Three

Grinning with jack-o'-lantern intensity, the Bel Air mansion welcomed all comers to the Jack the Knife III premiere after-party. Floodlights articulated the hulking architecture. The silhouettes of partyers flickered like black candlelight in its bright windows. Every time Max visited Jordan's palatial estate, he received a visual reminder of how badly he was being ripped off.

Lookie-loos flocked to Hollywood each year hoping to sight celebrities in their natural habitat. They came for the glitter and went home with the grime. What most people pictured as Hollywood was actually a small group of communities such as Beverly Hills. There, the industry's aristocracy lived in palaces secured in gated glamor and guarded by their own cops. Everything looked clean and beautiful, stretch limos drove date-palm-lined avenues, and the post office offered valet parking. They even painted the fire hydrants silver.

Bel Air wasn't Beverly Hills, but it was very close.

Max entered a spacious vestibule facing a grand staircase. Like a resume of influence and power, awards and photos adorned the entry walls. While celebrities and famous directors provided the face of Hollywood, people like Jordan Lyman ruled it behind the scenes by handling the cash that powered the illusion factory.

Producers could be studio moguls green-lighting projects, execs submitting to corporate boards, or indie companies packaging distribution deals for the big studios. Jordan had worked as all three, making a name at MCA/Universal and Columbia before jumping again to do his own thing as an indie producer. Max considered his relationship with the man something of a Faustian bargain.

Leaving the vestibule, he entered a vast living room overlooking a glowing swimming pool. Here, cast, crew, and friends of Jack the Knife III mingled and laughed among sprawling furniture, expensive art, and soft lighting. Caterers circulated bearing trays of hors d'oeuvres. An INXS song piped through the house speaker system. The partyers shined with needy, manic cheer.

Gazing at this scene, Max pictured himself as a director in a horror film who wants to escape before an ancient evil manifests to consume them all. Too late: Blood drips from the ceiling. It plops into drinks, runs like scarlet mascara down leering faces, disappears on shrimp kebabs into chomping mouths. Looking into their red eyes, he realizes the merriment is all phony.

He is already in a trap, and they are the evil.

A peal of laughter swept through part of the crowd, and Max flinched.

A familiar gruff voice: "Welcome to the Hotel California."

He sighed. "I think I need a stiff drink."

"You earned it, Maximillian."

Raphael Rodriguez had worked with Max on the entire Jack trilogy as special makeup effects master. The man who put the splatter in Max's splatter flicks.

When Tom discovered Pam screaming on a meat hook in the third act and pulled her off, it was Raphael's gore that geysered from her back. When the released counterweight dropped an anvil onto Tom's head and Tom's skull exploded like a watermelon, that was Raph's work too.

Specifically, blood he made from corn syrup mixed with food coloring and other ingredients. Brains from cauliflower, bread, and gelatin.

If Max loomed behind his movies as a master of illusions, Raphael performed as an expert stage magician. He was no celebrity genius like Tom Savini, whose macabre artistry with Dawn of the Dead and other horror pictures established him as the Sultan of Splatter. He had skill, though, and he was reliable. Best of all, he could handle Max's shit. In fact, aside from Susan, Max's fluffy Pomeranian waiting for him at home, Raphael remained the only real friend he had in this town.

He couldn't say how their long friendship started. Like him, Raphael had reached middle age, came from a blue-collar background, and was a filmmaking veteran. Besides that, the man had fought in Vietnam and similarly understood horror and death from a personal perspective. In the jungle, he'd learned what a savaged body really looked like, which he now re-created for horror movie directors with latex and in the process purged his own suppressed demons.

"What I earned is a punch in the face," Max said.

"What happened?"

"I let my producer have his way too many times."

Raphael laughed. "You should thank him."

"Et tu, Raph?"

"Your movie turned out awesome," he said. "You're actually getting paid to do something you love. Only you would find a way to get all neurotic about it."

"Okay, okay," Max grumbled.

Looking at it one way, he stood at the pinnacle of success. He understood that. He appreciated it. Looking at it another way, he was trapped in the creative echo of the one good thing he did eight years ago, an echo that degraded with each iteration. He pictured his tombstone bearing the epitaph HE GAVE US JACK.

