What kind of monster would throw these out in the street during a thunderstorm? Harlan wondered. Clearly someone who couldn't see value in old things. Someone who felt the past held little worth. Someone like Vicky, he thought, and quickly rebuked himself for thinking it. She'd always been kind and patient, open to new experiences. If anyone had played the villain in their relationship, it had been him.
Harlan absently picked up a videotape he'd surprisingly never heard of and read the tagline aloud, "'NASTiES will make your life a living Hell.'" He uttered a mocking chuckle.
The painting on the cover showed a VHS tape with a pentagram burned into it, glowing red and smoking. Above this, two teenagers in hooded cloaks held black candles, apparently in the midst of some kind of dark ceremony. A swirl of tentacles and greenish mist surrounded them. He'd seen this sort of un-ironically cheesy cover dozens of times during his visits to the only retro video store in the neighborhood, and much more often when he was young, at the old Blockbuster with his parents. Harlan grinned and turned it over to read the blurb.
The NASTiES are just that: nasty, disgusting, rotten little tentacle demons hell-bent on nothing but destruction. High school student Troy Stark finds a possessed Betamax, and after reciting the ancient incantation in the accompanying instruction manual during a Halloween party at his parents' house--coinciding with a mysterious thunderstorm--he and his friends unwittingly unleash the NASTiES. One by one, they die in increasingly gruesome ways, while Troy and cheerleader Tina discover the terrible truth about his parents' involvement in the occult in their attempt to send the NASTiES back to Hell!
"Sounds fucking awful." Harlan laughed. "I love it." He nearly dropped it when he read the credits on the back cover:
CO-WRITTEN, DIRECTED & EDITED
BY NICOLO FUNELLI
"Holy shit! It's a Funelli?"
On his list of all-time favorite B-movie directors, Nicolo Funelli had always been among the top three. He firmly believed the old studio tagline, Funelli puts the 'Fun' in schlock horror! He'd seen every single piece of trash the deceased Italian director had put to film, even the lost "classic" Ragers in Space, all except this... and the fact he'd never heard of it only increased its worth in his eyes.
Harlan cracked a beer and sat in front of his laptop. He looked up Funelli's credits, but NASTiES wasn't among them. He searched for NASTiES specifically, with Nicolo Funelli in quotations--still niente, as they'd often said in Funelli's early films, when he'd still been working in Italy, and the subtitles would spell out "nothing."
"An undiscovered Funelli," he muttered. "I could make a fortune off this."
The cover looked cheap, but still had the appearance of mass manufacturing, as opposed to something an industrious collector might have made for a one-off dubbed copy of a bootlegged film. The label was printed directly onto the cassette, not a sticker. Most of the names listed in the production credits had corresponding IMDB listings--Jack Emmerson, Funelli's frequent co-writer, and sometime collaborator Ham Gottlieb were among them--but Harlan found nothing about this film. Utterly baffling.
Maybe I've stumbled onto a rare one. Like, really rare... NASTiES... wow!
"Well, let's give 'er a run-through," he said to himself, and brought the tape to the VCR. Opening the gate, he eyed the physical tape to make sure it was free of debris and crinkles, so as not to damage the video heads. Giving it the okay, Harlan popped it into the machine. The player swallowed it with a hungry whir of machinery.
PLAY ► appeared on the black screen while Harlan sat on the floor amid the new tapes in his collection, eagerly waiting. The digital readout counted up:
00:00:00... 00:00:01... 00:00:02...
At 00:00:13 the VCR groaned. A horizontal line of video noise crackled down from the top of the screen. Harlan rose to his knees to adjust the tracking, or smack the top of the VCR, but the picture adjusted itself before he could do either.
00:01:32... 00:01:33...
Still nothing.
He pushed Fast Forward. The image warped, shuttling through nothing but black. His hopes sank.
"Someone must have erased it. Or left it next to a bulk eraser."
