Book Review: Silver Screams/David J. Schow, ed. (1988)

SILVER SCREAM, David J. Schow, ed., 1988, Tor Books, 500 pp.

The common theme in this anthology is the movies. The settings range from Hollywood backlot to broken down movie theaters and drive-ins with plenty in between. Ranging from sweet to brutal, balanced between stories of the supernatural and of psychological horror, featuring works from Robert Bloch, Clive Barker, Ramsey Campbell, Robert R. McCammon, F. Paul Wilson, and others, complete with an introduction by Texas Chainsaw Massacre director Tobe Hooper.

In Robert Bloch's much-reprinted "The Movie People," a Hollywood extra discovers a unique access to life after death in a sweet story that only the narrator finds unsettling while another tale focuses on a rural outdoor theater taken over by a bunch of slimy Christian theme park developers who discover it has a lethal soul of its own which they trigger. Then there's the movie serial hero Green Falcon, now an old man, maybe losing his grip as he chases a serial killer...who he might be unlucky enough to find. A dying killer secretly holes up in an old movie theater his soul becomes the deadly catalyst which acts out the emotions of countless past patrons.

These were anong my favorites stories. Many in this book are good, a couple I didn't get, a few I didn't care for. Par for the course in a collection. Certainly the theme is a natural for a true movie buff.

If you come across this book, it's worth a read-through. Not for kids, though. There are some sexual situations, but primarily, some of the stories get pretty strong with their imagery.

In "Danse Macabre," Stephen King wrote that everybody dies and horror stories focus often on the good death versus the bad death. The bad death falls into the "it could be worse" department. And some of these guys die bad. So be warned.