Max didn't care about money or fame or power. He didn't even really care about his fans. He was an artist. He lived for his movies. If they were nothing but cheap, safe, recycled thrills one chuckled through and promptly forgot afterward, what was the point? To him, a movie wasn't two hours of entertainment but an experience. A statement that endured the test of time.

Was success still success if you'd succeeded at the wrong goal?

Soon, he'd be the same age Dad had been when he'd died. Max went to bed every night and awoke each morning with a sense of living on borrowed time.

Before Raphael could lecture him more about his good fortune, he flagged down a good-looking bow-tied kid carrying a silver platter loaded with bacon-wrapped jalape?os. He handed over a crisp twenty-dollar bill, and the young man with the wavy blond hair and prominent cheekbones took it.

"I want you to head over to the little bar Jordan has set up over there and bring back two glasses of the finest scotch he's got," Max said. "I'll take mine neat."

This allowed him to avoid the crowd. He'd nearly burst a blood vessel dealing with these needy adult-size children for months. He had no patience for hanging out with them now.

Nicholas Moody's agent doubled the actor's price per sequel. Ashlee Gibson suffered nosebleeds during shoots from inhaling too much coke in her trailer and once tried to scratch a makeup artist's eyes out. As for the pair's off-screen romance reported in the gossip rags, it was all a publicity stunt.

"A little ice in mine," Raphael said. "If you don't mind."

"Right away, Mr. Maurey." The kid handed back the money. "No need to tip. My name is Johnny Frampton. I'm an actor. I hope you'll remember me one day if I end up in front of you in a casting call."

Max stared at him. The kid pressed on.

"I could really use a break. My granny isn't doing that great, and my one big dream is for her to see me—"

"Sure," said Max. "Fine."

"Awesome!"

Raphael smiled after the kid left. "See that? You're a big man."

Max scowled. "How do you do it?"

"Charm and intellect. Sorry, what are we talking about?"

"Every picture, you wake up and go to work. I say to you, ‘All right, Raph, Jack needs half his face to look horribly burned from his fiery car wreck.' You scissor up some bald-cap vinyl, burn it to a crisp, and layer on some K-Y Jelly—"

Raphael bristled with feigned creative offense. "You forgot I also made a small prosthetic—"

"The point is you make it and hand it over," Max said. "You have no say in how it ends up in the final product. And you're okay with that."

"It's the job, man. It pays the bills. And I like doing it."

Max didn't know what to make of that statement. A job. It wasn't a job to him, it was a calling. More, it was his identity.

He loved being a motion picture director. He also lived it.

"I'll tell you what, though," Raphael went on. "For once, I'd like to do something really big. Maybe an arrow sticking out of a dude's eye. Something that would make ol' Tom Savini go, ‘How the hell did he do that?'"

"You've done exceptional things," Max protested. "You're the one who taught me to show a real murder weapon cutting stuff before we substitute the fake one stabbing people. So the audience connects the two and feels like it's real."

The man turned sheepish. "Also Savini."

"Anyway, you know what I'm talking about. A yearning to do something powerful."

"Sure." Raphael shrugged. "But I don't let it keep me up at night."

The actor returned with a tray bearing a pair of snifters filled with scotch.

"Thank you, Johnny Frampton. I'll remember you." Though he doubted it; while handsome, the kid was generic enough to be a script placeholder. Max shot a look at Raphael. "Come with me. I'd like to show you something cool."

Rows of plush red seats faced a silver screen. Controlled by a dimmer switch, downlights softly illuminated Jordan's spacious home movie theater.

"Oh, groovy," said Raphael. "So this is what boo-coo money looks like."

"Let's see what he has in his private collection," Max said.

"I thought you'd been here before."

"We watched a few pictures together. Sometimes, we come here during production to check out dailies."

They pushed aside a dark, heavy curtain and entered the projection room.

Max added, "But he's never let me inside the holy of holies."

A pair of stout projectors stood side by side, ready to trade off the job of keeping the movie rolling. In a corner, another machine awaited its task of rewinding reels.

