Classics Mutilated Part 43

"Now, when I first landed on your island, I was shocked by what I saw, and horrified by your callous treatment of your creations. But when I look at these miserable, flea-bitten creatures, I feel certain that some good may still come of them. Their lives need not be nasty, brutish, and short."

The Master politely says, "I do not take your meaning, sir."

The Other barges in and cackles. He is very sick. "He's making you an offer, Master! He wants to buy your sideshow."

The Stranger sniffs. He is also sick. "Hollywood is not a sideshow, Montgomery. You've clearly abandoned their education. Consider it an extension of your experiment, if you will-"

"I think you should take him up on it, Guv." The Other limbers up his whip. "They're at the gate, rarin' to go, bags packed."

The beasts have not forgotten all of the Master's lessons. The walls of the compound are on fire.

"See what you've done!" the Master shoves the Stranger out onto the porch to see the flames and hear the cries of the beast-men. "Before you came, they were content-"

"You brought this on yourself, Doctor. I hope they will be more merciful to you than you were to them."

"Don't forget this one, Dixon." The door to the laboratory flies open and the red woman splashes into the room.

The Master has only begun to feed her the Needle and human blood-His blood-to change her mind. The Knife, however, has been busy. The freshly sculpted digits of her clawless paws drive her mad with agony. The cracked and reset pelvis betrays her when she tries to run on all fours.

But her broken mind and body are sound enough to choose between the two masters before her.

She pounces on Dr. Moreau.

Dixon shoots her in the flank. His hand shakes. He aims at the Master's heart, and then his hand falls.

A rock smashes the window behind Montgomery, who looks the room over once and shouts, "d.a.m.n it all," then flees.

With no claws, the puma-woman bats pitifully at the Master, but her teeth are still sharp. Her mouth closes on his forearm and snaps the bones. He howls for Montgomery.

She goes for his throat.

The Stranger closes his eyes and shoots. The red woman twirls in the air and trips on her insides, shrieks, and dies.

Without a word, the Stranger goes outside.

I come out from my hiding place. The Master orders me to leave him, and go to the surgery.

"Get all the alcohol ... and douse my journals. My work must not fall into the wrong hands. And this man-"

"Please ... Master...." Smoke pours in the windows. I will not need to fuel the fire. I try to move the Doctor, but he is too large, and he is ready to die.

"Go, Diogenes. You were a faithful a.s.sistant ... and a good man."

The burning roof crashes through the room. I turn and run on all fours.

Outside, the wall has collapsed, and the beasts rampage through the burning house, hair on fire, mad with poison and the end of the Law. I can barely carry my own head, but I must tear off my blue serge suit, or I will meet the same fate as Mr. Montgomery, the Other with the Whip. Down on the beach, between the launches, they crowd round his body to get at the sc.r.a.ps.

I hide in the icehouse, beneath a pile of cadavers. The celebration goes on until dawn, when there is nothing left unburned.

I come out from my hiding place to wade through ashes. The beasts are gathered on the beach. In their midst, Wilbur Dixon stands with a gun in his hand. He hasn't enough bullets to kill them all, and they are far beneath even the reasoning of a loaded gun.

"I promised you a new life, without pain, with hope and the promise of becoming true men. I do not lie."

He points the gun at the sky and fires. A red flower of fire blooms and fades in the rosy dawn light.

He sets fire to a stick and blows out smoke. The beasts are captivated by this, but only for so long. They begin to close in on him. The Sayer of the Law is dead, a victim of his own rigid faith, and the new Law. But some memory of the sacred remains, for they carry his head.

I know I must join them, if I will not be next. I climb over the smoking bones of the Master's house.

I see it before the others.

It comes out of the fog at the mouth of the bay. A s.h.i.+p bigger than the compound.

When we see it, we fall down and moan. The Stranger sees me and smiles. He points the gun at me.

"His master's voice," he says.

DOc.u.mENT B.

ADVERTISING CIRCULAR.

(12/1/29).

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Thanks to Dixon's patented animal cultivation techniques, there are amazing new opportunities in the film industry-both in financial and creative terms-for doctors, veterinarians, surgeons, chemists, anesthesiologists, chemists, biologists, animal trainers, nurses, and teachers. Apply today!

DOc.u.mENT C.

H'WOOD REPORTER.

(2/22/33).

MONKEY SEE, MONKEY DO STARRING MOXIE MONKEY, AN INT'L HIT; DIXON ANNOUNCES PLANS FOR FIRST FEATURE.

