landis stood behind, quiet and concerned.
He waited respectfully while she emptied her stomach, then offered her a handkerchief as she straightened up.
Their eyes met, hers wild and fearful, his strangely excited.
“What was it?” she coughed.
“A joke … I think.”
“What?”
“A
sick joke, that’s all.”
Roberta looked at Landis with undisguised disgust. He winced. She held her gaze for several seconds, then turned abruptly on her heel and began to walk briskly away.
“Hey, wait a minute!” Landis shouted.
“Don’t talk to me!” Roberta said with icy conviction.
“It wasn’t my idea! It was Buzzy’s!”
“You knew?” Her angry eyes surprised him. It wasn’t the reaction he’d anticipated.
“Yeah, I guess I did.”
“You’re an asshole, Landis Woodley!” she shouted, and began to walk away again.
“Are you leaving?”
She answered by walking faster, up the incline toward the street.
“Laura’s still up there!” Landis said quickly. “What about her?”
Roberta stopped and turned to face him. “Oh! What’s he got planned for her? More fun and games? You guys are really sick!”
Roberta heard Laura’s voice calling.
“See? She’s all right.”
“No thanks to you.”
Laura ran after Roberta, her face still wet with tears. They embraced, Roberta staring daggers at Landis over Laura’s shoulder. Then the two women turned and marched up the hill.
“Wait! Where are you going?”
“We’re going home!”
Landis hurried after them. “I’ll drive!”
“Stay away from me, I’m warning you!” she said, her voice cracking with emotion.
“How are you gonna get home?”
“That’s no concern of yours.”
Landis watched her go. From back in the tree house another scream rose. Buzzy was having some more fun with another guest.
Inside the house, Albert Beaumond was explaining the aspects of Satan in South American Indian cultures to Sol Kravitz when Landis and Buzzy reentered the house.
Fred, the hanged man, swilled champagne and jammed pretzels in his mouth, the rope still trailing from his neck. “I’ll hang myself every half hour, you’ll love it,” he boasted.
Devila danced with Luboff while the cameras clicked away.
Then, at midnight, all the lights went out.
“Don’t panic, folks!” Landis called out. “It’s probably the fuse box. We’ll have it fixed in no time!”
As soon as Buzzy and Landis disappeared into the cellar to make repairs, a nervous pall settled over the crowd. The old house became terribly uncomfortable in the dark. The guests huddled together, speaking in whispers. The mood went from celebration to consternation in a few short moments.
Almost as soon as the two men disappeared, strange things began to happen, and the guests began to grow increasingly uneasy.
First, in the great fireplace, which had been cold all evening, a fire sprang up spontaneously. A gasp went through the crowd, followed by nervous laughter.
“Good trick,” cried one of the special effects people.
Then some torches along the wall of the stairwell, which most people assumed were fakes, ignited with a surprising “whump.” A few women gasped. The leaping fires threw unsettling shadows across the room. At the center of it all, the guillotine stood tall. The fires burned in pagan ritual all around it.
“Bravo!” one of the cameramen shouted. “Landis Woodley, a master!”
People gathered in the light of the torches, drawn to the guillotine.
The rest of the guests shifted uneasily on their feet, looking up at the blade.
The edge gleamed ominously high above the floor, lit by the dancing flames of the torches. The staircase, now swathed in sinister half-tones, reclined like an evil creature, curled around the beheading machine. The wrought-iron filigree became a demonic face in the shadows.
Buzzy Haller emerged from a door behind the guillotine and waved to everyone.
“Almost fixed,” he chirped, his cheerful banter in stark contrast to the mood of the guests. “It’s just a matter of a fuse, it shouldn’t be too long. In the meantime, have you been admiring this beautiful piece?”
He ran his hands along the rough wood beams of the guillotine. Buzzy was drunk, but he wasn’t slurring his words yet. In the early stages of intoxication he was invariably entertaining and engaging.
“It’s a genuine antique. Mr. Woodley paid a small fortune for it. It will be the centerpiece for our next film, Headless Beauty. Shares are still available, by the way.” Someone in the back of the room giggled. “Seriously, this is the real thing, folks, comes complete with curse.”
“Why didn’t he just have one made?” a woman’s voice shouted from the back of the dark room. There was a smattering of nervous laughter.
“Ahh,” Buzzy replied, “a good question. Perhaps Landis himself should answer that.”
