Hotter Blood: More Tales of Erotic Horror

THE SPLICER Don D'Ammassa

In retrospect, Scott suspected that the first tampering with the film program had occurred during the Godzilla Festival.

Saturday was always science-fiction night at the Managansett Cinema, just as Fridays were reserved for horror films, Mondays for swashbucklers, and so on. Old Man Bradford couldn't afford to show first-run movies in the town's only theater, but he made up for it by sheer volume. Every show was a double feature on weeknights, triples on weekends.

The same economy was reflected in the staff. Candy Carter sold tickets from one side of her booth, candy and popcorn from the other. Scott collected the tickets at the entrance to the theater, did a brief stint as an usher, then climbed the narrow stairway to the projection booth. It was a real struggle on Friday nights, their only busy nights, when they played to a nearly full house, but generally there were less than two dozen customers, primarily teenage couples so preoccupied with each other he could have shown three hours of blank tape without their noticing anything. Scott would never have lasted three years in this job if it required any real initiative or brainpower; he operated the projector mechanically and possessed no understanding at all of the means by which celluloid images were transmitted to the screen. His boss occasionally made disapproving sounds about his shoulder-length blond hair, of which Scott was inordinately proud, but had never pressed the issue, perhaps because Scott was willing to accept such low wages.

Scott had long since stopped paying much attention to the movies, almost all of which he had seen several times before, preferring to spend the time lost in one daydream or another, usually involving the dispensation of large sums of cash or the resolution of dramatic political crises for which only Scott Barkin had the necessary personal qualities. Infrequently, there were sexual overtones, but carnal acts or nudity made him uncomfortable, on the screen or off it.

Which is probably why he noticed the girl in the torn dress during Godzilla versus the Smog Monster.

It was the third of three Godzilla movies that night, and Scott was anxious for it to end so that he could rewind the film, check to be certain the theater was empty, and lock up for the night. The smog monster had just taken to the air on its latest rampage when the camera shifted to a crowd shot, the usual aggregation of frightened figures running for whatever ineffective shelter they could find. At the forefront of the crowd, a slender Japanese woman fell to the ground, her blouse slipping from one shoulder. As she struggled to rise, someone stepped on the hem of her dress, which tore all the way to her waistline, briefly revealing a swath of white thigh before she was swallowed up by the crowd.

Scott only noticed it because even that small hint of sexuality seemed anachronistic in a Japanese monster movie of the 1970s.

A week or two later, while the original King Kong was passing across the screen, Scott was startled by the giant ape's rather revealing exploration of Fay Wray's clothing, at one point exposing a clearly naked breast for a split second. He vaguely recalled reading that some censored footage from the original print had been restored, so he just shook his head and chuckled.

It was the torrid love scene between Anne Francis and Leslie Nielsen in Forbidden Planet that finally led him to suspect that something was wrong. It was part of a double feature, opening with the classic The Thing. Margaret Sheridan had seemed somewhat lightly clad for a posting in Antarctica, and she displayed a rather fuller figure than Scott remembered, but otherwise there had been no note of incongruity in that film. But when Nielsen and Francis began clutching at one another in evident passion during the next show, Scott knew something was up.

"What the hell?" He rose from his chair and moved forward, peering out through the small window at the screen shimmering below. Nielsen had one hand closed quite obviously over a breast, while his free hand worked at the fastenings of her blouse. The ultimate revelation was only put off when Dr. Morbius, portrayed by Walter Pidgeon, put in an untimely appearance.

When the theater had emptied some time later, Scott stood staring at the coiled film. There had been no discernible reaction from the audience; could he have imagined the entire sequence?

"Hey, can I go now?"

Startled, Scott turned to see Candy standing nonchalantly in the projection-room doorway.

"Yeah, I suppose so. Everything all set downstairs?"

She nodded, chewing gum energetically. "Of course. I'll deposit the box office take on my way home. You okay? You look kind of funny?"

"Me? I'm fine. See you tomorrow." He was aware that he sounded distracted, but he couldn't help it. Absentmindedly, he followed her downstairs to the lobby.

"Okay, sure. See you." She watched him another second, then turned and left.

That's when he noticed the kid with the thick-rimmed glasses standing at one side of the lobby.

"Excuse me, mister." The kid stepped out of the shadows. Scott judged him to be barely into his teens. "Was that some special cut of Forbidden Planet or something?"

So he hadn't imagined it! But he didn't want to give anything away to this kid. Not until he had a chance to think. Scott kept his expression neutral. "What do you mean? It looked fine to me."

