By BROCK BROWER (Popular Library; 1971)

I know this literary relic is considered a “lost classic” by many, but it did very little for me.  It centers on Simon Moro, an aging horror movie icon a la Karloff and Lugosi who’s so revered in the horror community he has his own legion of fans (known as “Moroites”), but has also incited a fair amount of controversy due to the fact that the victims in his films are all young girls.

Now, in the “unshockable seventies,” the old man is looking to further the controversy with an elaborate double-pronged publicity stunt.  It involves Moro being shut in a coffin for days on end and then getting faux-staked in a NYC theater, followed by a JOHNNY CARSON SHOW appearance on which Moro plans to further shock America by unveiling a macabre keepsake he terms “Pinkie.”  It’s all in service of a trashier-than-average version of Poe’s THE RAVEN, which, as is eventually made clear, is to be Boro’s last-ever film appearance.

The novel is related in three parts, each narrated by a different person.  That’s part of the problem I had with the book, as all three voices—a journalist reporting on the filming of THE RAVEN, the publicist responsible for cooking up Moro’s big stunt, and Moro himself, reflecting on the Carson appearance and, by extension, his life—sound the same.  The ultra-cynical, pop culture inflected banter is consistent throughout the book; a critical blurb invokes Nabokov, but I say the 1973 horror novel SPICY LADY is a more accurate comparison, it being, like THE LATE GREAT CREATURE, set in the entertainment industry, and related in a similarly motor-mouthed manner that evidently seemed quite hep in the early 1970s.

Author Brock Brower deserves credit for his thorough knowledge of horror cinema, information on which wasn’t nearly as widely available in 1971 as it is now.  References are made to Peter Bogdonovich, Val Lewton, X: THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES, FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND and many other aspects of the scene, which help render Boro’s backstory convincing.  I’m not sure, though, that we need a detailed synopsis of Boro’s RAVEN film (as it’s not very interesting), nor an interminable transcription of Moro’s JOHNNY CARSON SHOW chat (presented in the form of quotation mark-free dialogue packed into three very bulky paragraphs), nor the lengthy lead-up to Boro’s apparently shocking publicity stunt, which to modern sensibilities doesn’t seem too upsetting (David Blaine having already outdone it)—although the unplanned outcome admittedly is pretty startling.