Picking up a copy of 65mm by Dale Hoover, I was drawn to the premise: a computer programmer, dissatisfied at his job, quits and buys a movie theater in a small town with the intention of restoring it.
Of course, since this is an Abyss book, it doesn't go as planned. The town has deep, dark secrets, least of which is that the theater is EVIL.
Joe the programmer becomes obsessed with the theater, alienating his wife and best friend, and starts running with a bad crowd: the creepy locals.
So it's sort of Christine as a building, including the self restoring part. The locals take care of the killings.
65mm, read in the context of it's time, doesn't really distinguish its self. As seen from the perspective of the late twenty-teens? Mmmm. The computer stuff is a little dated. Talk about C prompts is kind of a giggle. AND... there's a Magical Negro. Rozina. She's (coincidentally enough) the ex-girlfriend of Joe's best friend Kelsie; Rozina and Kelsie reconnect when he comes to check on Joe:
He knew she had some royal blood in her, but maybe there was a little bit of the witch doctor in her as well... midnight in her ebony face and moonlight shimmering in her black hair.
Maybe in 1994, this was... "exotic". In 2019, it just seems... awkward.
Original Publication Date: April 1994
Availability: Out of print, but available on the secondary market.