After only four years, it's almost impossible to recall what Hollywood was like without Will Dixon.

The soft-spoken King of Family Entertainment has changed almost every aspect of filmmaking with his revolutionary "humanimal" performers. His forty-seven live-action Animal Overtures and Barnyard Ballads one-reelers outdid the Keystone Kops and Laurel & Hardy at pratfall comedy to become the most sought-after bookings to open RKO features, while bringing moral hygiene and innocent fantasy back to the movies. "Monkey See, Monkey Do," "Puss In Boots," and "The Three Little Pigs" each won Short Subject Oscars in 1930, 1932, and this year.

They also put the kibosh on the once-popular fledgling field of animated cartoons, which Will Dixon helped pioneer, before abandoning it after returning from the South Pacific with a miraculous discovery-which he has patented and steadfastly refuses to comment upon-that led to the first of his remarkable "humanimal" creations.

"My early work in animation was, sadly, a great big boondoggle," he admits. "The major studios were too eager to own the rights to my films and the characters, and they killed the Golden Goose. I was naive, not wise to the ways of ancillary merchandising or the fine print in contracts, and it cost me plenty. But now, I've had the last laugh, as it were, because the expense of animated films has kept it from getting a foothold. And, frankly, the sad truth is, people just don't enjoy them. Why should they settle for a blinkered, diminished sketch of reality, when we have the tools to bring the fantastic to living, breathing life?"

Mr. Dixon has certainly learned from his early mistakes. The young studio mogul keeps a private army to watch over the hundred-acre Burbank laboratory-studio he still calls the Barnyard, and the neighboring "farm" where his curious menagerie of trained human-animal hybrids lives. When they are not singing and slinging pies in front of the cameras, Moxie Monkey, Darn Old Duck, Algy Gator, the Three Little Pigs and all the rest are as pampered as any stars, even if you'll never see them at Musso & Frank's without a phalanx of guards and trainers.

Dixon is not unaware of the controversy among some circles his creations have stirred up. To religious leaders who have lodged accusations of blasphemy, Dixon points out that farmers have been selectively breeding and changing farm animals to suit human usage. "Our humanimals are like my own children," he adds. "We're a big happy family."

The question labor leaders raise is harder to dismiss, however. "Dixon has created monsters with no legal status to replace human actors," Herb Rosenfeld, spokesman for the Screen Technicians Guild, said from his hospital bed at Temple Hospital, where he is recovering from injuries incurred during a recent Barnyard strike. "From there, it's a short leap to breeding an army of subhuman serfs to do his bidding, instead of paying a living wage to professional, fully human workers."

Only time will tell how this brewing dispute will shake out, but Dixon is single-mindedly fixed on the future ... namely, on this Christmas, when his first three-reel feature will bow on every screen in the Paramount theater chain. Banjo, the story of a lonely little circus elephant with a unique gift, will be like nothing ever seen before, he promises. "I can't wait for the world's children to meet Gene, our little humanimal prodigy who will play the t.i.tle role. And I know he can't wait to meet them."

DOc.u.mENT D.

DIXON STUDIOS INTEROFFICE MEMO: CLa.s.sIFIED.

(5/16/36).

It has come to our attention that subversives posing as animal rights advocates have infiltrated our happy family at Dixon's Barnyard. Mr. Dixon has always considered his employees and animal performers a big happy family, so it is with reluctance that we clarify our position, in re: the legal status of our Barnyard children.

The humanimals are, like the patented process that made them, wholly owned intellectual property of Will Dixon Productions and Noxid Enterprises. Like any pets, they feel, love, and dream, and we will jealously guard them against any strangers who wish to do them harm. The notion that they are slaves ent.i.tled to the rights of United States citizens is slanderous and punishable by immediate termination and prosecution to the fullest extent of the law.

DOc.u.mENT E.

FROM LOOK MAGAZINE.

(5/12/43).

The Patriotism of Will Dixon: When Hollywood Goes to War General Eisenhower predicted that it would be impossible to mount an invasion of France without the loss of tens of thousands of American lives, but he never reckoned on the shy civilian super-patriot from Hollywood. "I just did what anyone who loved this country would do, which was everything I could. And my Barnyard children did the same."

Will Dixon has always jealously guarded his patented "humanimal" process, because he feared it falling into the wrong hands. "I speak for my humanimal family, and they speak for me. I can guarantee these unique creatures will never be abused or mistreated, but I could never accept the burden of letting them out into the wider world, where they would be at the mercy of men with less compa.s.sion in their hearts."