At that moment Landis entered through the same door Buzzy had: a small Gothic, round-topped aperture located halfway up the stairs on a landing behind the guillotine. It was almost like a secret passageway.
“My technicians are working on the lights. They should be back on in a few minutes. Were you curious about this?” He put his hand on the guillotine, directly in the path of the blade, where the head would have been locked into place.
“Be careful!” a woman shouted.
Landis smiled. “No need to worry. The blade, although razor-sharp, is locked in place with four thick bolts. There’s no chance of it falling.”
“Someone wanted to know why you didn’t just have one made?” Buzzy reported.
“I can answer that question with another question. Would you want to own a copy of a great painting when you could have the real thing? You see, I had a rare opportunity to purchase this historic piece in Paris last year.” Landis paused, and looked around the shadowed room, slowing his pace for maximum dramatic effect. He spoke as if reading from a script. “The price was right, a bargain actually. It seems the previous owners wanted to dump it quickly, they thought it was haunted.”
“Haunted? Surely you don’t believe that?” a man’s voice challenged.
Landis’s smile never wavered. The entire line of questioning amused him, and he instinctively began to milk it for all it was worth.
“Who knows what the spirit world is capable of?” another man answered. He stepped forward out of the throng of people and looked up at the gleaming blade. His eyes sparkled.
It was Albert Beaumond. He was dressed in his all-black, Satanic priest’s outfit, a silver pentagram pendant hung from a chain on his neck. He waved his hand dramatically at the looming specter of the guillotine. “This machine is for beheading. The removal of one’s head from one’s body leaves the soul … shall we say, confused? Those poor creatures who were its victims left this world rather quickly and against their will. Their spirits may indeed linger here, attached to this device forever.”
Landis nodded. “Our esteemed guest has hit the nail directly on the head. The question is: how could it not be cursed? If this blade could speak …” His voice trailed off, and his eyes rose to the razor edge. “Imagine the things it could tell.
“In my opinion, the curse makes it even more valuable, more of a collector’s item. If I could be so lucky as to capture a real ghost on film, well, we could all retire.
“Let me demonstrate for you how it works.”
He approached the machine casually, touching it now as if it were nothing more than a hat rack. “Ghosts or no ghosts, it’s a hell of a thing, isn’t it?”
Albert answered in the affirmative.
“Named after Dr. J.I. Guillotin, a physician who thought it would provide a more humane method of execution, the guillotine is a formidable piece of equipment. The blade is weighted and extremely sharp, it runs along this track and severs the head cleanly into this basket.” Landis pointed to the appropriate features. “They say that the severed head lives on for a few moments after it has been removed from the body, and that it is actually aware that it’s falling into the basket. During the revolution, there were always a few heads in the basket. A gruesome harvest, eh?”<
br />
“Were the heads buried separately from the bodies?” Albert asked. “That might have had an influence on the hauntings.”
“I couldn’t tell you,” Landis replied. “Want to see how it worked?”
Without waiting for an answer, Landis walked around behind the machine and placed his head in the yoke. The guests gasped.
“Be careful,” Albert warned. “If this machine really is haunted … well, just be careful.”
“Nothing can hap—”
Before Landis could finish, the blade came down, slicing his head off with no more effort than a paring knife moving through a carrot.
When people looked up and saw the blade beginning its descent, they screamed. The whole thing seemed to happen in slow motion. Landis’s headless body jerked away from the yoke, a gout of blood issuing from his neck. It stood before the crowd—the screaming never stopped—then reached into the basket and retrieved its head.
Albert Beaumond was speechless. He stood stunned while the headless body of Landis Woodley held the trophy high and shook it. Then it turned and staggered through the door. A trail of blood marked his path.
Screaming and shouting filled the room.
A moment later the lights flickered on. Buzzy Haller watched as several women fainted, men dropped their drinks, and more man one person became sick.
The lights revealed their astonished, frightened faces blinking at one another in the harsh glow of the electric bulbs.
Too stunned to move, they stood around rubbing their eyes and wondering what they had just witnessed.
Albert Beaumond was the first one to laugh.
7
“Did you see the expression on Luboff’s face?”
Devila laughed hysterically. They were in the hearse being driven home, sharing a bottle of brandy. When the enormity of Landis Woodley’s pranks revealed themselves, a new level of respect among the horror community sprang up. The guy may have been a maker of B-movies, but as far as parties went, he was A-class all the way.
To pull off a prank like that required planning, expertise, and true devotion. He would go to any lengths to scare people.
And he had succeeded.