All film, Roszak argues, is secret film, filled with hidden agendas and manipulative designs upon our psyches. Film is more than it appears. It is a conspiracy against the Real, a clever trick masquerading as what really Is. It is created, not by a conspiracy that stretches across the veil of years, but by quiet, unknown technicians laboring on movie sets to make a grand Illusion that somehow cheapens life a little bit. Film is not real, but it tries to tell us it is, and our own sense of reality suffers a bit each time we walk into a darkened theater.
Flicker is the best kind of paranoid conspiracy story, the kind the reader wishes was true.
It epitomizes the deep appeal for conspiracy has for us, the desire for there really to have been a Max Castle and movies that did hide some secret Truth. Flicker also pulls in a lot of Hollywood's true secret history, such as the events surrounding Welles' Heart of Darkness . It is an interesting stroll through the world of film, a world quite like our own in some ways, and quite alien and unreal in others. If you would like to buy this book, search The Weird Bookshelf science fiction and fantasy online bookstore.