The boy seemed confused. "Some of that stuff wasn't in the original film. I thought maybe it was a restored version, like they did with King Kong, you know."

Scott shrugged. "I don't know, kid; I just show 'em. Sometimes we get the old ones spliced together wrong. Come on, let's go. I have to lock up."

Later that night, somewhere deep in his brain, Scott conceived the idea that this odd variant of the original film might be valuable, but try as he might, he could think of no way to take advantage of the situation. It would have to be sent back to the distributor in the morning; even if he had the facilities to copy it first, he had no idea how to make use of his discovery. The thought that he was missing a chance to make money, possibly quite a lot of money, was disturbing.

The very next weekend, Scott realized he had misjudged the situation.

It was a triple feature this time, starting with Gene Barry in The War of the Worlds. Scott paid little attention until the final moments, then moved his seat to a better vantage point. Next up was Silent Running, one of the few movies he still enjoyed watching, primarily because of the cleverly conceived robot characters. He had heard somewhere that they had actually hired amputees to play the parts, standing on their hands inside the confining costumes, and he never tired of trying to imagine how each shot had been constructed.

Within minutes, Scott realized that something was wrong. He knew without question that the crew member named Wolf was not a tall, slender redheaded female. At least, not until now. He was so stunned that he never even noticed later when, during the fight scene between Raquel Welch and Martine Beswicke in One Million Years B.C., the former's furry bra was completely removed.

He waited impatiently for the last disheveled couple to fix their clothing and leave the auditorium, then descended to the lobby and helped Candy finish her cleaning up. She looked at him suspiciously — he had never offered any kind of assistance before — but made no comment.

"Walk me to the bank?" There had been two muggings in downtown Managansett that week, and Candy had expressed concern about her own safety.

"Sorry." He shook his head. "I've still got things to do before I leave."

She bit her lip. "I can wait, I guess. I'd feel better if I had some company while I'm carrying all that money."

Scott made an impatient noise. "It's not even a hundred dollars, Candy, for Christ's sake."

"The muggers don't know that!"

He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "Look, just leave it for me. I'll make the deposit myself on my way home, all right?"

She looked dubious. "I don't know. I'm really supposed to do that myself."

"Then do it and stop whining at me!" he exploded. "I'm not paid to be your bodyguard or your nursemaid."

Candy's eyes widened and her mouth opened as though she were about to respond in kind. But then her features twisted angrily and she snatched up the deposit bag, whirled, and stormed out of the theater.

Scott carefully remounted the film on the projector and restarted it, convinced that his fortune was made. The credits played through and the story began.

Wolf was once again a young actor named Cliff Potts.

That evening, lying awake in bed, Scott Barkin reviewed the possibilities. There had been an opportunity for someone to switch copies while he was downstairs arguing with Candy, but that seemed highly improbable. He might be going crazy, have hallucinated the entire thing, but he dismissed that immediately because clearly that kid had seen the same thing he had in Forbidden Planet. The only other alternatives that occurred to him were that… somehow… the images from the film were being altered before they reached the screen, or that there was a way to make more than one person hallucinate the same way. He had no idea how this could e achieved, but perhaps some brilliant but reclusive inventor had developed such a device and was testing it secretly. Certainly Managansett, Rhode Island, was pretty remote, intellectually if not physically. The entire town seemed to lag a decade or more behind the rest of the world.

There still might be some way he could take advantage of the situation, but to do so, he would have to identify the source of the alterations. Tomorrow was comedy night, Arsenic and Old Lace and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. He was familiar with both movies and should be able to spot any variations. Somehow he would have to devise a method of tracing these changes back to their source. He passed the night restlessly trying to develop a strategy to deal with the situation.

Disappointingly, Sunday's screening passed without event, as did those throughout the week. Scott was ready to chalk everything up to fatigue and tension when he showed up for work on Saturday.

The Blob passed uneventfully enough, Steve McQueen saving the day in the final moments. The classic was followed by the darkly humorous sequel Beware the Blob, one of the few Scott had not seen before. His unfamiliarity caused him to miss some subtle divergences from the original, the highly revealing dress Carol Lynley wore during the party sequence, the dissolving of Cindy Williams's clothing during her death scene. The third feature, however, was another of his favorites.

Originally, Bradford had ordered The Stuff, another Blob-like film to complete the triple feature. The distributor had accidentally substituted Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which, while mismatched, was to Scott's thinking a far superior movie.

