by Greg Kihn
“You’ve got talent. I want you to be successful. But do you want your brilliant script to get buried here and never made?
“This world is full of compromises, and if you want to be a big-time writer, you need hits. Guys like you and me have used up all our favors, Neil. It’s time to deliver. Nobody’s knockin’ down our doors with million-dollar offers, are they? Now, Buzzy has come up with an idea that definitely puts this movie over the top. Okay, it’s sick, I’ll admit that. But who are we to argue?”
“It’s a dead man, for Christ sake!” Neil sniveled. “He can’t defend himself.”
“We all die, man.” Landis’s voice had taken on a soothing timbre. When it came to talking people into things they didn’t want to do, he was slicker than a frozen pond.
“Put your feelings aside and come back in there with me. I need you, Neil. Honestly. You’re my F. Scott Fitzgerald. Do it for me, okay?”
There was a full half minute of quiet. To Landis it seemed like an hour. Finally, Neil whispered, “All right, you win. I’ll do it, but only for you.”
Landis hugged Neil. “I knew you wouldn’t let me down.”
They walked past the sleeping watchman. His snoring was like the buzzing of a chain saw, very far away, carrying across a lake on a summer night. Landis leaned over, picked up the bottle of wine, and wiped off the top with his sleeve. He sighed and took a big swig. He handed the bottle to Neil, who raised it to his lips. “Thanks. I think we’re gonna need it.”
When they arrived back at the location, Buzzy was looking at his watch and pacing. “Come on! We’re really late now! We’ve got a lot of catching up to do, and I’ve got to get this old boy back into the drawer before they start coming in for the morning shift. We don’t have much time.”
Landis wondered what time people started showing up for work here. He guided Neil back to his chair, picked up his script, and shouted, “Scene thirty-eight! Let’s go!”
People snapped back into their jobs as if nothing had ever happened. Forty minutes had passed and not one shot had been completed, unheard-of for a Landis Woodley production. Chet lined up the next shot. Landis walked them through it, and when it came time to use the corpse, Tad Kingston objected.
“You mean, I have to touch it?” he whined.
“That’s what the script calls for,” Landis said.
“You never told me that. I’m not doing it!”
Landis looked at the script, men back at Tad. “Don’t be a wimp, Kingston. Buzzy’s gonna be right behind it, manipulating the arms, it reaches out and grabs you by the neck. We’ll get it in one take.”
“It smells!”
“Of course it smells, you knucklehead. It’s dead.”
“Can I talk to you for a minute?” Tad demanded like a petulant child.
“All right,” Landis sighed. He stood up and pointed to the far side of the room, indicating that he would talk to Tad there. “Don’t anyone move!” he shouted at the crew.
They walked together, and Landis was beginning to feel like a psychiatrist. He didn’t like to talk this much. “What’s the problem?”
“Well, I agreed to come back on the production with the rest of the crew, but I didn’t realize I had to touch that thing. It scares me; I’ll have bad dreams. Can’t we work it out so that the close-up is Buzzy’s hands instead of that … that thing?”
“You don’t want to touch it?”
“No, sir. Please don’t make me do it.”
Landis looked at Tad, sizing up the situation. “Sure, Tad,” he said with phony enthusiasm. “I’ll get Beatnik Fred to do it.”
Tad started to agree, but Landis cut him off. “No problem, and I’ll get Fred to star in the movie instead of you!”
Tad blanched. “No, you don’t understand—”
“Oh, I understand all right.” Landis smirked. “You’re just tryin’ to fuck up my movie.”
Tad shook his haircut. Landis noticed it was still perfect. He scratched his head and looked back at the crew, who were all straining to hear what was being said. Then, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a hundred-dollar bill, and stuffed it in Tad’s shirt. “You can buy some bubble bath and soak for hours when you get home, just do the scene,” he whispered.
Tad blinked. “But—”
“Do the fuckin’ scene, Kingston!” Landis hissed. “And don’t bother me anymore. This whole production is turning into a real pain in the ass!”
Landis turned and walked away from Tad Kingston. A fly buzzed around his head. Landis wondered how a fly could get all the way down here in the morgue. Christ, it must be happy, he thought.
