The Corps Vanishes

Zoltan Szábo and his wife Hilka, the first couple of the Romanian theatre, are forced to flee the fascists in the mid-1930s and wind up in Hollywood. Big stars in Europe, Zoltan is relegated to playing a two-bit Poverty Row vampire again and again, while his incredibly beautiful wife, Hilka, gets a handful of small pointless roles. Zoltan resents the overwhelming success of Britisher, Ivan Chernov, former truck driver turned actor, whose deforming facial war wounds (not any notable talent) make him the perfect horror movie star. Everyone knows about Zoltan’s resentment, and when Chernov is killed by someone who seems to think he’s a vampire, guilt by public acclimation is Zoltan’s fate…and now he can’t find work (even his own bloodsucker, i.e. his agent, deserts him). Mocked by the press and getting little cooperation from the police with the sort-of help of Hilka (who puts her uncontrollable nymphomania to good use) and his friend, a homosexual screenwriter named Winston, Zoltan sets out across the high and low places (mostly the low) of Hollywood to find out for himself: whodunit?