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“Of course all the big names in rock are going into film,” Decker explained. “Intensified Chaos, Black Sabbath, Toxic Waste … But the Stinks have got Simon, who is out-front state of the art.”

“Absolutely,” Pox concurred. “Dunky is gettin' us into generic evil. No more crappy kid stuff. We're goin' over the fucking edge here.”

The one great question I wanted most to ask was too big to squeeze into any words I might expect the likes of Bobby Pox to answer. But I tried anyway, in words of approximately one syllable, aiming my query somewhere between Pox and Decker, hoping for a semiserious response. “Look … what's this all about?”

Decker looked blank. Pox said “Huh?”

“The whole scene,” I went on. “What's it all about? You, Iggy Pop, the Crucifugs, Kiss … What's the goal, the purpose … the satisfaction?”

Decker deferred to Pox, who looked bewildered at the question. I might have been asking an Eskimo why he spent so much time in the snow. Finally, he shrugged and said, “I dunno. Shittin' on the world, I guess.” A pause and he attached a thoughtful addendum. “And of course collectin' some loot.”

“Is that what Simon's after? Loot?”

“Simon? Nah. With Simon, see, it's like a true religious thing.”

“Shitting on the world is a religious thing for Simon?”

“Well, Simon … I dunno. I don't think he sees it like that.” Looking honestly inquisitive, Pox turned to Decker. “What is it with Simon, d'you think?”

Decker wagged his head. “There's no accounting for genius. I would say, yes, there's a religious dimension going with Simon.” He asked over his shoulder, “Wouldn't you say so, Brother Justin?”

Brother Justin, who had been listening to every word, now pretended he hadn't heard a thing. “Hm?” he asked, as if Decker's question had just caught his attention.

Decker repeated, “For Simon, the movies have a religious meaning, isn't that so?”

Brother Justin stretched his mouth into his toothsome smile. “I would hope that for our pupils, all honest labor is a spiritual service.”

“There, see?” Pox said. “Like what I said.
Ipso facto.”

Grinning steadily at me, Brother Justin continued. “Perhaps that is what you had in mind, Professor, when you suggested that Simon's films might teach something of our faith. When a devout Christian offers up his work as an act of devotion to the one true God, in effect as a prayer, a hymn of praise to the All-Highest, one might hope it would have some redeeming influence even on the most hardened souls, if only …”

He went on. And on. Within a few moments, he'd succeeded in larding the conversation with enough melting religious rhetoric to stifle further talk. All the while he spoke, Simon Dunkle's acts of devotion—those I had so far witnessed—rippled through my memory. Images of cannibal children, butchered parents, kinky eroticism, bloody murder played for laughs.

What manner of faith heaped honor on such a prophet?

After we'd sat by the pool for the better part of two hours, a boy of about sixteen, wearing the school uniform, looked in shyly at the gate, then approached Brother Justin to deliver a message.

“Simon is ready for us,” the priest announced.

By this time, Humper and the girls had left the pool and joined the rest of us waiting for the summons. Slutty, who seemed to be Bobby Pox's favorite among the girls, had finally done us all the favor of dressing, though only minimally: bikini panties under a torn T-shirt that bore the motto “Kiss My Mucus,” and below the words a crude drawing of someone doing just that. Once again, this drew a teasing nudge from Jeanette.

“And what is that she is wearing around her neck?” she asked in
a worried whisper. I couldn't tell until we had risen to leave the cabana. Then I saw. It was a necklace of bloodstained teeth with a piece of raw meat as its centerpiece. I asked Sharkey to reassure me that her jewelry was a plastic reproduction.

“Nah, it's real,” he answered. “Morbs like that kind of thing. Like the teeth there, probably they come from … ”

“Don't tell me,” I pleaded, moving off.

Outside the fence there was an open motorcart not quite large enough to carry the dozen of us who were to view the film. Humper and Decker had to ride the running boards. The boy drove us slowly to the buildings I'd seen farther up the hill: Simon's studio. The ride was a chance to strike up a conversation with Brother Justin, who sat beside me. I'd already decided to weigh my words carefully in speaking to him. I remembered what Zip Lipsky told me about the orphans: “They can be mean as hell.” Brother Justin didn't look mean; but, like Dr. Byx, he was guarded in everything he said to me. I wasn't going to be more candid with him than he was with me. I started by asking if it was true that Max Castle had often visited the school during his Hollywood years.