20
Buzzy hunkered down behind the corpse and, using some wire that he’d attached to its wrists, manipulated it like a marionette.
The condition of rigor mortis made it hard, but by first bending the limbs and loosening them up a little, he was able to get limited movement.
The smell was a factor, but Buzzy was made of iron. He’d liberally applied the spray, but it couldn’t work miracles, and a miracle was what was needed. All the crew members were appalled at the sight and smell of their guest star, and Buzzy was of a mind to minimize it as best he could. Stoically, he acted as if it happened every day.
Touching the dead body’s skin and being in such close contact with it was horrible, not at all like touching the dead girl the coroner had shown him earlier, but as long as he kept moving and kept his mind on the finished production, he was all right. Focus was the key. Focus your energy, he told himself.
He was assisted by, of all people, Jonathon Luboff, who came to his aid when Beatnik Fred balked at having to handle the corpse. Luboff seemed to have a morbid fascination for the dead man that Buzzy found intriguing. It was almost as if he was checking the body out, wondering what it would be like when he was dead.
If anyone there on the set was close to the grave, it was he. Buzzy was grateful for the help, even though Luboff hands shook when he tried to tie off the wires.
“That’s all right, Jonathon, I can take it from here,” Buzzy said. “Thank you for your help.”
Jonathon nodded. “What name will you give this man?”
Buzzy looked bemused. “He’s marked as John Doe, so I think I’ll call him Johnny. Johnny D. The ‘D’ stands for Doe, or Dead, depending on your mood. Johnny Dead. I like it. It has a nice ring to it. I can see it in the credits now. Corpse—Johnny D.”
There was no smile from Luboff, not even a flicker. “You know, as an actor, Johnny Dead has dignity,” he said, his accent thick and his eyes downcast.
“Why do you say that?”
“He has no ego, no vanity to get in his way. He’s pure—his life is done and he’s left this world. His petty problems and worries are behind him now. He is to be envied, I would think. Imagine to be as free as that.”
Buzzy laughed. “No thanks. The day I start envying dead people is the day I stop drinkin’.” He looked up, concerned at the seriousness of Luboff’s words, determined to lighten the grave-heavy mood. “You dig?”
Jonathon’s face was drawn and overcast, like a slate-gray LA sky. “I dig, young man, I most certainly dig,” he said.
“Okay, let’s get old Johnny D. in position.”
The lights illuminated the dead man’s face, sharply defining every decay, every failing of the human flesh. White as a fish belly, and just as soft, with subtle discoloration here and there, his skin seemed to come alive under the harsh scrutiny of the klieg lights. Their unforgiving carbon arcs showed nuances that only the camera wanted to see.
Chet peered through the viewfinder and whistled. “Christ, come here and look at this,” he said to Landis. “Talk about scary. This guy’s in his own league.”
Landis hurried over and squinted into the eyepiece and nodded. “Yeah, it looks incredible. You like the light?”
Chet checked his light meter. “It’s perfect. I got a little shine, but it works, keeps it wet. Powder would dry it up too much. Let’s go before something
happens.”
Landis waved his hand and everyone came to attention. “We’re ready to shoot. I want this in one take, okay?”
“You got it!” Buzzy said from behind the corpse. He sounded excited. Tad looked stricken, as if he might be sick at any moment. He was clearly terrified, and, of all the people on the set, appeared to be the most distraught. In a rare show of humanity, Luboff patted him on the back and whispered that it was time to go into character.
Neil Bugmier watched the situation with the detached interest of a funeralgoer. This is madness, he thought. Am I the only one here who realizes the monstrous thing we’re doing? This could ruin all our careers and haunt us forever. Have we become so desperate and so desensitized that violating the sanctity of the dead becomes just another Hollywood prank?
He lit a cigarette and tried not to show his emotions.
Blame it all on Landis, he told himself, blame it all on Buzzy. I am not even here.
Landis Woodley shouted out commands. “Lights! Slate!”
Bob stepped into frame and barked, “Cadaver, scene thirty-nine, take one!” Crack! The slate box slammed down, and Landis leaned forward.