His enjoyment turned to excitement during the scene in which Richard Dreyfuss and Teri Garr had a hysterical argument in the bathroom. Frustrated, confused, even frightened, Dreyfuss/Roy struck out at his wife. Garr/ Ronnie fell back against the bathroom wall in astonishment, then began to struggle as her distraught husband tore at her bathrobe and began making violent love to her. They were both naked when their children arrived to investigate the disturbance.

Scott rushed downstairs as the film was ending to ensure that he could surreptitiously watch the patrons on their way out. To his disappointment, everyone looked perfectly ordinary. There were several young couples who came regularly to neck in the back row, two young males who appeared to have arrived separately, a couple of elderly men, one distracted woman who constantly subvocalized to herself, and the kid with the glasses.

Scott crossed to intercept him, trying to be casual. "How'd you like the show?"

The kid peered up at him dubiously. "I don't know where you get these cuts, mister, but if my mom finds out what you're showing here, she'll never let me come again."

"Let's not tell her then, right?"

When the theater was empty, Candy locked the door from the inside. She hadn't forgiven him his churlishness. "Don't you have things to do?" She glared at him until he turned away, but he hadn't even noticed. His mind was racing at full speed.

Just to be certain, he rechecked the tape before leaving for the night. The film now displayed the original version.

Obviously, whatever device was being used was quite small, virtually undetectable. Even if it was some kind of hallucinatory gas, it would have to be contained in something. Perhaps he could at least identify who was bringing it into the theater. Scott began paying more attention to the movies he showed, but as he had expected, nothing happened during the next several days. He had concluded by now that whoever was responsible came on Saturday nights only, for the science-fiction program.

The following Saturday, a notebook and pen were at hand. Scott knew few customers by name, but most of them were familiar enough that he could mark down some significant characteristic by which to separate one from another. He made twenty-seven entries in all, either while taking tickets, or later, during a leisurely stroll through the theater before bringing down the house lights.

The Creature from the Black Lagoon passed uneventfully, but Barbarella was transformed.

Scott knew something was up right from the opening sequence when the nude Jane Fonda received her assignment. He couldn't remember how explicit the original had been, but this screening was downright lewd. Judging by the murmuring from the audience, the explicit sex on screen had even attracted the attention of the back-row patrons. And it didn't end there. Each encounter was altered in some fashion, always designed to provide longer and more revealing glimpses of Barbarella's body. The scene involving the now transparent pleasure machine was so erotic that it evoked a shocked outcry from someone in the audience.

The kid gave him a strange look at the end of the show, but rushed out of the lobby without speaking.

The next several weeks involved a painful process of elimination. Scott had decided to drop from his original list anyone who was absent during a subsequent incident. David Warner's rape of Mary Steenburgen in Time After Time eliminated seven people the very next weekend, but it took two more films to eliminate another five, and there were still eleven contenders. Confusing the issue was an influx of new viewers, primarily high school students lured by rumors of X-rated films. Scott's quarry must have noticed something amiss as well, because there were no alterations for almost a month, long enough for attendance to dip back to its usual level.

Scott was on the verge of giving up when the changes resumed. They had been growing increasingly daring all along, and the single-mindedly sexual nature of the alterations continued. But now the sex was frequently distorted, even violent. The mute girl, Nova, was subjected to some sort of painful electrical stimulation in Planet of the Apes. and the Morlocks tied Weena over an open fire for a prolonged sequence in The Time Machine.

For three straight weeks, Scott was unable to eliminate any of his candidates, the list of whom now consisted of two teenagers, the woman who talked to herself, an elderly man who seemed to fall asleep frequently, a man in his mid-twenties suffering from the worst case of acne Scott had ever seen, and an overweight middle-aged man whom Scott had chosen for no particular reason as the most likely culprit. The kid with the glasses stopped coming after Dian the Beautiful was brutally ravished in At the Earth's Core.

On the last Saturday in November, Scott got lucky.

For one thing, it was sleeting and promised to get worse. Candy had been glancing nervously outdoors ever since she arrived, even though she lived only six blocks away. Only seven people bought tickets, and two of them were among those whom Scott had already eliminated. There was also a middle-aged couple he'd never seen before. That left the acne case, the middle-aged man, and one teenage boy, the only one who always sat by himself.

The first feature was Night of the Comet. For a long time, Scott was afraid that there would be no change in the script, that this would be another fruitless night. But when the insane stockboys stripped and spanked the two sisters before tying them up, he knew his quarry was in the theater.

But there were still three possibilities.

Then the middle-aged man rose and walked up the aisle to the door, zipping his coat as he did so. Scott ran quickly downstairs and confirmed that the man had indeed left the theater. Two suspects remained, Acne Face and the quiet boy.

