Midnight Movie: A Novel Read online

  And the farther we went into the basement, the worse the salami smell became.

  Dude led me through the maze of ratty boxes, high-end computer equipment, and a very tiny but very fancy-looking chemistry lab to a big utility room. In between a furnace and a rusty washer/dryer, he’d set up a movie screen, the kind of pull-down, marked-up screen that I used to watch filmstrips on in second grade. At the other end of the room, there was a single folding chair and bridge table, on top of which sat an unstable-looking movie projector. Dude told me to take a seat, then asked me if I wanted a beer. I said no, thanks, I should watch the movie so I can get back home and write the article. I pulled out my notebook—not my laptop, but actual, honest-to-goodness paper—and Dude slapped it out of my hand.

  I said, “What the hell, man? What’s the problem?”

  Dude said, “You can’t take notes, and if you insist on doing so, I’ll throw you out on your ass.” He was smiling while he said it. Not sure why. Maybe to soften the blow.

  Now, if this wasn’t a Tobe Hooper movie, I’d have told Dude to fuck off and then left. But it was a Tobe Hooper movie, so I sucked it up and told him to roll film. He said, “Excellent. Forgive me if I won’t be joining you. The first ten minutes were enough for me.”

  I thought, Thank God, then told Dude, “I’ll be fine.” Frankly, I was ecstatic he was leaving. He was one of those people whose innate wrongness made every interaction uncomfortable and distracting, and since I couldn’t take notes, I needed to be completely focused on the movie.

  So. Destiny Express.

  The credits were pretty funny, although I don’t think they were meant to be. It was a sexy little high school girl wearing a Catholic schoolgirl uniform, flipping through cue cards, kind of like Bob Dylan eventually did in the “Subterranean Homesick Blues” video several years later. I doubt D. A. Pennebaker got the idea from Tobe Hooper, but it was oddly similar. The first card said, “A TOBE HOOPER FILM.” The second: “DESTINY EXPRESS.” The third: “STARRING GARY CHURCH.” The fourth: “CO-STARRING HELEN LEARY.” The fifth: “AND CLAIRE CRAFT.” The sixth: “CAMERA AND SOUND BY DARREN ALLEN.” The seventh: “MAKEUP AND SPECIAL EFFECTS BY WILLIAM MARRON.” The eighth: “WRITTEN, DIRECTED, CONCEIVED, AND BRIEFLY NARRATED BY TOBE HOOPER.” Only six people. Talk about a skeleton crew.

  Then there was a jump cut to a suburban cul-de-sac that was filled with birds, and trees, and perfectly coiffed lawns. The camera panned around in a half circle before stopping on a young man—a boy, really—sitting on a porch, staring off to his left. He coolly turned forward, gazed into the camera, then nodded and said, “Good afternoon, dear viewers. My name is Tobe Hooper. You don’t know me. I could be a nice guy. I could be a liar and a thief. I could even be a killer. You can believe everything I tell you. Or you can ignore every word that I say. Or you can burn this film into a pile of ashes.” He paused, ran his hand through his crew cut, then said, “But if I were you, I’d listen carefully. Because I have the camera. And I know the truth.”

  He stood up and began pacing back and forth, no longer looking into the camera. “I’m speaking to you from Austin, Texas. It’s a quiet little town, Austin is. Nobody pays much attention to us. That’s a bad idea. Like I said, you should listen carefully. You might want to get your friends and family to join you in front of the screen. They need to see this.”

  And then there was another jump cut to a man—or possibly a boy made up to look like a man—curled in a fetal position, wearing a filthy, tattered shirt and no pants. He was covered with some sort of dark glop, probably mud, but since the movie was in black and white, it was hard to tell exactly what it was. The thing—I guess you could call it a man-boy—stayed on the screen for a total of only two seconds, enough time to make one hell of an impression, then it cut back to Tobe, who said, “Did you see that? I know it was only there for a second, but I couldn’t let you see it for too long. Because you’d go mad. And then you’d die. And then you’d become undead. And then you’d kill your loved ones.” Another cut to the man-boy, who was now limping across the screen, with some kind of clear slime oozing out of his ass.

