From Publishers Weekly
Ex-rocker and current L.A. deejay Kihn brings back the resourceful hero of Horror Show for another goofily entertaining movie-and-rock romp, this one set in 1967. B-movie director Landis Woodley hasn't made a picture in 10 years when Sol Kravitz hires him to direct a dubious low-budget rock-and-roll flick?beach bunnies, racing cars, drugs, monsters. Landis's cousin, Beau, lead guitarist with a San Francisco band bumming around L.A., is swept into the movie, as are an uptight, ambitious young actress, an aging cheesecake starlet and a drug-soaked Bela Lugosi look-alike. Financing difficulties develop between Sol and investor Ernie Shakleford, owner of Shang-a-Lang Records, which drive Sol and Landis into the lethal embrace of Hector Diablo, a handsome devil who makes macabre conditions on his loan to bail out the production, now shooting. Landis and Sol are forced to take on his sinister nephew Johnny Immaculata as a producer, and to use James Dean's "death car" (reconstructed) in the movie. But there's worse to come. Sol is the first man murdered as the plot twists and loops around the wacky denizens of Kihn's Hollywood?many of whom survive the curse, and two of whom (the epilogue hints) will return in a sequel to this giddy exercise in pulp fiction.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
B-movie director Landis Woodley is revered in Japan, but nobody in Hollywood will return his phone calls. So when he gets a chance to write and direct a rock-and-roll movie titled
Big Rock Beat, he doesn't hesitate, despite serious misgivings about the shady financing behind the production deal. When the film's producer is found dead in the movie's setpiece--James Dean's Porsche Spyder, salvaged and rebuilt--Landis is forced to deal directly with the mysterious moneyman El Diablo. Kihn's sequel to his widely praised debut,
Cadaver (1996), offers the same quirky humor and an entertaining cast of characters, including a Bela Lugosi^-like smack addict, a pure-hearted ingenue, and a talented musician who receives good advice from the ghost of Brian. Former rock musician Kihn makes good use of his background, and this is perhaps the only novel to ever feature a death by guitar (the victim is impaled on a Gibson Flying V). Short on plot but long on attitude, this lighthearted spoof should appeal to fans of Tim Burton's movie
Ed Wood. Joanne Wilkinson
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