A flicker of light inside the machine caught his eye. Curious, Harlan pushed up the flap. He leaned over and peered inside. The tape dragged sluggishly over the video heads. Nothing out of the ordinary. As he closed the flap, a spark of electricity zapped his finger. Crying out in pain and surprise, he jerked his finger back. A whiff of burnt flesh and ozone stung his nostrils, the skin beneath his fingernail charred.
"Balls," he said through the finger in his mouth, hurrying to the bathroom to run it under the tap. The cold soothed his pain, but the running water made him need to urinate. Not like there's anyone around to nag me about it, he thought, relieving himself with the door open. The memory of his fight with Vicky made his heart hurt.
Life isn't all darkness and horror: her words from long ago echoed as he flushed the toilet. How long had it been since he'd thought of that night in her bed? Long enough he could barely remember it now. She'd helped him through that dark time, giving him six of the best years of her life, and he'd rewarded her with not-so-subtle insults, passive aggressive snarkiness, neglect. He deserved whatever fate lay in store for him.
Vicky had gotten him the job where she had worked since high school, a place much like a prison, each inmate with their own little 6'X6' laminate and fuzzy carpeted cell. But where Harlan saw only bars, Vicky saw the door, and while she rose in the ranks from Data Entry to HR Administrator, Harlan mindlessly entered data into his terminal, dreaming of one day becoming a famous movie director, each day getting one day further from realizing his dream.
ZAP!
A flash of blue flickered over his shoulder in the mirror.
ZZZZAP! ZZZAP!
A fork of lightning arced across the doorway. Harlan dried his hands quickly and hurried out, but what he saw in the living room made him launch himself back into the bathroom hall, pressing himself flat against the wall as his heart thumped. Blue flashes brightened B-movie posters on the plain white walls as he peered around the corner.
Lighting curled outward from the tape player, striking the tapes on the shelves and the ones laid out on the floor, reminding him of cheap film effects of the '80s, from The Highlander's "Quickening" sequence to the clock tower scene in Back to the Future. Despite the very real danger of electrocution--hadn't Vicky wished he'd get struck by lightning?--Harlan scurried around to the power bar and yanked the plug with his foot before the machine could do any more damage to his collection. Surge protection would prevent errant electricity from frying his laptop, at least, but the tapes it had struck were likely toast. Dozens of them had rattled off the shelf and landed among the new tapes in his collection. Every one of them would need checking. It would take him hours. Maybe even days.
The VCR smoldered quietly on the shelf.
Harlan downed the rest of his beer, injured finger extended as he eyed the VCR. The tendrils of gray smoke had stopped oozing out of its mouth, but he supposed it still could catch fire.
"Better put it on the balcony, just in case."
A light mist fell. The air had cooled down considerably from the muggy, soup heat of the day. Harlan laid the VCR on a ratty old patio chair he'd salvaged from the Dumpsters, and laid a few dry newspapers from the recycle bin on top of it. He lit a cigarette butt from the ashtray, sucking the last few drags from it while gazing out at the purple bruise of sky above the apartment buildings.
He often watched miniaturized lives play out in lighted apartment windows while he smoked: people cooking dinner, having parties, playing with their children. Blue light flickered in many darkened apartment windows. After the electrical storm inside his apartment, the sight of those blue windows was vaguely sinister. He imagined arcs of lightning from cable boxes and satellite receivers zapping the zombified eyes of passive viewers, creating automatons who threw themselves down stairwells and off balconies, killing themselves to
the soundtrack of some meaningless reality show.
The apocalypse will not be televised, he thought, and shuddered, crushing out the previously butted cigarette as he'd exhausted its nicotine supply.
Something clattered inside. As he peeked in through the doorway, the television came on with a high-frequency whine. He stepped in, curious and on edge despite the smoke, wondering how the TV could be on when he'd unplugged it from the wall along with the VCR.
