Something More Than Night

Newman (Anno Dracula) crafts a genre-bending mystery that twines meticulously researched history with the unabashedly campy tropes of early sci-fi and horror. In the 1930s, Hollywood mogul Ward Home Jr. bursts from his Gothic home on Sunset Boulevard on fire and strapped into a strange metal contraption. He’s pursued by a special effects engineer who douses him before fleeing the scene. When investigator Joh Devlin takes the unusual arson case, he discovers a mad scientist’s laboratory and multiple corpses underneath the Home house, but he’s kicked off the case when he refuses to sell a neat explanation of events. He enlists writer Raymond Chandler and actor Boris Karloff to help him unofficially continue his investigation, plunging all three into a madcap plot that takes them across the borders of life and death. Though the narrative can feel disjointed, jumping between narrators and timelines, Newman successfully integrates real historical figures into a tale that’s equal parts monster movie and detective noir, abounding with witches, murderous clowns, Frankenstein’s monsterlike creatures, and brooding gumshoes. The result is both an homage and a glorious reinvention, perfect for those nostalgic for the pulpy genre fiction of the past. (Nov.)