Dixon's total control over the breeding and rearing of humanimals has also made him a very wealthy man. But when Uncle Sam came calling in the summer of 1940, Will Dixon never hesitated to meet the challenge.

And it was a big one. To raise an army of fierce, strapping human-animal hybrids that could be ready to storm the beaches in less than three years, Dixon was given a blank check to expand his Barnyard into a factory to rival Henry Ford's. When California balked at the scope of the project, Dixon acquired 30,000 acres of Florida swampland and began work on the first of millions of cows and bulls donated by America's dairy farmers and meatpackers. The "cowboys" made the most of their reprieve from the slaughterhouse, but they were only a humble beginning, as Dixon's Florida "bioneers" began implanting specially treated humanimal eggs, and a little Dixon magic, into twenty thousand brave surrogate mother sows.

The rest, as they say, was history. Flying monkey scouts, gremlin saboteurs, centaur couriers and kamikaze "frogmen" invaded Europe in waves that reduced Fortress Europe to a barnyard in flames in less than two years. The real stars of the show were Dixon's special gorilla-rhino infantrymen, who are a lot less lovable than their celebrated Tinseltown representative Private Lummox, but no less courageous. One of the lumbering berserkers' biggest fans is General George S. Patton. "I don't give a d.a.m.n who made them, these are G.o.d's perfect soldiers. They never grumble, they never give up, and they only bathe in kraut blood. I shudder to think what a cl.u.s.ter of fudge this war would've been, if we'd had to fight it with an army of snot-nosed, puny humans."

One challenge Dixon had to overcome was the "savage" animal nature itself. Contrary to popular wisdom about the Law of the Jungle, when it comes to fighting, it turns out that humans are the only animals who don't know when to stop. "Even wild predators have a natural 'off' switch that kicks in to smooth raised hackles after besting a rival or running down prey. But we've fixed that."

DOc.u.mENT F.

PART TWO: THE HAPPIEST h.e.l.l ON EARTH.

(Anaheim, 6/30/44) The train emerges from the tunnel, and everybody cheers.

The sunlight comes down in rays of white gold on Moxie's Main Street, a cobblestoned confection recasting of Tivoli Gardens with the gambling, alcohol, and prost.i.tution lovingly strained out. A mob of humanimals pours out of the quaint gingerbread storefronts to face the train, dancing and singing "When an Angel Gets His Wings," the maudlin standard that rocketed to the top of the charts after its appearance in Banjo.

Will Dixon jabs me in the back and I stand and take a bow, tipping my top hat and unpinning my grotesquely huge ears. A giggling Senator's daughter plays peek-a-boo with me. I hide my rheumy eyes with my trunk.

The humanimals who perform the tear-jerker tune sixty-eight times a day are fed mola.s.ses and Benzedrine to keep them in a constant state of frenetic joy. And so far, no awkward incidents with rutting or feces-flinging. The performing humanimals are all neutered and rigorously toilet-trained.

The Three Blind Mice, the Three Bears, and the Three Little Pigs form a pyramid. Snafu, Darn Old Duck, and Moxie Monkey race to plant Old Glory on the summit.

The Boss is hot to fade out the Three Little Pigs. Their short heyday was long ago, and the old vendetta has only grown more vicious with time. The set was a bloodbath. Nine Big Bad Wolves have been ga.s.sed since the original. The pigs are always under guard, but the wolf, trying to write his own ending, always goes for the third Little Pig, the bricklayer.

Keeping the internecine feud out of the press has required its own special team. Dixon wants to replace the wolf with a man in a suit for the park, but nothing drives a humanimal wilder than a man in an animal suit.

The train chugs on around Main Street and into another tunnel. "This next exhibit might be a little scary, so mothers, you might want to cover your little ones' eyes." Dixon delights in the children's fearful looks, the uncertainty of the parents.

The sins of my fathers run deep.

The tunnel opens on the faint light through the dense canopy of the towering Black Forest. A low, ominous horn sounds. Demonic hounds with green flame for eyes race alongside the train, and their faceless horned master reins in his demon-horse to crack a whip over our cowering heads.

Skeletons rise from barrow mounds in an ancient graveyard and engage in a macabre waltz. A wolf in a b.l.o.o.d.y nightgown chases Little Red Riding Hood through a glade, while Hansel and Gretel run ahead of giant ravens to a gingerbread cottage, the doors of which are flung wide open to devour the train. Inside, the cackling witch sharpens a cleaver as we turn to our final destination, the yawning mouth of a red glowing oven.

