Sometimes, old Hollywood doesn't seem quite real. The grand melodramas, the over-the-top musicals, the larger than life personas of those glittering screen stars who seem to be made of smoke and legend a bit more than human flesh. At least, that's what the glamorous, teetering on surreal, world of classic cinema seems like to me at times. In Graham Masterton's 1988 horror tour-de-force "Mirror", the question is asked: what if those old screen stars didn't even quite view themselves as altogether real, and became shrouded in darkness because of it?
There are so many deep allegories for the greed, arrogance and corruption that has always run through Hollywood throughout the years that I barely know where to begin. But it all starts with an angelic little boy called "Boofuls" and the reign of terror that is somehow unleashed 50 years after his savage death. He was a bright, shining child star, a beacon for hope and optimism during the demoralizing days of the Great Depression. He was an exuberant musical star bringing cheer to the thousands of the American movie-going public; with his rosy cheeks, blond curls, and sweet face, he was dubbed the "boy Shirley Temple" but he meant even more to the public than just being a musical star. He touched a deep emotional chord with all of them, random women *literally* wanting to be his mother. In the midst of all this fame and all of this adulation, this dynamo "Boofuls" was caught up in something utterly horrific....which lead to his grandmother descending on him one evening after he returned from shooting his latest musical, and slaughtering him.
Hacked to death with absolutely no warning of madness from the grannie who up until then, had cared for him, bringing him to Hollywood in the first place where he had enchanted the audience in one hit after another, little Boofuls becomes a dark memory of this star maker land. His name is silenced, his movies are buried, and he is forgotten by generations of actors, producers, directors and writers. Until Martin Williams, a desperate, more than slightly obsessed screenwriter whose life has taken a turn for the worse, scoops up a mysterious mirror that once hung in Boofuls and his grandmother's mansion. Martin may be slogging along writing scripts for the mediocre TV shows of the day (the late 80s, an era where I was just beginning to open my eyes and set it on the small screen), but his hopes for fame and stardom of his own has never burned more brightly. And he is determined to find it in the life and death of the child who once cinematically rallied a nation.
When does dedication become dangerous? Martin finds out the depths of wrongness and evil when he buys this artifact. A man who is half in the past, the other half in the present, all he can see is the piece of history he is buying, his screenplay, his 'magnum opus', based on the short life and demise of the child propelling him on what he feels is his personal destiny towards notoriety.
I can tell you right now--what you get in this novel is FAR from what you would be expecting. Boofuls actually comes back to life because of the mirror Martin purchases as "inspiration", but this is the furthest thing from a mere ghost story. It is a representation of all that is unholy and wicked hiding in the crevices of a world beyond our imagining. And all of it unravels because of the actions of a thin, stressed-out writer with a penchant for corny musicals.
Imagination is the biggest part of movies. It can transport you to a different place, a different time. It can shape your emotions, lift you up or drag you down. Movies are the most useful tool of media and one of the most powerful platforms for change. With the legacy of Boofuls', there was something very powerful in his small presence back in the late 1930's, but that curious charisma he had as a musical star is what Martin discovers, is directly connected to his grisly death. That power and ability for change is heightened like nothing ever seen before with any other actor in film because of the horrifying and previously unknown details of the kid's life...and it is being used to come straight at the heads of audiences in Martin's time.
Martin Williams finds the mirror hidden in the dusty corners of an elderly woman's basement, in her down at the heels, garish retro house. Like a wilted, once elegant lady, her house has seen a better time. It's become an outdated monument to the past she shared with her late husband, frozen in the 1960's. That scene with the old woman who, kinda like Martin, has one foot in the past and the present (but just in a different way), is a brilliant little introduction to the surrealism he's entering. Before he's even stepped into the bizarro world of Boofuls', he's, in a sense, left his previous reality behind. The old woman's father-in-law had purchased the murdered child's furniture at a ghastly auction that was immediately held after his death and his grandmother's subsequent suicide, and has been languishing in her and her late hubby's home for the past 50 years. Martin can only afford one piece, the mirror, which he gleefully takes home to his small second floor apartment. From there, a little piece of hell opens up.
As Martin's carting his new prize possession away, I couldn't help wondering if the old lady had known something was....not quite right, sinister, with the mirror and was fobbing it off on her unsuspecting buyer. She had lived with it for decade after decade, it was a beautiful antique yet it was tossed aside, collecting grime. The little things in Masterton's story that are left unsaid are almost as intruiging as the obvious plot elements! The nuances are fascinating, as if the reader is peeling back the skin of a rotten piece of fruit, going down to the fetid core.
Back in 1939, Hollywoodland had been buzzing with production of Boofuls' musical Sweet Chariot. One of the biggest movies of its time, as famous as he was, the kid was poised to transition to a whole new level of superstardom when he was killed by his grandmother in the middle of it. Using the little boy's angelic face to their advantage, Hollywood had cast him as a singing, dancing street urchin turned angel, ready to sweep the country into the 1940's. Sweet Chariot is the unfinished chapter of this child's life that Martin's particularly obsessed with in his whole filmography. He has collected memorabilia from the making of the doomed project, and has included the last limo ride away from the set in his screenplay about Boofuls' life (tastefully leaving out his bloody demise).
The minute Martin places Boofuls' mirror in his home, the memory of the child comes back to LIFE. The mirror is crackling with life, the boy's energy, and it will not contain him any longer than Boofuls wants it to. After a series of events which include the abduction and trapping of Martin's landlord's five year old grandson Emilio (read it and you'll see where), and the yowling appearance of a monstrous cat in Martin's apartment, Boofuls' himself, in all his undead glory, appears in front of the terrified writer one fateful night. And he is here to stay this time.
