Greg Kihn's debut Horror Show, is easiy one of the best genre novels I read in the sparse 1990s. It's a wild, loving ode to the glorious days of B-Movie history. It made the final Stoker ballot as Best first Novel of 1995, and it should have won. Kihn is an outsider to the cliquish little world of horror, and a pop star to boot. Not even a cool pop star. I believe it hurt his chances.
Despite that, Horror Show was a publishing success, and two years later Kihn followed it up with Big Rock Beat, a semi-sequel that features some of the same characters.
It's a decade later in the Kihntinuum History, and filmmaker Landis Woodley has been hired to make a beach movie. Think Frankie and Annette, but with a little spooky shenanigans thrown in for good measure. The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini is an obvious inspiration.
Greg Kihn isn't snidely looking down his nose on these type of exploitation opuses. He has genuine affection for them, and the poor bastard has wasted as much of his life on trash cinema as I have.
You have Landis, kind of an amalgamation of William Castle, Ed Wood, and Roger Corman. Beau, a hippie rocker from the burgeoning freak scene up north in San Francisco, is recruited to provide rockin' tunes. There's an aging bombshell starlet trying to shed her sex symbol reputation and turn on to the new generation. A sweet ingenue straight from the midwest whose innocence is as doomed as Fabian's singing career. A shadowy investor from south of the border is on hand to make sure his Cartel father's money isn't wasted. And the car James Dean died in, which may or may not be cursed, is going to be used in the movie.
At any rate, people are dying, things are weird, but the show must go on.
Big Rock Beat is the second of three loosely-related books by Greg Kihn. Horror Show being the first, and the trilogy ends with Mojo Hand.
All three books are fast, furious, funny, genuinely scary, and extremely well-written. I wish more horror novels were as rewarding and fun as these. I also wish Greg Kihn was still writing 'em like this.
Written by Mark Sieber
Despite that, Horror Show was a publishing success, and two years later Kihn followed it up with Big Rock Beat, a semi-sequel that features some of the same characters.
It's a decade later in the Kihntinuum History, and filmmaker Landis Woodley has been hired to make a beach movie. Think Frankie and Annette, but with a little spooky shenanigans thrown in for good measure. The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini is an obvious inspiration.Greg Kihn isn't snidely looking down his nose on these type of exploitation opuses. He has genuine affection for them, and the poor bastard has wasted as much of his life on trash cinema as I have.
You have Landis, kind of an amalgamation of William Castle, Ed Wood, and Roger Corman. Beau, a hippie rocker from the burgeoning freak scene up north in San Francisco, is recruited to provide rockin' tunes. There's an aging bombshell starlet trying to shed her sex symbol reputation and turn on to the new generation. A sweet ingenue straight from the midwest whose innocence is as doomed as Fabian's singing career. A shadowy investor from south of the border is on hand to make sure his Cartel father's money isn't wasted. And the car James Dean died in, which may or may not be cursed, is going to be used in the movie.
At any rate, people are dying, things are weird, but the show must go on.
Big Rock Beat is the second of three loosely-related books by Greg Kihn. Horror Show being the first, and the trilogy ends with Mojo Hand.
All three books are fast, furious, funny, genuinely scary, and extremely well-written. I wish more horror novels were as rewarding and fun as these. I also wish Greg Kihn was still writing 'em like this.
Written by Mark Sieber
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