I’ve recently read the book Horror Show by Greg Kihn. Published in 1996, it’s a tale about 1950s shlock filmmaker Landis Woodley (think Ed Wood with a little William Castle), and his entourage as they make the best movie a tiny budget has to offer–with real corpses. And, unbeknownst to them, a demon.
Kihn really gets the mindset of a horror fan: “All the crazy dreams that had been causing the kid sleepless nights since adolescence were suddenly real. It was just as he’d always suspected. There were monsters. Even at the movies, when he covered his eyes because he was too afraid to see something that he knew would haunt his dreams for years to come, he always peeked. He had to. Let me see. I want to see it.“
But before he was an author, Kihn was the frontman of the ’80s two-hit wonder (the other hit being “The Break-up Song”) Greg Kihn Band. The music video for “Jeopardy” reflects anxiety about the lifelong commitment of marriage by depicting couples as bickering Cronenbergian mutations. Check it out!
