Hello and welcome! To today’s blogpost, which is another leg of the Hot Splices Book Tour, hosted by Blackthorn Book Tours.
HOT SPLICES by Mike Watt:
Hot Splices features eight interwoven tales about the Film Addicts, the flicker freaks, the Cinephages - they devour film for the high, to connect to the art on the granular level...the bleeding perforations in their skin is just part of the game. There are five forbidden films, when run together, can induce madness, or release the Dark Gods that created them, speaking through the psychopathic director. There is a man on the run, with a lost movie that others would kill to obtain. He barely escaped with his life. There is a tower, once housing for students, now a crumbling, rotting monument to film history, and the men and women who returned to the tower, to die watching their favorite films. Beneath the tower, there lies something made of light and shadow. It does not love its worshipers… If you do not love film... If you do not wish to devour it as it devours you... If all you seek from film is entertainment... ...This is not the book for you.
First things first; do you need a degree in film studies for to enjoy this book? No, but it will help if you have seen above average number of films (and maybe more on the disturbing side of the horror film spectrum). There are quite a few references of quite disturbing horror (and just generally well known) films throughout the story, so if you are a connoisseur of horror films like me maybe you will get some extra enjoyment form the references. Otherwise you would just be enjoying a well written story set in the world of filmmaking.
This story is eight stories interwoven into one, but it is done so seamlessly that you don’t notice it! With a large cast of interesting characters, you will be drawn into the world of the film addicts. Some broken by the industry others obsessed with finding the legendary Borgia films, what is the legendary Borgia films you might ask, well, they are five experimental films from a filmmaker named Luther Borgia, whom killed people for his art, and that when the films are watched together (according to legend), will induce madness and murder into whomever watches it. I will not go into the story too much, in fear of spoiling it, but as one expects the legend seems to be somewhat true!
One feature in this story (and this world) is that the film fanatics and enthusiasts are Flixing, (i.e. they get high on cut-offs of old film reels), which to some extent transports them into the film they are getting high on. If this was a real-world thing, I believe porn movies would be in high demand! Flixing is a fascinating idea and brilliantly executed in the story , and something I would like to read more of in possible future books and stories.
Besides the main story, there is also three deleted scenes, or short stories set in this world, all of them quite different and interesting, from the guy working with an massive film machine that seduced the man who previously worked with it (not exactly what I expected when I first started reading this book), to the guy obsessed with sharing a sensual moment with his favourite silver age actress through the act of Flixing and finally the critic that discovers the seedy underground of snuff films (the last one is especially disturbing and compelling)
So, in the end it is a compelling story set in a fascinating world of filmmaking and film obsession, which I can recommend to horror book lovers as well as horror film lovers, it’s the perfect blend between book and cinema!
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