The second feature was Wavelength, a relatively low-key story about a young couple who stumble on a secret military base where three extraterrestrials are imprisoned. Scott watched intently but with growing unease. If nothing changed, did that mean the older man was his quarry? The brief nude scene early in the movie passed without alteration, and Scott settled back in his chair thoughtfully, trying to decide how best to approach the man.

The story unrolled before him, but Scott's mind was elsewhere as Robert Carradine and Cherie Currie made their way through the tunnels, eventually to be discovered and captured. He was so preoccupied, in fact, that he never did see how the girl's sweater was lost during the struggle with the guard, and only the brutality of the beating administered afterward was enough stimulus to startle him from his reverie.

Scott was downstairs waiting even before the closing credits began to scroll across the screen. Just possibly something in the demeanor of one of the two remaining suspects would tip him off. Acne Face walked by, eyes downcast, hands tucked into coat pockets, and never even looked in Scott's direction.

The quiet boy never came out at all.

Scott checked the theater thoroughly, but there was no sign of him. Something of his perplexity must have shown because Candy asked him what was wrong.

"One of the customers never came out," he explained. "That mousy little kid with the glasses who's in here all the time. Maybe I should check the rest room again."

"Don't bother." She sighed. "He took off right after the first picture ended. I heard him asking for a ride."

Reality seemed to freeze in place. "Are you sure? He left before the second feature started?"

She shrugged. "About then, yeah. The older guy who comes in here a lot is his neighbor, I guess. What difference does it make?"

Scott never answered her question, never even heard it, and a few seconds later, Candy turned away, shaking her head.

The following Saturday, Scott was waiting for Acne Face, having decided upon his strategy the night before.

"I know what you've been doing," he whispered as he accepted the ticket. Startled eyes met his own, then darted away.

"I don't…" The sound drifted off.

"Wait for me outside, half an hour after the show ends." Scott spoke more firmly. "I won't tell anyone if you do what I say."

There was no reply, but the look of guilt that passed over the acne-scarred features was as good as a confession.

There were no changes in that evening's double feature.

"I'm Scott." He offered his gloved hand in the darkness outside of the theater. The slouched figure standing in the shadow made no effort to respond. "What's your name?"

"Chuck. Chuck Scusset."

"Pleased to meet you, Chuck. Look, it's freezing out here. Why don't we go to some place quiet and talk about this, somewhere warm?"

And so it was that they ended up in Chuck Scusset's cluttered apartment less than six blocks from the theater.

Scott was no fanatic about neatness, but he was appalled by his surroundings. Chuck lived in what amounted to a bed-sitting room with an adjoining half bath on the third floor of one of Managansett's seedier apartment buildings. Other than the bed, there was a single folding chair and a card table, no other furnishings. Chuck's clothing was apparently stored in two cheap suitcases and a half dozen cardboard boxes he had retrieved from behind one of the local markets. Chuck had taken the chair, so Scott was forced to sit on the bed, the only relatively uncluttered area available.

It was evident that Chuck was a science-fiction fan. There were piles of genre paperbacks and digest-size magazines lining every wall, covering the card table, under the bed, filling the few shelves mounted on the walls. A model of the starship Enterprise stood in one corner of the room, surrounded by figurines of monsters, aliens, and space-suited humans. There was no other indication whatsoever of human habitation except for an occasional candy wrapper or empty potato chip bag.

"So how do you do it?" Scott asked.

"I didn't do anything," came the sullen reply.

"No shit? The movies just changed themselves and you let me come up here just because you're a nice guy."

No response.

Scott leaned forward, hands on knees. "Listen, Chuck, you're messing with copyrighted material here. You could get into a lot of trouble doing that."

"I don't hurt anything!"

Scott sat back, sighing with satisfaction. "Ah, but you do change things, don't you?"

For a few short seconds, it seemed as if Chuck were going to retreat into denial once more, but at last he nodded.

"All right, then, we can work out a deal, can't we?" Scott didn't wait for an answer. "Show me what you do it with."

Chuck looked away, apparently staring at a water stain on the far wall. "Can't."

Scott made an impatient noise. "Cut the crap, Chuck. You already admitted you're doing it, now show me the goddamned thing, whatever it is!"

The head snapped back in his direction and the lips grew firmer. "I can't! I do it with, you know, my head. Like, I imagine how I want the story to be, and it changes."

This wasn't at all what Scott expected, and he wasn't sure he liked it.

"You mean, there's no machine or anything like that? It's just something you can do and no one else?"

Chuck nodded.