  And then back to Tobe. “Some people think the word ‘zombie’ derives from the word ‘jumbie,’ which is how people in the West Indies refer to ghosts.”

  Another quick shot of the man-boy. The clear slime was now leaking from both his ass and his ears.

  Back to Tobe. “Some people think it comes from ‘nzambi,’ which is African for ‘spirit of a dead man.’ ”

  Back to the man-boy, whose eyes were now leaking a thick, dark goo. Pretty good special effects for a sixteen-year-old. I made a mental note to ask Tobe about it at the screening.

  Back to Tobe. “But we here in the South, here in the stinking bowels of Texas, we believe that it comes from the Creole word ‘zonbi,’ the translation of which is, A dead man brought back to life without free will or the ability to speak.”

  And then the man-boy limped slowly into the frame and hacked off Tobe’s arm with a machete.

  As I watched the blood gush out of Tobe’s shoulder, I actually gagged. I don’t know how blood looks when it’s coming out of a freshly amputated limb, and I don’t know if young Tobe Hooper did either, but this looked pretty damn real. The oozing ass and the leaking eyes were excellent special effects, but the arm-chop was astounding.

  After a few seconds of staring blankly at the camera, Tobe collapsed into a heap, his scream mixing with the zombie’s mournful moan. The zombie licked the blood off the machete for about a minute—which is a long time, when you think about it—then sat down on his haunches and began to slurp up the fresh puddle of blood still dribbling from Tobe’s shoulder socket. Then he turned to the camera and stuck out his tongue, which was coated with a combination of Tobe’s blood and that weird zombie goo. He stood up and limped toward the camera, raised his machete, swung it forward, and then the screen went black, like he’d killed the cameraman.

  It was a brilliant start, and had Tobe been able to sustain the momentum, he could’ve turned pro right then and there. Unfortunately, the moment the “story” kicked in, Destiny Express went straight into the crapper.

  Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space wasn’t even out yet so there’s no way that Tobe could’ve stolen anything from Ed, but there were numerous similarities. The acting in both was horrible, for instance, but Tobe’s situation was more forgivable, because his performers were probably all in their teens, while Wood’s were adults. Both plots were incomprehensible, but quality-wise, Tobe’s flick wins a head-to-head competition, because visually speaking, it was a lot more stylish, and the gore factor was off the meter.

  Destiny Express featured two more human amputations; one zombie castration; an alligator attack; a sex scene between the man-boy and the female lead that, I’m embarrassed to say, got me a bit excited; and finally, a machete-versus-hammer battle between the zombie and girl lead that ends up with the two of them making out while covered in blood and slime. No clue what any of that has to do with either destiny or express.

  It was a humorless piece of work, but, like the opening credits, the closing credits were funny in a weird way. The cue card girl reappeared, and, when she flipped to her third card, the zombie materialized behind her and bit off her ear, then sucked the ear hole until they both collapsed onto the sidewalk, the zombie clearly in ecstasy, the girl clearly dead. The end.

  It was only an hour long, and I had the afternoon free, and since Dude McGee had disappeared, I rewound the film and gave it another watch. It was just as confusing the second time around. Try as I might, I still couldn’t figure out how he made the amputations look so convincing. And that castration … horrifying, man, just horrifying.

  I stumbled my way out of the utility room, past the weird little laboratory, past the boxes, past the comic books, and back into Dude’s basement apartment. He reluctantly tore himself away from his computer bank—it looked to me like he was playing three different splattercore games at once, but it could’v
e been one game spread out on three screens—then said, “So how’d you like it, Mr. Erick McLaughlin, Mr. Massacre This, Mr. Film Critic, Mr. Austin Chronicle, Mr. Austin Powers?” He spit onto the floor, farted, then gave me a weird giggle. I chose to ignore all three.

  I told him the movie was interesting.

  He then asked, “Are you coming to the screening? It’ll be a ton of fun. More fun than a barrel of zombies who have clear goo leaking from their orifices.”

  I said, “I doubt it. Twice was enough.”

  He said, “Twice, eh? And you survived.” He did that weird laugh again, then said, “If I’m you, I wouldn’t even consider missing it, because maybe you could slip Tobe a Massacre This CD, and he could use it in his next movie.”