On the TV was a dark attic, lit blue to look like moonlight. An actor meant to be high-school age--as evidenced by his letterman jacket--but clearly much older, read gibberish from an arcane tome: "Shubish! Coitus! Interruptis!" he cried with all the sincerity of a bad actor reading unintentionally horrible lines. Wind howled, blowing the actor's hair and flipping pages. The girl with a puffy pink sweater and teased wall of blonde bangs clung to his shoulder as cardboard boxes sprung open and dusty objects clattered off the shelves--
The image cut abruptly to the interior of a studio. A petite brunette sat tied to what looked like a director's chair in front of a green screen. Harlan recognized her pale blue monkey pajamas seconds before she turned her wet mask of terror in his direction--but it wasn't possible. This wasn't happening. Black lines of mascara ran down Vicky's cheeks as she tried to look everywhere at once, her small frame quivering in terror. Harlan stumbled over the coffee table and kicked through the cassettes on the floor, dropping to his knees in front of the screen.
"Vicky!" Harlan called, knowing she couldn't hear him through the television but too frightened not to try. "Vicky, where are you?"
She turned to him, her relief short-lived as she recalled her predicament. "Harlan? I don't know, I don't know, I was watching TV. I must have fallen asleep, but I woke up, I woke up here, and I, I don't know how I got here. Harlan, I'm scared..."
Clapping came from the side speakers of his old TV. Vicky's gaze followed the sound, struggling against the ropes as a man entered the frame, dressed in black with cowboy boots and a Stetson. From his tall, slim build and the loping way he walked, Harlan recognized him immediately. He'd seen him in hours of feverishly studied documentary footage.
It was Nicolo Funelli. Or a pretty damned good lookalike.
"Hello, Harlan," the long-deceased Italian director said, and his Dali moustache curled upward as he grinned. In one hand he held a Philips VHS Movie Camera, gray with a black shell. He raised it to his right eye, aiming it at Harlan through the screen. Behind Vicky and Funelli, the green screen filled with an image of Harlan's own terrified face. When he scowled, the face on the screen behind Vicky and Funelli scowled with him.
"What is this, some kind of sick joke?" Harlan said, searching the TV for a hidden camera. "You're a lookalike, right? Somebody hired you to mess with us? Tell me this a joke, Vick. Vicky?"
She merely whimpered, shaking her head softly.
"I assure you, Harlan, this is no joke," Funelli said, his accent heavy. "We're going to have a little fun. If you play along, your lovely leading lady will be returned to you in one piece."
"If you touch her, I swear to--"
"Who? To God?" Funelli laughed haughtily. The green screen filled with a battle taking place in slow-motion through a spaceship's massive viewport, a scene from Ragers in Space. "If there is a God why am I here, talking to you, when I could be in heaven, drinking wine with Hitchcock and Kurosawa?"
For a second time, Harlan couldn't find the words to argue. This was no prank. Somehow, Nicolo Funelli had kidnapped his girlfriend.
Ex-girlfriend, Harlan reminded himself, as if the situation wasn't already bad enough.
"In here, Harlan, I am God."
The space battle cut to a close-up of Funelli, grinning down at himself.
"We're going to make a film, you and I," both Funellis said calmly. "In the movies, this is what they call the 'ticking clock.' You have until midnight to discover how to release me from this videotape, so make haste, my friend. If you don't, your leading lady dies."
He removed the video camera from his eye to nod in Vicky's direction. Her gaze flicked from the director to Harlan in unbridled terror.
"As you know, I have no compunctions about killing off my main characters, and that includes you." The director showed his teeth, and made a short bow. "Adieu," he said with a slight giggle, and the screen cut to black.
"Wait!" Harlan grabbed the sides of the television, shaking it on its shelf. "Wait! How do I let you out? How do I let you out! Vicky! VICKY!"
The screen remained dark. He plugged the television back in, and flicked uselessly through the channels. Blue screen... blue screen... blue screen.
"You're wasting your time," he told himself, glancing at his watch. 8:35. Midnight deadline. He had to do something, and fast. "Okay, I can do this. I just have to work it out in my head. I've seen every damn movie that motherfucker put on film, all except this one, I should be able to--"
Inspired, Harlan leaped to his feet and hurried out onto the balcony, where the VCR still lay under dampened newspapers. He brought it back to the living room, plugged it in, and ejected the tape. Staring down at the NASTiES cassette on the coffee table, trying to decide what the main character of a Funelli film would do, he lit a stubbed cigarette. He wanted to smash the cassette open with a hammer, but if Funelli really had been trapped inside the tape, like a genie in a bottle, he wasn't in there anymore. He'd gotten loose when Harlan played it, gotten into the cables--once Funelli's consciousness or whatever had kept the essence of him alive hit the optical cables, the fiberwire, he could literally move at the speed of light. There would be no stopping him...