He didn't care about them. He gawked at the shelves loaded with feature films spooled in shiny sheet-metal canisters. Plucking one at random, he read the embossed lettering on a strip of tape: ON THE BEACH (1959), REEL #1.

"This is freaking awesome," said Raphael.

"I've never envied Jordan for anything until right now," Max said.

He spoke in a quiet, reverent voice. For him, being in this film library demanded a level of awe akin to how a pilgrim felt visiting a holy site.

So many landmark movies were in attendance. The industry's first significant baby steps. The pioneers and groundbreakers of the fifties and sixties. The auteurs and artists of the seventies, the last powerhouse movie era before the studio giants ruined it all with formula blockbusters.

He shivered a little, though it was mostly the blasting air-conditioning.

Raphael wore a surprised smile. "He actually has excellent taste. I see Taxi Driver, Dog Day Afternoon, Network—"

"Hold the phone."

"What did you find?"

Max cradled a clunky, heavy can.

"Mary's Birthday," he whispered.

Despite Halloween's impact, fans still debated who started the slasher era. With its surprising shower murder, Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho kicked it off. No, Herschell Gordon Lewis's schlocky Blood Feast did. Wes Craven's brutal The Last House on the Left. Tobe Hooper's nightmarish The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The creepy Giallo movement in Italy helmed by the likes of Mario Bava and Dario Argento.

And of course Arthur Golden's Mary's Birthday. The tragic, never-released 1972 horror film so apocryphal it was practically an urban legend.

Max opened the platter and inspected the reel. Then his gaze shifted to the projectors.

"No way, pal," Raphael said.

"Yes way."

"First off, I didn't come to a Bel Air party to take in an old movie. Second, Ashlee Gibson is out there doing God knows what without my admiration. And finally, oh yeah, if Mr. Lyman catches us in his library, he'll probably let you off with a slap, but he'll burn my career to the ground. All of which adds up to me splitting."

Max looked at him with wide eyes. "This isn't the actual picture."

"Okay, then—"

"It's the footage of the accident."

Before Faces of Death, the Mondo series that claimed to depict real death, there was the Mary's Birthday tragedy in 1972.

Raphael slowly nodded. "Yes."

"Yes?"

"Right on."

Max set down his drink. From under the projection table, he pulled a pair of cotton gloves and a can of compressed air. Fitting on the gloves, he sprayed the rollers and sockets to blow off any errant dust. Raphael's eyes widened in silent dread, as if he already regretted the horrors that would soon confront him.

Max mounted the reel and threaded the leader into the projector. He flipped the toggle switch. The xenon light bulb flared to life. The machine clattered as the motor sucked the film under constant tension to the bladed shutter and across the hot light beam.

The cast of Mary's Birthday, Arthur Golden's schlock classic, suddenly smiled at him from Jordan's theater screen. The grainy footage showed only visuals, as no one had been recording sound. The lack of brightness and color correction only made it more raw and compelling.

The movie's story: When Mary was thirteen, she attended her best friend Jane's birthday party. In a fit of jealousy, she inadvertently caused the girl's death. Now Mary is a recluse about to turn eighteen and host a party at which she hopes to leave her childhood and horrible guilt behind.

No such luck, as reaching adulthood makes her fair game for Jane's angry spirit and her signature weapon—the knife used to carve her birthday cake.

Violence ensues at Mary's party, claiming everyone she loves until she finds a way to make amends with her dead and vengeful bestie. The usual justice theme played to the usual horrific Greek-myth level of disproportion, though Max always wondered if something else was going on with these villains. Perhaps a simple, brutal desire to destroy the cool, popular kids and the pedestal they stood on.

While shot on 35mm with the newest camera on the market, by all accounts, the picture had been assembled so poorly as to look homemade. An overbaked passion project by a wealthy amateur director whom rumor had it dabbled in the occult and might have been insane.

Despite all that, Mary's Birthday made history in that it served as a gory prototype for what would become the eighties slasher flick.

It was also never released. Instead, it entered a genre all its own.