“Yes, but I met him only once,” he told me. “That was 1941, not long before America entered the war. I had just arrived from Zurich to begin teaching. He was in a sad state. Very distressed.”

“Do you know why?”

“I understand he had been trying to make a film of his own for some years, mainly in Europe. I gather with no success. Apparently what there was of it had been lost when the European war started. A great blow for him. Castle, it seems, only came visiting when he needed money. Unhappily, the order was not able to spare him much at that point. Many of our assets had also been lost in the war—including the orphanage he was raised in. As a result, Castle was forced to take on some rather tawdry directing assignments. Wartime spy thrillers and such. He was most depressed about that. And quite angry, I'm afraid, with us for being so niggardly. The one time I met him, he was throwing a tantrum with Brother Marcion, who was then the director. It was a painful occasion. Soon after that, we learned he had tried to return to Europe—to Switzerland—to plead his case to higher authorities. As you know, his ship was lost at sea. Torpedoed.” He sighed heavily. “Perhaps it was a mercy that it ended as it did. I don't believe our people in Zurich would have given him a more generous hearing.”

“So, at the end, the order disowned him.”

“I would rather say Max Castle disowned us. And not at the end. Many years before that. From the time he came to America. The way he was lionized at the beginning, it was quite corrupting. And his work suffered accordingly.”

“And yet Simon Dunkle admires him.”

Brother Justin nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, that is true. And of course there is a great deal to admire—on the purely technical level—even in Castle's worst work, as you yourself have pointed out in your writing. Well, Simon is still young. Max Castle is apt to be only a phase in his development, one influence among many. I expect he will go on to much finer work than Castle was able to achieve.”

An interesting question struck me. “If you had your way, Brother Justin, whose influence would you like to see prevail in Simon's work? Among directors, I mean.”

He rolled the matter around in his thoughts for a while. “Renoir, perhaps. Or Dreyer. Cocteau. These are simply my favorites.”

I allowed him to see my surprise. “Do you think Simon's work is anything like theirs? You must be aware of the vast difference… .”

“In style, of course,” he added quickly. “But I have in mind the integrity of the work. Yes, the integrity.”

I saw that he was perfectly serious. He believed there was something Jean Renoir had in common with
Fast Food Massacre
and
Insect Anxiety.
He called it “integrity.”

Simon Dunkle's studio was housed inside an old, weathered barn that had been gutted and remodeled. Judging from what I could see as we walked through, the place was remarkably well equipped; small, but superior to anything I'd seen on the university campuses I knew. One thing was clear: a production facility like this could certainly have put out more polished work than I had so far seen in Dunkle's films. Which led me to conclude that the style of his movies—slapdash, hastily improvised—was deliberate, an effect he'd carefully crafted for his youthful audience. Dunkle was seeking what Sharkey called a “garagey” look, a primitive surface that gave him access to adolescent minds that were gleefully trashing all established aesthetic standards.

We were led into a screening room off one of the main studio areas. The room was well appointed: a thick carpet and plush seats. In the middle aisle sat a small group of young people. Simon wasn't difficult
to pick out among them. He was a small, slight lad with a head of shaggy, dead-white hair and a face that looked powdered with clown white. The pink eyes, however, were not on display; despite the dimness of the room, he wore dark glasses. Sharkey had guessed his age at eighteen; he could have passed for twelve. When he rose to offer his limp, moist hand in greeting, he stood little above five feet tall. Altogether, he had that shrimpy, subglandular physique of a boy whose balls had failed to drop.