  I thought that was actually a pretty good idea, but I didn’t want Dude to believe I had any respect for him. Yeah, I’d been around him for only five minutes, but he’s the kind of guy who you can safely label a douchebag after only two. I told him to put me on the list, and I’d try to make it.

  He said, “I’ll give you a plus-ten. Bring your friends.”

  I told him thanks, then made a quick exit. He belched again, and I almost sprinted up the stairs. That salami smell was making me nauseous.

  TOBE HOOPER:

  The flight from Hell-Lay to Texas was uneventful. Thank you, Ambien.

  There was supposed to be a car waiting for me at the airport to take me straight to the club. Didn’t happen. Wasn’t surprised. South by Southwest wasn’t known for its attention to detail. So I flagged a taxi. I didn’t want to be that guy, the Hollywood type who rolls into town and bitches about a ten-dollar cab ride.

  I hadn’t been to the Cove in who knows how long. The last time I was there—or at least I think it was the last time I was there; I might’ve gone another night after that and had such a crappy time that I forced it out of my brainpan—I got into a fight with three drunk dudes that ended with me getting a pool cue broken over my head. And I can’t fight for shit, so no surprise that I got the bad end of it.

  Anyhow, when I got there, I saw that Dude McGee either lied or didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about. They hadn’t expanded the Cove by a third; they just took out the pool table and the jukebox, which meant you could fit maybe fifteen more people in there. The Cove wasn’t a place to hang out anymore. It was a place to get fucked-up: no pool, no music, just crappy booze. There was nothing else to do there but drink, and maybe get a blow job in the bathroom. And, of course, fight.

  On the plus side, the girl selling the tickets at the door was a fucking knockout. Not that I’d do anything about it—I was old enough to be either her older father or possibly her younger grandpa—but she made the outside of that dump look a hell of a lot prettier.

  JANINE DALTREY (University of Texas senior):

  Dave Cranford, my old boyfriend, called the day before the Destiny Express thing and asked if I’d like to take a shift at the Cove. I said, “Are you serious? I already told you I’m never setting foot in that place again.” The last time I went, I was there for only five minutes before some guy—who, it turned out, was a regular customer—stuck his hand on my ass. And he didn’t just smack it or pinch it; he ran his finger up and down the crack, like, twice. I screamed at him to back the hell off, but he didn’t, so I pulled out a trick I learned at the self-defense class I took my sophomore year and stomped his foot with one of my heels, then elbowed him in the sternum, then got right on out of there. Dave told me later that I broke his fifth and sixth metatarsals. Good.

  So, you know, screw the Cove.

  Dave said, “All you’ll have to do is collect the cover charge. You can sit outside the door. You don’t even need to set foot in the place. I know you need the bread.”

  He was right. I did need the money. Six months before, I’d taken a leave of absence from my bartending gig at the Iron Cactus to cram for midterms. My manager wouldn’t give me the job back after I was all done with my tests, because he threw all my shifts to one of the servers who had really big tits and was in the habit of leaving her top four buttons unbuttoned. The manager actually told me that my B-cups weren’t cutting the muster. I told him to fuck off, and that he was going to hear from my lawyer, and that it was cutting the mustard, not muster.

  He said, “If I give you severance pay, will you keep the lawyers out of it?”

  Like I could afford a lawyer anyhow. But he didn’t know that, so I told him, “What kind of severance are we talking about here?”

  He said, “Five hundred bucks?”

  I shot for the moon and asked, “How about a thousand?” We agreed on seven-fifty. I was a month behind on rent, and two months behind on gas and electric, so the money was gone before I even touched it. By the time I got the call from Dave, I was at rock bottom. I could’ve called my parents for help, but it was too damn embarrassing.

  So I asked Dave on the phone, “How much can you get me?” I told myself the minimum for a night at the Cove was one bill.

  Dave said, “How does five hundred sound? Plus free drinks. Plus I can get your sister on the guest list.”

  My little sister Andrea didn’t have any money either, so I thought she’d enjoy a free evening on the town, even if that particular piece of town was disgusting. “Okay. So what’s the deal? I’m guessing it’s a South by Southwest thing.”

