Bruno Rossi, head of Ryker Pictures, folded his hands across his ample stomach and smiled. He’d regained the weight he’d lost during a six-month shoot in Argentina. Under intense heat, he’d made three pictures with Natalia Wray as the star: a slasher, a Conan rip-off, and a science fiction film that was basically a second slasher but set in space instead of a jungle. Same quota of gore and nudity, same sets dressed differently, same native crew who didn’t have a union to complain to. Shot on the cheap. Guaranteed rentals. Not a bad six-months’ work. Since they’d landed at LAX three months ago, Bruno had been putting all his time and money into Saturn’s Demon, a pet project he’d chosen to produce and direct from a script written by Natalia. Ever since Alien had chest-burst onto screens in ’79, he’d been waiting for the opportunity to prove what a great filmmaker he was. Shit, he’d been helping finance movies like Alien for years now, albeit badly dubbed, low budget affairs, but still, if some wet-behind-the-ears kid could have a hit, then so could he. It wasn’t as though he didn’t have the know-how. Throughout the ’70s he’d tried almost everything: kung-fu, cannibal horror, sweat-box prison movies, even soft porn. But he drew the line at Nazisploitation, telling Fangoria he chose to leave that shit to the gentiles. Yet through it all, Bruno had failed to gain a filmmaker’s sensibility. He produced shit and distributed worse. He was a businessman: work fast, give the people got what they want, and make good money in the process. By the time Natalie Slack (Natalia’s real name) auditioned for him in 1980, Ryker Pictures had become a byword for trashy cinema. She went on to star in twelve of Rossi’s films, approximating four films a year, taking top billing in eight. She’d played everything from Psycho Cult Leader to Psycho Stalker. And now here they were, three years later, proclaiming to anyone who’d listen that Saturn’s Demon was going to be Ryker’s answer to Star Wars. And he had to admit, Natalia was the one who’d made it work, writing the script and including a killer scene they were due to film the following day. If she wasn’t so goddamn ugly, he would have shown his full appreciation. At fifty-three, Bruno still had it. You could ask the hundreds of actresses who’d laid down on the couch for him, and they’d say the same. They really would. Natalie sat opposite Bruno on the other side of his wide mahogany desk. Unlike Bruno, she’d managed to keep her weight down, but she was still heavy enough to bag the parts no other actress in the image conscious ’80s would touch with a breadstick. “This could be the one,” Bruno said. “I’ve been looking at the rushes and I believe, truly believe, that this might be our best picture yet.” Natalie said, “I think so too, Bruno.” “And you’d know, right? My number one star.” “I thought Kathy Sawyer was the star this time.” Bruno batted away the mention of Kathy Sawyer like she was a fly buzzing around his ear. “I just tell her that, so she thinks her name still carries weight. You”, he said, pointing a stubby finger, “are the real star at Ryker Pictures.” It was true that Kathy hadn’t fared well of late. Cocaine and bad choices had seen her go from the third most bankable actress of the ’70s to a regular face on the grindhouse circuit. Her rapid decline gave Natalie reason to be cheerful. But still . . . “Nobody’ll even see my face in this one. I’m suited up all the time. Again.” “Doesn’t matter. It’s still gonna be your name they see in the lobby.” “Yeah, sure. Second billing.” Bruno held up his hands. “Hey. If top billing means getting Kathy Sawyer on board, then so be it. There are two reasons why guys will go see this movie: 1. They’ll get to see Kathy’s tits, and 2. Natalia Wray is a sure-fire way to scare the shit out of your date. And besides, the way Kathy’s been talking about you on TV? Hell, she’s practically selling the picture for us.” Bruno was referring to Kathy’s interview on Good Morning America with Melinda Conway. She’d bemoaned her experiences at being exploited by a male-dominated industry that had kicked her to the kerb once her looks dried up. Confessed through tears about her addiction to cocaine, the contracts that demanded at least one nude scene whatever the role, while Melinda, all hair spray and teeth, nodded understandingly and fanned her dry eyes. But when Kathy started in on a hate-fuelled rant, saying how demeaning it was for her to act opposite a no-mark like Natalia Wray, Melinda’s sympathy gave way to cold professionalism in a flash. She skilfully brought the interview to a close, promising a great recipe for banana cake right after these messages. Bruno leaned forward, resting his arms on the desk. “What is with you two? I mean, you don’t exactly gel, am I right?” Natalie sipped at the bottle of Coke turned warm in her hand. “Bruno,” she said, “maybe it’s time I told you about the prom.”
