Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
THEATER OF BLOOD, December 11, 2002
Joe Moreson is one of those nice, likeable computer geeks who gets all the dirty work. He has a boss who hates him and the feelings mutual. He has a best friend, Kelsie Brown, who is everything Joe is not. Then one day out of the blue, Moreson's strongly supportive wife, Karen, shows him an advertisement for the sale of an old movie theater in a little town not far from San Francisco. Seems like Joe's dream is to run his own movie theater, and this is just what the boy needs. Right? Wrong!!!
"65mm" is perhaps the most depressing and "hopeless" horror novel I've ever read. Needless to say, Joe's dream turns into a nightmare, as the theater is actually "alive" and has its own minions to keep feeding it. Seems like every Friday, Joe shows a movie that gets the audience to look at and confront their "Hiding Self." Now, what in the world this really means is beyond me, and Hoover doesn't really explain it. Unless you consider Kelsie's hidden fear of doing something to his rabbits when he was a youngster? Joe goes batty; Karen starts to worry; Kelsie comes in to save the day. However, Kelsie and company have to be some of the most inept and outright stupid heroes we've ever encountered. And the villains are so despicable, they border on nausea.
Hoover's book is really just a shade shy of being sadistic. The gore is thrown on for effect; the heroes never seem to get anywhere, and even when they do, there's even more thrown at them. Poor Kelsie suffers inhuman torture at the hands of the minions; his friend, Jeff, is also subjected to cruel and unnecessary torture.
I'm not a prude, and I like the gore to be appropriate, but this sadistic story makes you feel uncomfortable and when you're done, you can only say, "What in the world was Hoover trying to do?". Fortunately, the book didn't sell too well and the inevitable sequel has never surfaced. In fact, Hoover hasn't written since this. Hope she's on Prozac!
NOT RECOMMENDED.
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2.0 out of 5 stars
Celluloid horrors, April 8, 2004
Joe Moreson has always wanted to own a movie theater, one where he could screen and share his favorite classics. So when the opportunity presents itself, he finally decides he's had it with his current job and takes the plunge. He picks up and moves to Fareland, one of those small towns where everyone knows each other. But the Fareland Theatre is doing much more than enabling Joe to fulfill his dreams. He has suddenly become erratic and malevolent, detached from his wife, and perhaps from reality itself.Having read Hoover's first, the very original psychological horror novel Shadow Twin (also published by Dell Abyss), I was expecting something very fresh and different. But 65mm is basically just another presentation of horror story standards: the small town with a dark secret, a lurking evil force, and increasing insanity leading to a broken marriage. The setting of the theater is just that; it isn't really relevant. The story itself is unsatisfying and seems like it was aborted at too early a stage. The individual parts don't gel. A significant character is killed, but it never has any bearing on the rest of the story, least of all on the character to whom this person is most important. Murders are uncovered with a mysterious message, but we never find out what it means. And the evil force at the heart of it all is hardly defined. It's fine to keep a mystery, but at least give the reader something. It's just sloppy. 65mm is a surprising disappointment. It isn't a terrible book, but it will probably seem too familiar to most readers. By all means seek out the author's first novel, but give this one a pass.
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