The train bursts out of the tunnel into full daylight and hysterical screams. Dixon claps my back as most of his guests cover their eyes, blinded by the sight of Fairyland.

Centaurs and satyrs and a great white unicorn frolic in a rainbow sherbet Elysian Field of wildflowers. The Fairy Kingdom opens its b.u.t.terfly-winged gates to disgorge a parade. Thumbelina is brought to the train in a tiny golden coach. The audience holds its breath to hear her tiny voice singing "Bigger Than the World," her Oscar-winning theme song. Ray lifts the fourteen-inch princess up onto his shoulder and feeds her lunch with an eyedropper. Hummingbird food and opium.

The Senator's daughter asks me what it was like to fly. I tell her it was wonderful, and that I wish I could fly in real life. I don't tell her about the panic attacks, or the morphine I got hooked on after shooting three flying sequences on a broken leg. I don't tell her that Will Dixon was as good as his word. In his kingdom, there is no pain.

"You don't know how lucky you are," she says. "My mother says, when I grow up, all of this will seem very silly to me. But you get to stay here forever."

I pose for a picture with her and the next governor, and then rush off to the nearest employee restroom. I take out the steel syringe with its twelve-gauge trocar needle, and inject a bolt of bliss into the cl.u.s.ter of blood vessels behind my right ear.

I know it's dangerous and stupid to fix while serving as His Master's Voice, but I cannot face what I have to do next without a shot.

cd cd If any die-hard fans were to get past the moat, the electrified fence and the razor wire, the armed guards and the dog-men, they would find the Barnyard a big disappointment. The quaint, rickety old sets and stables still stand for VIP tours, with pampered humanimal specimens set up to perform for anybody Dixon wants to impress.

After the checkpoint, I get out of the plumbing truck that serves as my limousine. The guards all tip their hats and smile. One asks for my autograph.

The shower stalls in the main stable are all freight elevators. The underground complex was more than just Dixon's answer to Burbank's refusal to let him s.n.a.t.c.h up any more cheap real estate. Since the war made his studio a strategic target, Dixon moved all his operations and his treasured children into a ma.s.sive, hundred-acre bunker.

The guards below ask for my autograph, too, on a triplicate sign-in log. It smells like Noah's Ark, down here. Waves of carbolic acid and alcohol and bucket brigades of manure-hauling squirrel-men fight a losing battle against the ripe stench of the jungle.

Dixon can't stand the stink himself; it brings back his squalid early childhood near the Chicago stockyards, rather than the idyllic later years on a Kansas farm.

I close my eyes, and I am back in the ravine.

The echoing cries of predators and prey in adjoining cells, of rivals auditioning for the same part, s.h.i.+ver the rank air. The Master balked at remaking lower animals after a few disastrous experiments, but Dixon has found that many of them take more readily to humanity-or some uncanny semblance of it-than mammals. Unlike his volcanic screen persona, Darn Old Duck is quiet and thoughtful, and writes almost all his own scripts. Algy Gator has a car dealers.h.i.+p and an honorary law degree from the University of Florida.

And Dr. Hiss, who slithers out of a hole in the wall to uncoil before me, has risen, without hands or feet, to become the chief of genetic research, the humanimal master of the Knife and the Needle.

"He doesss not come among ussss," spits Hiss, venomous with insinuation. "Perhapssss he isss sssick?"

No one is looking. I step on Hiss's neck. "He is still the Father of us All, and always will be." Crus.h.i.+ng him into the sawdust, I remember what it was like to be pinned by Darius, who is now a moth-eaten coat in my closet. "You were born only to serve this family."

"I only meant," wheezes Hiss, "that it might be necessssary to ssselect a sssuccesssor." Behind the bloated dome of his skull, Dr. Hiss's green-black coils stretch around the corner. "Sssome sssay it will be you ... but only through a human puppet. But we could fix you ... trunk tuck ... earssss, of courssse. Skin graftssss and a shot of human serum.... We have Dougla.s.ss Fairbankssss. But if you could sssecure a sssample of our Father'sss ssseed...."

While he talks, I stomp down the length of the anaconda's wiggling sixty-foot span to find his tail, which has another head. This one's whispering our conversation verbatim into a telephone.

"Who is this?" I shout. Expecting a tabloid hack or a G-Man stooge on the other end, I am stunned by the voice that comes crackling down the overseas trunk line.

"I am the Sayer of the Law."