...
After all these years, Natalie could not give one good reason why she went to her senior year prom alone. Her date, a boy who’d had the shit kicked out of him more times than she could remember, had seen sense and ditched the idea an hour before he was due to pick her up. But Natalie went anyway. Defiantly? Stupidly? Naively? Maybe all of these things. She showed up and stood awkwardly at the edge of the dancefloor. Pretended not to notice the other kids laughing behind her back. Watched along with everyone else as Kathy Sawyer swept into the auditorium. Beautiful, graceful, intelligent and popular, Kathy was already a shoo-in for Prom Queen 1974. Until she looked Natalie’s way. Natalie saw the mask slip as some primordial, deep-rooted hatred bubbled to the surface. It appeared to consume Kathy, twisting at her guts as though Natalie’s very presence was an affront, a thumbed nose at the warnings never to enter Kathy’s sphere. By the time Kathy materialised at Natalie’s shoulder with her jaw clenched, the mask had been discarded entirely. She had her friends at her back. Some of the other kids -- drawn to the scene like a pack smelling blood -- formed a circle. “Why didn’t you just stay home where you belong?” Kathy said. The gauntlet laid down the crowd urged her on. Someone said, “Tell her, Kathy.” So she did, and though Natalie had endured the words a million times before, in this place, at this moment, they lacerated somewhere deep inside her gut. “Look at you. You’re gross. A big, fat, gross . . . Creature.” Then, as if to prove just how much Natalie grossed her out, Kathy threw up on her. The vomit came in a narrow stream, hitting Natalie in the ear and settling in a clump on her shoulder. The crowd cheered.
...
Natalie was still talking, telling Bruno how Kathy had systematically broken her down throughout high school. It sounded like the usual shit: spit balls, rabbit punches, name calling. One time Kathy even climbed a tree to photograph Natalie standing naked in her bedroom. She handed out two hundred photocopies around school before the principal called her into his office. He gave her three days suspension. Natalie didn’t open her blinds for a month. But Bruno wasn’t really listening. While Natalie had been baring her soul, he’d been pacing the room, visualising everything she was telling him. He mentally screened Natalie’s face in a dolly zoom, pictured the vomit arcing through the air at sixty-frames-per-second, the film going back to normal speed as the puke hit Natalie in the face. He said, “So, what, was she drunk or something?” “No. Of course not. Just anxious I guess.” Bruno sat on the edge of the desk, his crotch level with Natalie’s throat. “So what happened next?” “I went home, Bruno. That’s it.” “That’s it? That’s no good. What happened next with Kathy?” “Well, she spent the rest of the night in the nurse’s office. Course, she blamed me for the whole thing, said I’d ruined her chance of becoming Prom Queen. And I . . .” “This is great! I mean, not great what happened obviously, but don’t you see? This’ll create the kind of tension I’ve been looking for. Do you realise how much this will affect the last scene? Jesus, it’ll be like Joan Crawford and Bette Davis all over again.” “I guess,” Natalie said. “You guess? Jesus, Natalia, you’re telling me you weren’t drawing on this when you wrote it?” He cupped her chin, his thumb brushing the cleft beneath her bottom lip. Natalie drew back a little and shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not a psychoanalyst, Bruno. Psycho this, psycho that, maybe. Which reminds me, I have a great idea for Slaughter of the Bride 2. You remember how the groom woke up with his balls cut off? Everyone assumes it was the bride come back from the dead, right? Well, what if the perp was the sister of the bride? Make her a twin and I could play the part all over again.” But Bruno had tuned out again. He was looking ahead to tomorrow’s shoot, and further ahead to how a prom movie could be another sure-fire hit for Ryker.
...