“Camera?”
“Speed!”
“Sound?”
“Rolling.”
“Annnnd ACTION!”
Tad forced himself into the frame, moving stiffly. Luboff loomed behind him, the essence of pain. His face seemed to steal every scene he was in, whether he wanted to or not. It was just that everyone else looked so ordinary next to him. Tad Kingston bent over the corpse.
“Doctor, I—”
The corpse reached up and began to strangle Tad. Its dead hands pushed against his neck drunkenly, not actually closing around it, just pushing into it. The thumbs were pulled back, away from the fingers, so as to give the illusion of grasping. The touch of the cadaver was like fish.
It wasn’t in the script.
It moved against him like an eel he had the traumatic misfortune to handle once when he was a child. The memory flashed in Tad’s mind automatically, rushing in like an uninvited guest at a private party. His father had taken him fishing at the age of ten. In a tidal pool, trapped by the falling tide, a large, black eel swam desperately back and forth. Tad’s father, in one of Tad’s most vivid memories, went into the pool and clubbed the eel to death with a piece of driftwood. After the eel was dead, Tad’s father made him pick it up and carry it back to the car. “What’s the problem? It’s already dead,” he told him. Tad cried and cried to no avail. It felt like the most foul thing in the world, a seagoing worm.
That’s what the touch of Johnny D. was like.
Tad’s reaction was off the scale.
“Oh my God!” he screamed and stumbled back into Luboff, who deftly stepped aside, letting the young actor fall to the tile floor.
Landis thought Tad screamed like a woman. It was convincing, though.
The corpse had moved too soon; it wasn’t going according to plan. Tad had been taken completely by surprise, and his fright was as real and deep as the realization of death. He wasn’t acting. In fact, he’d forgotten all about the movie and everything else. To him there were only those hands on his neck, and the memory of the eel.
He nearly knocked the frail figure of Jonathon Luboff over, but the old man stood his ground miraculously. In front of a camera, he was a tower of strength. His spindly, discolored legs, scarred by years of injections, held like wire sculpture. Tad Kingston fell past him, brushing by as he crashed to the floor.
Kingston’s face was ashen. “It moved …” he stammered. “That thing’s alive.”
From behind the corpse, Buzzy Haller was smiling. He’d jumped the gun a few seconds just to see what kind of reaction he would get from Kingston. It was worth it. Knowing that Landis would want only one take, and knowing that Tad would be scared shitless, he’d made the decision to go beyond what they had planned.
It was part of the magic. Not only would they get real death on film; they would get real fear, too. The horror in Tad’s face was miles past his acting ability. It was true terror, and it transcended the movie. What Buzzy was doing was revolutionary, first with the corpse, and now with Tad. In a few short moments, he had taken this simple horror movie to the edge, then pushed it over.
Technique into passion, art into substance.
Real fear.
Landis let the camera roll; knowing Buzzy as he did, he suspected his partner’s motives and sensed his gamble. It was a stunning bit of cinematography. Luboff watched it all and felt the heat of the moment like a heart attack. It was beautiful to him. To assure the whelp’s performance like that was brilliant.
Buzzy pulled back the corpse’s arms and let him swagger. Tad groveled at his feet shamefully, too lost in his own nightmare to worry about anyone else’s.
The wires attached to Buzzy’s wrists hurt. They cut into him and inhibited his circulation, but it was the only way to get realistic corpse movement. The wires cut into the Johnny’s wrists too, but they were soft and cold, and in no time they were down to the bone. Without bleeding it was hard to tell how deep a cut was. Johnny’s wrists were nearly severed by the end of the scene.
Buzzy didn’t notice. Johnny D. never complained. His face was unchanged.
Tad Kingston was huddled on the floor sobbing for a good sixty seconds before Landis yelled, “Cut!”
People snapped out of their trance. Then, a funny thing happened. They applauded.
It wasn’t for Johnny D. they applauded, or Tad, or Luboff. It was for the moment. It was for the magic. It was for the triumph. Landis and Buzzy had pulled off, within the shabby confines of their lurid little movie, a golden moment in cinematic history.