Visions of a vanishing fortune raced through his head. But perhaps everything was not lost. He could arrange private showings, charge hundreds, maybe even thousands of dollars for the privilege of viewing an altered version of some movie or another. Maybe Chuck could substitute Cary Grant for Clark Gable in Gone With the Wind or something. But wouldn't the studios want a big cut if he did that or maybe even file an injunction or lawsuit against him?

"Listen, Chuck, there might be a lot of money in this for us."

"What do you mean?"

Scott gave a general summary of his ideas, not wanting to be too specific, partly because he didn't want Chuck to realize how nebulous his plans were, partly because he wanted to give the impression that arcane knowledge was necessary. It wouldn't do to allow Chuck to believe he could manage on his own.

"How much can you change things anyway? Could you maybe do a whole movie from nothing?"

Chuck shook his head and almost smiled. He'd begun to relax a bit, Scott noticed, but the set of his shoulders and neck was still alert, intent. "No, I can only, you know, guide things as they go along. If I try to change too much, I lose control. It's like there's too much to keep track of."

Scott nodded. "Too bad, but I kind of thought that might be the case. That's why you only changed some of the movies, right?"

"I guess." With the sudden mood swings that Scott had already begun to recognize, Chuck was taciturn again.

"How come all the sex anyway? That's what gave you away, you know."

Chuck looked away, his hands twisting in his lap, un-speaking.

"Come on, we're going to be friends, you and me. We don't need to have any secrets. If we're going to get rich, I have to understand how this works, how you make it happen, how much you can do."

Without turning away from his contemplation of the wall, Chuck shook his head.

Exasperated, Scott slapped his knees with his palms. "Listen, Chuck, I'm trying to be nice about this. Remember, I know about you; I can tell people what you've been doing."

His companion didn't speak, but he began twisting in his seat and his head moved nervously. Scott thought he had things sired up pretty well, decided it was necessary to push his point now, before Chuck had time to think things through.

"How would you like it if I told people you were a sexual pervert, Chuck? Would you like that?"

Chuck's head swung around, eyes wide, mouth moving now, hands clenched together so firmly that the knuckles were white. "I wasn't hurting anybody! It was all just pretend!"

"Sure, just pretend sex. And pretty rough sex, too. Rape and beatings and pain, right, Chuck? That's the way you like it, isn't it?"

Head twisting from side to side, Scott's companion seemed to be searching for an escape route. Convinced that he had his victim securely hooked, he leaned back, lying full length on the bed.

"But that's okay, Chuck. I won't tell anyone that you're a sicko whose only value to anyone, including himself, is that he has this trick with his head that lets him change the ways motion pictures appear on the screen. As long as you play ball, your secret is safe."

"No! No one's gonna tell again, not ever."

At first, the words and the tone were so out of place, Scott didn't register the meaning. He raised his upper torso, balancing on his elbows, and saw that Chuck's posture had altered completely. He was leaning forward now, hands raised and clenched into fists, and now his eyes met Scott's squarely.

"I'll do you just like I did my old man." And suddenly, inappropriately, Chuck began to smile.

Scott felt the change first in his chest, a funny, itching sensation that fell just short of pain. For a second, he thought he might be having a heart attack, unconsciously glancing down at his own body. Slowly but perceptibly, his chest was swelling out, forming a recognizable, if somewhat overstated, shape. The buttons on his shirt popped and the material peeled back, revealing not his familiar, mildly hairy chest but, instead, a creamy, abundant female bosom.

When he felt the itching between his legs, Scott panicked and tried to rise from the bed, only to discover that somehow the covers had twisted around his wrists and ankles, holding him firmly in place. Chuck Scusset rose, smiling broadly now, eyes preternaturally bright. The itching sensation grew more intense, and Scott felt the muscles in his thighs and calves shifting, assuming different contours. There was an odd pull at the base of his back, as though his pelvis had assumed a different shape, and his buttocks felt broader.

"What the fuck are you doing?" He tried to put force into the words, but they sounded desperate even to him. And the voice wasn't quite right; it was higher pitched, softer than he had expected.

"You've got good hair," Chuck spoke quietly, standing beside the bed. "I won't even have to change that." Scott's bonds pulled him back down onto the bed, retracting so that his limbs were drawn taut.

Chuck was holding a knife in one hand now, bending slowly down to undo Scott's belt with the other. "It's not just movies I can change, you know. They're just easier."

Scott was frozen by shock as his jeans were lowered, revealing far less than he was accustomed to seeing there. The blade flickered in front of his eyes.

"But this is much more fun," Chuck breathed as the knife lowered, for the first time.