Kathy had already planned on having Natalie murdered once the movie had wrapped, but when she’d read the script revisions Natalie had insisted on, it had cemented the idea in her brain. The guy who’d been stalking Kathy ever since he’d seen her in Sapphire 3 had agreed to do it already. “I’d do anything for you,” he’d said. “You just name it.” He was a loser, agreeing to off Natalie in exchange for the occasional fuck. It was a small price to pay; to appear in a movie with Natalie Slack -- or whatever dumb name Bruno had given her -- was degrading enough. But Natalie knew exactly what she was doing when she wrote this last scene. She’d planned the whole thing, Kathy knew. It was her way of paying her back for the prom. From her place at the top of the gangplank, Kathy listened to Bruno barking orders at the extras littering the floor around the rocket ship. “Dead astronaut at the back, stop tapping your finger. You’ve just had your spine ripped out! Bobby, quit fucking around. You’re dead, remember.” She tugged at the straps on her silver space bikini and counted the minutes until she could go home. Bruno’s favourite lackey, a boy of eighteen working on a promise that Bruno would read one of his scripts, came over with a clear plastic bag filled with crushed ice. “Bruno said you need to rub this on your tits.” “Why?” “He said nobody will be able to see your nipples otherwise.” Kathy snatched the bag out of his hands. “You need any help with that?” he asked. “Go fuck yourself, needle dick.” Kathy waited for him to leave before she debased herself. Dressed in an oversized alien costume, Natalie lumbered over and positioned herself on the gangplank, not ten feet away from Kathy. The hatred Kathy felt threatened to split her head in two. Someone called for quiet on set.
...
Natalie was sweating profusely inside the suit. Her thumb kept sliding off the button inside her monster hand. A tube ran from the button up her arm, ending at her jawline, attached there with Scotch tape. At the end was a nozzle pointing out of the suit’s mouth-hole. The opposite end of the tube led to a small tank hidden beneath prosthetic spikes. The tank was strapped to Natalie’s waist. In the tank was a mixture of syrup, gravy granules, cranberry juice, and green dye. At the last minute, Tom, the FX man, had added ground-up peanuts to the mix. Said it would give the goo a brownish, chunky consistency. Through pin holes she saw Kathy, backlit, lying at the top of the gangplank. Bruno called action. Natalie rubbed her thumb over the button, slick with sweat, and advanced towards her prey. She watched as Kathy back-pedalled towards the ship’s hatch, going through the gamut of emotions from disbelief to terror. She’s not going to make it, Natalie thought. She’s not going to make it because that’s how I wrote it. She grabbed Kathy by the ankle, pulling her towards her. Raised herself to full height and stood over her. Kathy screamed and screamed again, a piercing, brittle scream that went way beyond acting. It sounded like she was being tortured. It caused Natalie to pause. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t how Natalie Slack had been raised. Then, Kathy said, “Just do it, you fat, gross creature.” Natalie closed her eyes and pushed down on the button, felt the liquid surge up the tube and past her cheek as Kathy opened her mouth to scream a third time. If Natalie hadn’t closed her eyes, she would have seen the alien gunk hit Kathy square in the mouth.
... When Kathy was found dead in her trailer a half hour later, production on Saturn’s Demon came to a halt. Nobody knew Kathy had a peanut allergy. I mean, how could they? She hardly ate anyway, and when she did, she chose to eat alone on the Strip rather than on set with a bunch of deadbeats. In spite of everything, Bruno wasn’t about to let some accident stop his masterwork from making it into theatres. He hired in a porn actress to complete Kathy’s parts. It could have worked too if Kathy’s parents hadn’t filed a lawsuit for negligence. That, coupled with the accusations of rape that hit him from out of the blue, pretty much spelled the end for Ryker Pictures. Natalie – that goddamned turncoat – jumped ship, saying she no longer wanted to be associated with Bruno Rossi. Soon after that some crazy bastard tried to shoot her. Luckily for Natalie, said nut had the aim of a two-year-old, and she’d managed to escape with a clipped wing. From his old room in his mother’s house, Bruno read in Variety how Natalie was in talks with Warner Bros. Apparently, they were looking to turn the whole episode into a movie. Word was they were going to let her write the damn thing. Maybe even take a shot at directing. Who in the hell would go see that while a masterpiece like Saturn’s Demon sat on the shelf? Unbelievable, Bruno thought. After everything I’ve done for American film. And what do I have to show for it? Peanuts. If he wasn’t crying so hard, he might have laughed at his own joke.
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