THE PHANTOM REFLECTION

Stella Raye, ""a lovely motion picture actress"" circa 1935, keeps having this hideous phantom-in-the-mirror dream: ""I watched the image form into my horrified likeness."" Then she goes on location to the Casa de Alvarez and things get worse. She seems to be doing a Jekyll-and-Hyde, switching from prim to sleazy, and, later, not being able to remember the sleazy parts. ""A lack of identity in your subconscious mind, I suspect,"" says Stratton Walters, ""a handsome young doctor."" But that doesn't explain why nosy script girl Marian is stabbed to death. Or why ""medium-tall, handsome, well-built' leading man Jeff Beeler drops dead. Or why even the most tolerant reader of modern Gothics should bother with this triple-threat descent into childishness: paper-doll characters, fingerpaint prose, Romper Room plotting.