  He said, “Yeah, it’s a movie. You know The Texas Chainsaw Massacre?”

  I said, “Never saw it. But I suppose it makes sense to show it at the Cove.”

  He said, “Nah, they’re not showing Chainsaw. It’s a movie by the guy who directed it. He made it when he was a kid, like back in the 1940s or something.”

  I said, “Sounds like a blast. Andrea will love it.” I was being sarcastic. The only movies Andrea watched were romantic comedies and indie films about people who fall in and out and in and out of love. She was sappy like that. She was super-cute—if I’m being honest, I’d say she was cuter than me, and I’ve been told that I’m pretty cute—but she’d never had a real boyfriend at that point, and I was always afraid that her dream version of dating was clean and pretty, and she’d be disappointed when she learned that there were going to be plenty of arguments, and that sex is usually wet and messy, and you usually have to clean up the wet stuff before you cuddle, and even when you’re in love with somebody, you’ll still get butterflies when a random cute guy tells you how nice you look. I could’ve told her all that, but I thought it would be better for her to find out about it herself. I mean, I had on-the-job love training, and I turned out okay.

  Anyhow, Dave said, “Great, we really appreciate it. The screening’s at midnight, and the doors open at nine, so get there at eight. Cool?”

  I showed up right on time, because I’m a Virgo, and Virgos always show up on time. Virgos also do a lot of waiting around, because nobody else in the world ever shows up on time, Dave Cranford included. The Cove was locked when I got there, naturally, so I went back to my car and sat down on the hood. It was still light out, but I wasn’t concerned about getting harassed by anybody. The Cove itself is gross, but the neighborhood is okay. It’s almost like somebody plucked the bar out of a shitty area in Houston, airlifted it over to Austin, then dropped it, like, boom!

  So I’m there in the parking lot, chilling out on my hood, and this older guy comes over and asks if I work there. He had a scraggly gray beard and nerdy John Lennon glasses, and he looked relatively harmless, so I actually answered him. I said, “Not really. Just for tonight. One time only. This place is disgusting. I’m collecting the cover charge, and my plan is to stay outside all night.”

  The guy nodded, then said, “What if you need to use the bathroom?”

  I said, “I’ll hold it.”

  Then he said, “What if you hear people screaming and laughing at the movie? Wouldn’t you maybe step in for a minute or two?”

  I said, “Doubt it.”

  He said, “That’s too bad. I bet you’d enjoy it.”

 
I said, “You’ve seen it?”

  He said, “I made it.”

  I said, “Oh, you’re the Chainsaw guy.”

  He kind of laughed, then said, “Yeah, I’m the Chainsaw guy.”

  I said, “Cool. What’s the movie about?”

  He said, “I don’t fucking know.”

  TOBE HOOPER:

  I don’t remember much that happened to me from age zero to age fifteen. From fifteen on, I’m pretty good, although there’re big chunks of my late teens that sometimes get real hazy, which I blame partly on the weed and partly on the fact that all I did was think about movies. But before that, it’s virtually nothing. I lost most of my memory on the street in front of my mother’s house. Literally.

  I was playing concrete hockey with my buddy Scott Frost. I do recall that Scott was a helluva hockey player, man, both on the street and on the ice. There weren’t too many ice rinks near where we grew up—back then, hockey and Texas didn’t really mix, and if you take the Dallas Stars into consideration, that’s really still the case—but if Scott’d had regular access to a rink and somebody around to teach him the finer points of the sport, who knows what would’ve happened? Anyway, even though I don’t recall the specifics, I’m sure that whenever I played with Scott, I always tried to make certain that I was on the same team as him, because if you played against him, you were royally fucked.

  Taking into account my massive memory-suck, whatever I know about Scott, I learned from somebody else. Everybody I’ve spoken to said Scott was a good egg, popular, a fellow who always did the right thing. Apparently he was a precocious bastard, too; he was dating a college freshman when he was a high school sophomore. Some say he knocked her up. He must’ve really had something on the ball, because in that day and age, it was a rarity for boys in their mid-teens to be getting laid, especially by a college coed. Today, kids are screwing in elementary school. Man, I wish it’d been like that back in my day.