According to legend, the tragedy started like this:

On the last night of production, in a grassy field outside Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Golden and his crew prepared for the martini shot. The final shot that would wrap the film's principal photography—

A mile away, Harry Stinson, an old friend of Golden's, warmed up his helicopter to grab some bird's-eye B-roll footage of the town—

Helga Frost, the nineteen-year-old West German beauty who played Mary, took some extra time in her trailer preparing for the scene. This afforded the director the chance to pull the rest of the cast together to thank them for all their hard work—

And so Arthur Golden set his camera rolling to capture what for him would certainly be an emotional moment as his dark vision neared its realization.

In Jordan's private theater, the projector whirred. The reels turned. The warming air around the machine carried a whiff of ozone. Dust particles danced in front of its flaring beam.

Max absorbed the silent moving images with a fixed, unblinking stare.

Sporting a mix of early-seventies styles from long hair to bell-bottoms, the actors listen attentively in the afternoon sunlight.

Responding to whatever Golden is saying, they break into smiles. Many wipe tears from cheeks. They laugh as some shoot knowing glances at each other.

Jared Bearden, a veteran B-movie actor, accepts their applause with a sheepish grin. He raises his hand for a quick wave as a few of the actors turn to gaze at something off-screen, mouths working.

Someone points. Part of the crowd flinches.

The helicopter appears as a glimpse at the top of the frame. Angled down and out of control due to mechanical failure, spraying gasoline everywhere.

Rotating seven times per second, the blades sweep the actors and mow them to pieces like a giant lawnmower. Blunt blades that crush, mangle, and eventually sever everything in their whirl.

The resulting carnage at Wilkes-Barre is something Hollywood with all its costly modern special effects could never truly replicate.

Blood fountains among smashed bodies and spinning limbs in a rolling wave that slaughters most of the cast of twenty-one in mere seconds. The survivors squirm or sit dazed in the gore. Armless, Bearden thrashes in a pile of body parts, mouth open in a pitiful soundless scream.

The crew rushes forward to help.

Then the frame jumps as the helicopter crashes in a flaring off-screen fireball. It lights a searing barbecue clear across the remaining cast and crew that turns them all into a living, dancing bonfire, though none of them live very long.

The camera stays on the blaze for several seconds.

The screen went dark. The film crackled in the projector.

Max's heart pounded. He struggled to breathe.

"That's it," he gasped. "He turned off the camera."

Nonetheless, the footage continued to roll in his mind. The cast's faces, tired and happy and emotional about wrapping and going their separate ways. The sudden slaughter as the blades mowed them like bloody grass. The horrified crew racing to help only to burn to death in a massive blaze.

Helicopter accidents were sadly somewhat common in Hollywood. During shooting of The Twilight Zone: The Movie in 1982, a low-flying helicopter crash killed actor Victor Morrow and two children. World War III, High Road to China, Braddock: Missing in Action III, and other productions all saw tragic helicopter-related deaths in the eighties.

None, however, occurred on the same macabre scale as Mary's Birthday back in '72. Max didn't believe in hexes and curses, but if any film had a curse, it had to be that film. Not even The Exorcist—which premiered in Italy across the street from an old church that got struck by lightning, causing its cross to tumble smoking to the ground—came close. Or The Conqueror, shot downwind of an atom bomb testing site, nearly half of whose crew wound up getting cancer.

Even after receiving so much, Max wanted more.

Raphael blanched. "Jesus Christ, that was horrible. It was real, man. Why did I watch that?"

"It's affecting," Max agreed.

"Affecting? I fought in 'Nam. Which sucked. The absolute worst sucking ever. And I never saw anything there like what I just watched in that film."

But it was affecting. Max couldn't think of a different word.

Actually, he could. Heartbreaking, tragic, and sickening all came to mind.

Also strangely compelling. Fascinating. Haunting. Beautiful, even.

The car crash you can't turn away from, on a much grander scale.

But affecting covered all of it, summed it up.

And more than that: inspiring. Like some kind of gold standard.

Raphael eyed him. "You know, man, you scare me sometimes."

Max blinked, surprised and a little pleased. "I do?"

"Honestly, I wonder at times what you would have ended up doing if you hadn't become a director."

Who knew, really? But Max was a director.

His strongest reaction to watching the Mary's Birthday accident reel was he wished he'd made it.