GOLGOTHA FALLS

by Frank De Felitta ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 27, 1984

You know you're in the hyped-up, murky world of De Felitta-style occult when animals start copulating wildly and characters start tossing off lines like: ""Come off it, Anita. We've had experience with pyrokinesis. The priest was completely charged and it self-combusted."" And so it goes through this exorcism/parapsychology stew--set in the abandoned, accursed Church of the Eternal Sorrows in Golgotha Falls, Mass. Back in 1914 the resident Catholic priest lost his congregation to materialism, went bonkers (perhaps possessed by Satan), and sank down into yucky necrophilia and suicide. Ever since, the defamed Church has been giving off the worst vibes imaginable--with deaths, hallucinations, etc. So it's the perfect research site for desperate, unpleasant parapsychologist Marlo Gilbert and his lover/assistant Anita, working with a small grant from Harvard. But, just when Mario and Anita arrive at the church with their heaps of scientific equipment, Father Eamon Malcolm arrives there too: his mission is to exorcise the evil spirits, restoring the spirit of Christ to the church. (Father M.'s uncle made a similar attempt back in 1978--and wound up with a fatal case of bestiality.) The bulk of the novel, then, is the shrill conflict between the theological and parapsychological approaches to paranormal phenomena. Are the ugly goings-on in the church caused by a Satanic presence? Or by the energy-waves cast off from sexual repression--particularly the sexual repression of Father M. himself? And when Marlo takes photos of crucifix-manifestations in the church, how is it that they get transformed into pornography before the eyes of a Harvard confab? Did the devil do it all? Or is Father M. ""one of the most remarkable psychic transmitters ever known?"" Those are the questions here, talkily belabored--with crude dollops of sex and an ill-arranged subplot: the new Pope takes a special interest in tao Golgotha Falls brouhaha because he is a ""millenialist,"" heralding the imminent arrival of the Second Coming. And the finale is a doomed mass-media attempt to videotape the final exorcism/heavenly-apparition--while Marlo rediscovers some of his long-ago abandoned Catholic faith. More pretentious, somewhat less pulpy than Audrey Rose or The Entity, but also a lot less zesty: only for occult fans with a strong theological leaning and a taste for gratuitous luridness.

Pub Date: July 27, 1984

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1984

Categories: FICTION