[fudgetusk]

Previously published in BARE BONE 8
Name This Film

I think it was a seventies film. English. I saw it when I was a kid, snuck down in the middle of the night. I was just shaking off a dose of the flu, or something. The doctor didn't know what I had. Just kept sticking her thermometer in me until I eventually passed out.

Anyway, I saw this weird film. Missed the beginning, so I don't know the name of it. Maybe you'll recognise it. First off, there's this mad guy in a rubber suit, like something off Sesame Street, except weirder. He was all yellow with this big round head. His face was just like a man's, but his eyes and his mouth were fused to the shiny rubber of his head. A great effect. Looked like he was really made out of rubber. They had stained his mouth blue, on the inside. Horrible he was, riding around in a little kid's car.

He seemed to be lost in an underground shopping centre, with endless grey corridors like a maze. He would drive around, quite fast, beeping his horn and stopping to look in the shop windows, which were full of odd stuff. Not like shop windows, more like mini theatres. I remember this one display was of a gigantic heart, bristling with thick black hairs like antennas. It filled most of this little room beyond the glass -beating, beating. He watched the heart for a while, this horrible look on his face, and these things began to appear behind the mass of the heart. I think they were little men, but all grey and featureless, covered in webs.

Another thing I recall is a window with this room painted entirely black. Walls, floor, table, chair, and a man who was sat in the chair. The rubber man watched for ages before the scene came to life, the seated figure's mouth gaping open, full of all these weird colours, glittery and alive like snakes or fingers, spilling out and waving about. How they did that effect I don't know. Maybe it wasn't made in the seventies, but just made to look like it was. There were all these other windows with dolls running around being chased by giant spiders and spooky cemetaries spinning around upside down. Weird sh*t.

Another thing was this weird house, nothing to do with the yellow guy. It was in the middle of a misty wasteland of pebbles. Pebbles as far as the eye could see. There were these strange women walking about in the mist, holding big bunches of flowers. The flower heads were like flames, fizzling and smoking. The women looked burnt. Burnt rags and mangled up skin. The camera got a good look of these burnt women and then flipped to the interior of the house. A horrible kitchen. There was another woman, not burnt, wearing this bizarre dress made from maps. She was sniffing something in the sink. The camera came close but turned away at the last second. The thing she was smelling must have been like a drug, because she came away looking really off her head, falling about the place and making a weird noise. A creaky wood noise. Only it wasn't her, it was this blue door, slowly opening inwards. This black thing, like a towel, came dangling down over the top of the door. It just hung there, jerking slightly. The woman watched it, fear in her eyes. Then she grabbed the door handle and slammed the door shut on the black towel.

It made an awful racket, screeching and writhing about in agony. I had to turn the volume down so my parents wouldn't wake. Horrible it was. Stuck in my head for years. I must have gone to bed after that, or fallen asleep on the couch, because I don't remember seeing any more of the film. If you know what it is let me know, because it's been bugging me for years.