"But he needs me to get out," Harlan said. "That doesn't make sense. He can pull people in, oh God, Vicky--but he can't get out."
Think about it for a minute. Stop and think. He's got her trapped in some kind of B-movie purgatory, but he's trapped there too. There's always some kind of curse or spell or demonic incantation to solve the problem, and somebody knows it, someone who knows a lot more about what's happened. A "guide." A Yoda. Who knows more than me about Funelli? The documentarian? No. No, she lives on the other side of the country, she's probably asleep by now, even if I could find her number...
"I've got it!" Harlan slipped the movie into its case, and tucked it into his jacket as he headed out.
2 – Funelli's Monster
SO HIP VIDEO was dark when Harlan arrived, but he knew the owner lived in one of the apartments upstairs. He thumbed all three buttons, hoping one of them belonged to Dave Lee. A light flicked on in the front apartment upstairs, and a slim silhouette stood by the window for a moment. A minute later, heavy soles trudged down the stairs to the paint-flecked door. With a rattle of locks and latches, it opened on Dave. He wore a black toque over his shaggy hair (dyed to a color Harlan had once heard him call "Asian orange"), and skinny pajamas tucked into Ugg boots.
"Harlan? Store's closed, bruh. Come back tomorrow," he said, already closing the door.
"Dave, wait, just listen for a minute."
"Okay, what? I just smoked a bowl, I'm trying to chill..."
"Do you know Funelli? Nicolo Funelli?"
"Funelli?" the store owner blinked sleep from his eyes. "Sure, sure, of course, he put the 'fun' in B-horror. That's a terrible tagline, by the way. Doesn't even sound the same. It's Foonelli not Funelli, and two, Funelli's more like D-horror. Or F. Funelli puts the F in fail." He grinned proudly at the joke, scratching his sparse black goatee. "Did you wake me up just to ask me about Funelli?"
"No, Dave, I just really, really need your help. This is gonna sound crazy, but Funelli's trapped Vicky, my girlfriend. He's trapped her inside the TV or, or something... and I just need your help to get her out. Please. I'm desperate, man!"
Dave narrowed his eyes. "Are you doing a Vine?"
"This isn't a Vine, Dave," Harlan snapped. "This is real life."
"Dead directors don't drag girlfriends into the Phantom Zone, Harlan, not in IRL. You've been watching too much Funelli, and I
am way too baked to talk movies with you right now, okay?"
Dave began to close the door. Desperate to make him believe, Harlan yanked the videotape out of his pocket and waved it at him. Dave's marijuana-addled brain took a moment to register what he saw, and then his eyes widened.
"Holy Tarantino! Where did you get that, dude? Wait, don't say anything!" He opened the door all the way and tugged Harlan inside by the jacket. The cramped entrance smelled like cabbage. Junk mail littered the floor. Red bled through the black walls where paint had faded and flaked off, the stairs grimy from years of trampled-in dirt and dotted with cigarette burns. The scene reminded him of the bathroom stairwell of a goth nightclub.
Before shutting and triple-locking the door, Dave peeped up and down the street. He turned to Harlan, inches from his face in the tight hallway. "Now, tell me everything from the start."
"I found the tape, and I played it--"
"No. Dude." He raised his hands to emphasize the mental stress Harlan had caused him. "Seriously, where did you find it? A garage sale? Scream Factory? The fucking Twilight Zone?"
"What are you talking about?"
Dave's eyes jittered as he tried to keep his stoned brain in focus, staring Harlan down. "This tape," he jabbed an accusatory finger at the offending object, "it was never manufactured, okay? This movie does not exist."
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