The sound of their hands clapping ricocheted off the brittle walls like gunshots.
It was a scene for the ages.
However, for all its gruesome intensity, the scene that most horror aficionados remember in Cadaver was not the Kingston/corpse interaction, but a scene that came a few minutes later. It resulted from another Buzzy Haller gamble.
Landis Woodley wanted a close-up of Johnny D. It was a pivotal shot, one that would establish Johnny’s credentials and would be used several times. Johnny’s face was so hideous that no special lighting was required to make it any more frightening. It sold itself. The only problem was the eyes. They were closed.
Landis wanted them open. A corpse with closed eyes didn’t seem quite right. In the medium and long shots it wasn’t a problem. They were sunken and distorted and pushed so far back into the skull that they seemed to disappear. In the close-up he wanted them open.
Buzzy told Landis that he thought he could get them to open by pulling back the skin along the top of the scalp.
“It’ll look like he’s opening them himself, man. It should be incredible,” Buzzy crowed. They were both riding so high from the previous shots with Johnny D. that they felt they could do anything.
“I gotta warn ya,” Landis told Chet as he prepared the camera angle. “I don’t know what to expect under there. The damn things are probably rotten and runny as poached eggs. It could be pretty disgusting. Whatever you do, just keep rolling till I yell. Got it?”
“Got it,” Chet acknowledged.
“Let’s rock.”
The camera whirred, the lens screwed in, bringing the viewer’s eye close, close, closer to Johnny’s haunted face. Everyone held his breath. At Landis’s signal, Buzzy yanked back on the scalp and the eyes jerked open, first one, then the other. The right one had stuck for a split second, glued down by some dried putrescence. It popped open a heartbeat later.
Chet gasped. Through his camera lens he got the worst of it.
Worms. Hundreds of worms. Surprised by the light, they wriggled out of the sockets, squirming insanely. Somebody screamed. Chet kept the camera on it just as he was told, and its unblinking eye recorded it all faithfully. He stared, astonished at the grotesque mass of writhing hell, and tried to keep from vomiting. The supreme effort it to
ok to keep his stomach down was second only to his dogged determination to keep the shot in focus.
Everyone else looked away.
It was as if the brains inside the dead man’s head had come alive and were trying to crawl through the holes.
21
“Okay, that’s a wrap!” shouted Landis Woodley at 4:30 A.M. “Let’s pack it up, people! I want everybody back here tonight no later than five.”
The LA County Morgue morning shift was coming in, eyeing Landis and his crowd as they broke down their equipment and loaded it back into their truck. Buzzy had been careful to put everything back exactly the way he’d found it, especially Johnny D.
No one noticed anything amiss. To the coroner, they were a model crew.
Landis was bleary-eyed when he came out of the dark building into the daylight. It had been a very long night. The light hurt his eyes, and he immediately donned his sunglasses. He was smoking his umpteenth cigarette as he walked through the parking lot.
An ambulance, bearing the day’s first customer, pulled up. The paramedics took their time unloading a gurney with a sheet-covered figure on it. Landis watched the leisurely pace of the workers. The time to rush is over now, he thought. This guy is no longer on the razor’s edge, he’s just another stiff checking into Hotel Hell. Looks like business as usual.
Landis flicked his cigarette across the parking lot and yawned. Buzzy rolled down the window of his car and waved at Landis. Landis walked toward him, a thin smile on his lips.
“Hell of a night,” he said.
Buzzy nodded. “We made horror-movie history, man. I think we really got something special in there last night.”
“I can’t believe we actually did it.”
“Yeah, and it’s all immortalized on film.” Buzzy started his engine.
Landis looked at the sky. “Looks like the rain is over; it’s gonna be fresh and clear for a change.”
Buzzy put the car in gear. “Won’t last. See ya later.”
That night, to no one’s surprise, Johnny D. made his triumphant encore. Buzzy and Chet joked about it, and Landis could tell that the horror of their actions was gone; it was almost normal now. Even Tad seemed less uptight, as long as he didn’t have to touch a corpse.