The very next weekend, Scott realized he had misjudged the situation.
It was a triple feature this time, starting with Gene Barry in The War of the Worlds. Scott paid little attention until the final moments, then moved his seat to a better vantage point. Next up was Silent Running, one of the few movies he still enjoyed watching, primarily because of the cleverly conceived robot characters. He had heard somewhere that they had actually hired amputees to play the parts, standing on their hands inside the confining costumes, and he never tired of trying to imagine how each shot had been constructed.
Within minutes, Scott realized that something was wrong. He knew without question that the crew member named Wolf was not a tall, slender redheaded female. At least, not until now. He was so stunned that he never even noticed later when, during the fight scene between Raquel Welch and Martine Beswicke in One Million Years B.C., the former's furry bra was completely removed.
He waited impatiently for the last disheveled couple to fix their clothing and leave the auditorium, then descended to the lobby and helped Candy finish her cleaning up. She looked at him suspiciously — he had never offered any kind of assistance before — but made no comment.
"Walk me to the bank?" There had been two muggings in downtown Managansett that week, and Candy had expressed concern about her own safety.
"Sorry." He shook his head. "I've still got things to do before I leave."
She bit her lip. "I can wait, I guess. I'd feel better if I had some company while I'm carrying all that money."
Scott made an impatient noise. "It's not even a hundred dollars, Candy, for Christ's sake."
"The muggers don't know that!"
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "Look, just leave it for me. I'll make the deposit myself on my way home, all right?"
She looked dubious. "I don't know. I'm really supposed to do that myself."
"Then do it and stop whining at me!" he exploded. "I'm not paid to be your bodyguard or your nursemaid."
Candy's eyes widened and her mouth opened as though she were about to respond in kind. But then her features twisted angrily and she snatched up the deposit bag, whirled, and stormed out of the theater.
Scott carefully remounted the film on the projector and restarted it, convinced that his fortune was made. The credits played through and the story began.
Wolf was once again a young actor named Cliff Potts.
That evening, lying awake in bed, Scott Barkin reviewed the possibilities. There had been an opportunity for someone to switch copies while he was downstairs arguing with Candy, but that seemed highly improbable. He might be going crazy, have hallucinated the entire thing, but he dismissed that immediately because clearly that kid had seen the same thing he had in Forbidden Planet. The only other alternatives that occurred to him were that… somehow… the images from the film were being altered before they reached the screen, or that there was a way to make more than one person hallucinate the same way. He had no idea how this could e achieved, but perhaps some brilliant but reclusive inventor had developed such a device and was testing it secretly. Certainly Managansett, Rhode Island, was pretty remote, intellectually if not physically. The entire town seemed to lag a decade or more behind the rest of the world.
There still might be some way he could take advantage of the situation, but to do so, he would have to identify the source of the alterations. Tomorrow was comedy night, Arsenic and Old Lace and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. He was familiar with both movies and should be able to spot any variations. Somehow he would have to devise a method of tracing these changes back to their source. He passed the night restlessly trying to develop a strategy to deal with the situation.
Disappointingly, Sunday's screening passed without event, as did those throughout the week. Scott was ready to chalk everything up to fatigue and tension when he showed up for work on Saturday.
The Blob passed uneventfully enough, Steve McQueen saving the day in the final moments. The classic was followed by the darkly humorous sequel Beware the Blob, one of the few Scott had not seen before. His unfamiliarity caused him to miss some subtle divergences from the original, the highly revealing dress Carol Lynley wore during the party sequence, the dissolving of Cindy Williams's clothing during her death scene. The third feature, however, was another of his favorites.
Originally, Bradford had ordered The Stuff, another Blob-like film to complete the triple feature. The distributor had accidentally substituted Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which, while mismatched, was to Scott's thinking a far superior movie.
His enjoyment turned to excitement during the scene in which Richard Dreyfuss and Teri Garr had a hysterical argument in the bathroom. Frustrated, confused, even frightened, Dreyfuss/Roy struck out at his wife. Garr/ Ronnie fell back against the bathroom wall in astonishment, then began to struggle as her distraught husband tore at her bathrobe and began making violent love to her. They were both naked when their children arrived to investigate the disturbance.
Scott rushed downstairs as the film was ending to ensure that he could surreptitiously watch the patrons on their way out. To his disappointment, everyone looked perfectly ordinary. There were several young couples who came regularly to neck in the back row, two young males who appeared to have arrived separately, a couple of elderly men, one distracted woman who constantly subvocalized to herself, and the kid with the glasses.
Scott crossed to intercept him, trying to be casual. "How'd you like the show?"
The kid peered up at him dubiously. "I don't know where you get these cuts, mister, but if my mom finds out what you're showing here, she'll never let me come again."
"Let's not tell her then, right?"
When the theater was empty, Candy locked the door from the inside. She hadn't forgiven him his churlishness. "Don't you have things to do?" She glared at him until he turned away, but he hadn't even noticed. His mind was racing at full speed.
Just to be certain, he rechecked the tape before leaving for the night. The film now displayed the original version.
Obviously, whatever device was being used was quite small, virtually undetectable. Even if it was some kind of hallucinatory gas, it would have to be contained in something. Perhaps he could at least identify who was bringing it into the theater. Scott began paying more attention to the movies he showed, but as he had expected, nothing happened during the next several days. He had concluded by now that whoever was responsible came on Saturday nights only, for the science-fiction program.
The following Saturday, a notebook and pen were at hand. Scott knew few customers by name, but most of them were familiar enough that he could mark down some significant characteristic by which to separate one from another. He made twenty-seven entries in all, either while taking tickets, or later, during a leisurely stroll through the theater before bringing down the house lights.
The Creature from the Black Lagoon passed uneventfully, but Barbarella was transformed.
Scott knew something was up right from the opening sequence when the nude Jane Fonda received her assignment. He couldn't remember how explicit the original had been, but this screening was downright lewd. Judging by the murmuring from the audience, the explicit sex on screen had even attracted the attention of the back-row patrons. And it didn't end there. Each encounter was altered in some fashion, always designed to provide longer and more revealing glimpses of Barbarella's body. The scene involving the now transparent pleasure machine was so erotic that it evoked a shocked outcry from someone in the audience.