Horror, truly fantastic horror, the kind that reaches deep in the reader and stirs up the most primal of emotions, bypasses what's just a good read and enters the realm of explosive. This is what Graham Masterton's achieved with his ode to classic cinema that shatters the rosy aesthetic in the most insidious way. You are sucked into this realm of deceit when one star after another of the golden era of Hollywood is revealed to be a part of the larger plan this magnetic little boy had set in place with the help of one woman, only called "Miss Redd"
His plan doesn't involve just the making of movies. At some point, Boofuls became someone and someTHING else...something that has made a promise to the illustrious stars the endless fame of their dreams, if ONLY they would help him in a supernatural mission that will encompass the world and the fates of every man, woman and child on it.
This is why Boofuls has returned, in 1988, in front of the screenwriter who wishes now that he'd never heard of the kid, picked up the mirror and unwittingly entered this contract Boofuls has arranged. You see, the kid is BACK and he wants to make the movie he never got to finish, Sweet Chariot, and he refuses to take no for an answer and head back to deads-ville. Or I should say, and you the reader will discover, is the realm of dark reflections.
What Masterton does here I was really surprised to see works so brilliantly because he is simply cramming SO much into this story! I'm not just talking about word count or number of pages but the sheer number of themes, ideas, perspectives, spiritual, emotional, intellectual and even psychological threads that you would think might result in a jumbled mess. The appropriately named Masterton is a master however because instead is this mind-blowing (and yes, I said mind-blowing--I use this word sparingly) work of art that is not only visually arresting but encompasses small yet significant nuances that keep your brain whirring, excited and yeah, in a little bit of shock, after you've read the last word.
What the essence of this horror tale is, is the cosmic battle between the forces of good and evil, darkness and light, the utter wrong and the pure, unvarnished right. How does an average man deal with this perpetual, ancient struggle for humankind’s collective immortal soul, especially when it’s captured within a child? Boofuls is not really ‘Boofuls’, the happy-go-lucky star of whimsical musicals but a disgusting little entity who has been manipulating everyone around him to do the wrong thing and do it gleefully because they’ve been promised BIG rewards. Imagine Damien from “The Omen” if he actually pretended to be lovable. The disturbing power of Masterton’s tale comes from how someone who seems so innocent can be so evil. Who’s more innocent than a child? What I also thought was a genius touch in the book was how *media* was used as the tool to conquer people’s minds and hearts and how easily corruptible the movie-making machine, Hollywood itself, is at its core. While I love film, and actually consider myself an old movie buff, I have also observed how many disturbing stories there’ve been to the history of Hollywood and filmmaking and the inner world of the movie stars themselves...scandals of abuse, exploitation (particularly of actresses and the old child stars who encountered mental/emotional abuse on the sets), and the drug and alcohol addictions of many stars that originated with the massive pressure and manipulations they faced as the ‘money-making machines’ of the old studio system. On the outside looking in, at first, classic Hollywood at first may seem like an enchanting palace filled with wonder and magic, but when the outside layers are peeled away, a lot of sordidness, misery and trauma becomes apparent and has destroyed the lives of many people in old Hollywood. Masterton takes the grime that could’ve very well been floating around the waters and gives it this paranormal punch. What can come out of the corruption that exists within a world that serves ONLY the superficial, which is comprised of men and women who exist only to represent their own image, but who are aging and petrified of the days when their fame and power run out? When irrelevancy consumes them and these images they’ve so carefully constructed, fade into half-remembered memory? What happens when they are so empty inside and obsessed with the vanity of their image that they decide to sell their very souls for the privilege of endless adulation? Not only is “Mirror” a phenomenal horror novel, it’s what I consider a fairly ruthless commentary on the narcissism which has always been present in Hollywood - actors and actresses who have lost themselves so thoroughly that they’ve mentally disconnected from the rest of humanity and view themselves as not just entertainers but elevated entities perpetually needing the feeding of their egos. ALL of this is directly tied into what the child star Boofuls had orchestrated back in the late 1930's before his death and not so surprisingly what he’s been able to organize in 1988 Los Angeles after his ghostly return. In "Mirror", these movie stars simply take their obsession with glory to a whole ‘nother level...and it’s mind-blowing, posing an extinction threat to the entire world.
I can’t say anymore about the book without spoiling the journey Graham Masterton takes you on and I wouldn’t want to! It kept me up for hours, it scared the hell outta me and most importantly, it caused me to think about important matters (albeit placed in a fictional construct) in a unique manner as a reader, writer and classic film fan. It made me think of very specific aspects of darkness vs. light and how it relates to this spiritual battleground called earth, the evil of the out of control ego (which goes back to the old Biblical theme of the ‘sin of pride’) and even the importance of not living in the past, as the screenwriter Martin Williams actually brings about his personal nightmare and ultimately the nightmare of thousands of people because he cannot relinquish the memory of this dead star and the screenplay he’s written that revolves around his life and demise. All of it combines into a magnificently compelling read and to be honest, richly deserving of a quality film adaptation. I came away thinking I’d read one of the best horror novels of the late 20th century in “Mirror”. I hope that you will enjoy this read as much as I did. Fair warning though--keep a lamp on when you get through it! The chills won’t stop coming with this one.
You can also read this review over at Goodreads and connect with me there!
