Back in 1995, David Prill wrote The Unnatural, a strange and funny look at America’s Pastime: competetive embalming. I don’t know why. But it was deadpan and sly and even charming. He followed this up with 1996’s Serial Killer Days, which is about an annual small-town festival which culminates in the murder of the festival queen. Again he took the rituals of American life and twisted them into something totally unique and very very funny. In 1998, he published Second Coming Attractions, a Prill-ian (Prill-esque? Prill-ish?) peek inside the world of religious filmmakers. And after that? Nothing. Nada. Zilch. We kept waiting and hoping, and in 2002 finally the long drought was over with Subterranean Press’s publication of Prill’s new collection Dating Secrets of the Dead.

The title story is a look at teenage dating after death. The tone is brilliant—very reminiscent of one of those old health class filmstrips (or, for younger readers, the health & hygiene films they sometimes showed during MST3K). It is an unusual writer who can balance the funny, the charming and the grotesque, but Prill is very good at it. You’re rooting for Jerry and Caroline even as you’re laughing at the inevitable outward manifestations of the deacying process.

The second story is much darker. “Carnyvore” is a much more straightforward horror story, right out of the old EC Comics: self-righteous townsfolk cause the failure of a traveling circus and the carnies take their revenge. It’s not a humorous story, but Prill does take the old Cryptkeeper’s delight in the justice imposed on the hypocritical “normals” by the carnival folk.

The final story is yet another departure for Prill. “The Last Horror Show” is a Bradbury-esque tale of the gradual end of the traveling horror show and the boy who grows up as the shows fade away. Prill does a marvelous job of capturing a kid’s joy in the schlocky live horror shows that traveled around a film circuit providing live screams and chills and laughs before a horror movie. It’s easy to get caught up in Davy’s enthusiasm. But Prill does an equally fine job at showing us the people behind the show, with their own hopes and dreams, and how they try to hold onto them as those dreams inexorably fade away. “The Last Horror Show” really shines.

Three very different stories from one talented writer. I can only hope that Dating Secrets of the Dead is merely a hint of things to come.
( )