Brother Justin made the introductions. Simon answered my how-do-you-do through a cruel stammer, his muscle-bound jaw cramping his words into near incoherence. “I'm gl-gl-glad you c-c'd c-c-c … ” Giving up, he plumped down in his seat as if overcome with embarrassment. Rapidly, he drew something from his shirt pocket: a crumpled white and green box. He dug into it and, once, twice, three times, his hand shot to his mouth. I saw his fingers and lips were chocolate-stained. “… could come,” he finished, a brown froth collecting across his lower teeth. It seemed to be the right moment; smiling apologetically, I offered the paper bag I was carrying. “Don told me you like these.”

He looked into the bag and then back at me, his face beaming with honest delight. “Oh gee, th-th-th … ”

My heart sank with each stuttered syllable. This was going to make conversation with Simon difficult, maybe impossible. I'd hoped to quiz him about every aspect of his work. Now I feared I might not get very far—unless the Milk Duds did the trick.

“You have a remarkably fine studio here,” I said.

Simon only nodded in reply, his teeth grinding away at some unspoken word.

“Did you learn all your filmmaking here?” I said.

“N-n-no,” he answered. “I w-was at V-V-V … ”

The last I realized might not be a stutter. “Three Vs?” I asked. He nodded. So Simon, like Max Castle before him, had a connection with V. V. Valentine. Sparing Simon the need to tell me more, Len Decker filled in. “You might say Simon served his apprenticeship at Three Vs. A small taste of the commercial film world. We think that's of value to our students. Let's see, Simon did
Happy Kill
for Valentine. And …”

“
I W-W-W-W
… ” Simon added, or rather tried unsuccessfully to add. He popped another Milk Dud and managed to stitch the stutterese into an answer. “
I Wanna Ghoul.”

At the mention, Sharkey lit up. “I
Want a Ghoul
—that's Simon's flick? I didn't know that.”

“Oh yes,” Decker assured him. “Script, production, everything.”

“Wow! Sensational,” Sharkey bubbled. “That's one of my big shows. Kids love it.” Turning to me, he asked, “You see it, Jonny?
I Want a Ghoul Just Like the Ghoul Who Buried Dear Old Dad”

Trying to sound as if I deeply regretted it, I admitted I hadn't.

“You'd love it,” Sharkey told me. “There's this great bit in it. These werewolves dressed like the Beatles, with these Yiddish accents. It's a howl. But also very gross, very gross.” In Sharkey's aesthetic system, this last was a high compliment. Turning back to Simon, he asked, “Say, how come your name isn't on the flick?”

This time Decker intervened to answer for him. “I'm afraid Mr. Valentine isn't always too scrupulous about such matters. Actually, not very much that he puts out under his name was made by him.”

“Yeah, so I hear,” Sharkey said. “Guy's a regular horse thief. But he's broken in lots of talent.”

I asked, “Did you know that Valentine helped out with some of Max Castle's films?”

“H-he did?” Simon was surprised to hear.

“That's how Valentine got his start. I gather he wasn't much more than a gofer at the time.” Then, as nonchalantly as possible, I added, “He was one of the first people to mention Castle's secret filmmaking techniques to me. He tried to pry them out of Castle, but not with any success.”

In the silence that followed, Brother Justin was the first to speak. “Secret techniques? Do you mean the little tricks you discussed with Dr. Byx in Zurich?”

“Those, among others.” I turned to Simon. “Are you still using these … little tricks?”

Brother Justin hastened to answer for Simon. “Surely what matters most in any film is the total aesthetic effect, however it might be achieved. After all, every director has his methods, the mysteries of his craft. But are they worth serious consideration apart from the work as a whole?” The question was rhetorical. I saw that Brother Justin had a well-developed talent for sidetracking conversation he found uncomfortable. He hurriedly ordered up the film we'd been invited to view and we all settled back to watch.

What is there to say about a movie that has become as familiar—and notorious—as
Sub Sub?
It was intended to propel Simon Dunkle
out of the cult-film ghetto, and that it surely did, as explosively as if the young director had been shot from a cannon. Though hardly mainstream fare, it managed to hold out in a number of first-run houses around the country for several weeks, long enough to attract significant critical attention—and then for many months more in the shopping-mall cineplexes, where its largely adolescent audience took to it like an addictive drug. There were reports that some kids had seen the picture more than a hundred times and threatened to riot at theaters where it stopped showing.