The Show that Smells
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
The Show That Smells is the most SHOCKING story ever shown on the silver screen! It’s also the tale of Jimmie, a country music singer dying of tuberculosis, and Carrie, his wife, who tries to save him by selling her soul to a devil who designs HAUTE COUTURE CLOTHING! Elsa is a powerful Parisian dress designer, and a vampire. She wants to make Carrie look beautiful, smell beautiful – AND THEN SHE WANTS TO EAT HER! Will Carrie survive as her slave? Will Jimmie be cured? Starring a host of Hollywood’s brightest stars, including Coco Chanel, Lon Chaney and the Carter Family, The Show That Smells is a thrilling tale of HILLBILLIES, HIGH FASHION, AND HORROR!
[Directed by Tod Browning (Freaks) from a screenplay by Derek McCormack. Black and white. 79 minutes.]
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Famed Italian fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli (1890 1973) stirs up sanguinary trouble as the "Dracula of Dressmaking" in McCormack's phantasmagorical novella, the latest entry in Dennis Cooper's Little House on the Bowery series. The action takes place inside a mirror maze at a carnival, where vampiric Elsa crows about her new perfume, Shocking! (the base note is blood), goads a desperate woman into selling her soul and commits dreadful wordplays (" 'Haute couture?' Schiaparelli says. 'Haute horreur!' "). Thank goodness for Coco Chanel, godmother of the little black dress and the cardigan jacket, not to mention part-time vampire-hunter, whose eponymous perfume works better than garlic on nasty old Elsa. But can the Vogue vampire really be vanquished? Throw the Carter family into the mix (Schiaparelli accuses them of "carter-wauling"), an undead Lon Chaney (The Man of a Thousand Faces) and preparations for two Satanic gay marriages, and you've got a recipe for a book that'll have you shaking your head in an odd but energizing combination of admiration and annoyance. This is a one-of-a-kind glimpse into a clever and devious mind.
