It starts like one of those old Gap Ads - a bunch of crazy kids jitterbugging madly...
...and then suddenly, we are high above the glittering jewel of Los Angeles, on Mulholland Drive in a limo...
...with a beautiful black haired woman...
...who suddenly finds herself in a bad situation, but is given a left handed gift from the gods in the way of a head on collision...
...which leaves several cars ruined, several people dead, and our dark haired beauty stunned and bloody. Dazed, she wanders off into the night, down a hill and onto the streets of L.A. proper.
Police and detectives arrive, they are perplexed. They realize that there is a survivor, but they don't know where he or she has gone.
Meanwhile, our heroine finds refuge in an empty apartment, where she falls asleep and...
...dreams a peculiar dream of two men in a restaurant. One of the men tells the tale of a dream he had of a monster who lives near the dumpster behind the restaurant. The two men then go to the back of the restaurant and when the man sees the "creature" ...
...he falls away, seemingly dead from fright.
Phone calls are made...someone is trying to find someone. "The girl is missing".
And then we see a bright eyed beauty who arrives at LAX accompanied by a seemingly sweet older couple who wish the young lady well ...
and when the older couple get in a limo and start grinning malevolently and laughing...something seems terribly wrong...
Welcome to Hollywood.
Our perky blond, Betty, goes to an old, palatial, weed choked apartment complex and meets the landlady, Coco, a flamboyant, tough old broad who welcomes her with open arms. Seems that Betty is in town to try her hand at acting. She's just won a dance contest and the world is her oyster.
Once inside the apartment that she is using while her aunt, an actress, is out of town, she discovers the dark haired woman using the shower.
More strange goings on...
Meanwhile, there's this young director being strong-armed into casting someone against his will to star in a film he's making - said director smashes the windows of the bad guy's car and beats a hasty retreat...
...on the other side of town, a rather inept hit-man has killed a few people and stole a book...
...one of his bullets hits a cleaning lady in the ass, "Something bit me bad, mister!" she hisses, before the hit-man kills her.
In spite of everything, Betty still can't believe she's in this "Dream place".
The mystery of the dark haired woman, now dubbed "Rita", deepens when she discovers a major amount of cash in her purse...
...and a rather odd, blue key.
The hit-man is asking questions, he wants to know if anyone has seen a dark haired woman...
...while the director discovers his wife in bed with Billy Ray Cyrus!
The girls decide to put their heads together to solve the mystery of Rita and what happened to her...
...and then one of the loopy tenants shows up at the apartment and when she meets Betty she is all doom and gloom. She say's Betty is not who she claims to be...
...now a cowboy is giving the director an ultimatum.
While Betty goes on an audition and wows 'em...even Chad Everett is impressed...
...since she did so well at her audition, Betty is brought down to the studio where
The Sylvia North Story is being shot. Betty is entranced by the movie magic she sees, but realizes that she still has some sleuthing to do and rushes back to Rita - the two women break into another apartment hoping to discover a clue about Rita's past...
...and find a rotted corpse.
Terrified, Rita and Betty rush home and Rita starts cutting her hair off, before Betty convinces her to don a blond wig as a disguise...
...and the the women go to bed, and make love - seems like our ingenue is not as innocent as she appears...
...and then, in the middle of the night, Rita wakes up and starts speaking in Spanish. Betty comforts her and soon Rita says that they have to go to Club Silencio, a strange little theater. Once they arrive, they find an emcee who proclaims,"
No hay banda !" It's all an illusion...and then...
...a woman sings an acapella version of
Roy Orbison's
Crying, in Spanish - half way through her song, she falls away, much like the man in the restaurant's parking lot did earlier, but the song continues...
...during this, the women discover a blue box in Rita's purse, they hurry home...
...and find that the odd key fits a lock in the box...and then Betty disappears, and so does Rita...and suddenly we are in an empty bedroom.
Betty's "aunt" enters the room as if she's heard a noise, looks around and then walks out.
Now we find a rather skanky looking woman waking up from a troubled dream - wait, it's Betty, or is it?
Soon we discover that the last hour and a half have been nothing but a fevered dream of a troubled young woman named, Diane. Her Oz-like head trip populated with people she met during her short but not so illustrious stab at show biz ... Coco the landlady is now the bitchy mother of the director who is going to marry Camilla...Camilla, we now know is the real name of the dark haired beauty ... even the cowboy is there (see him in the background?)
Gone is the needy woman with no memory of who she was, in her place is a careless bitch who toys with Diane's emotions at every turn...
...it seems that Diane and Camilla were once lovers, but as soon as Camilla found the director, she moved on to better her life, leaving Diane bitter, heartbroken and wanting revenge ... so she engages a hit-man (he looks familiar) to kill Camilla...
...he tells her that when she finds this key, the job will be done. The conversation takes place in the same restaurant from earlier where the two men were discussing the dream of the monster who lives behind the dumpster...
...speaking of which, what's the freaky guy/monster/creature from the dumpster doing with the blue box?
After he puts the box in a paper bag and tosses it aside, the old couple from the airport,( now miniaturized, cackling daemons), emerge from the box and skedaddle on in to the night...
...and appear to Diane, laughing and chasing her through her apartment...
...overcome with guilt for what she did, Diane's nightmare manifests into a sick reality, with the daemons taunting her to madness, driving her to her bedroom...
...where she reaches for a gun...
...and shoot herself in the head...looking just like the body she saw in her dream earlier...
and then we are back at Club Silenco where a blue haired woman sits in a box seat and utters the last line, "
Silenco".
I hate trucks. I hate this truck especially because it kept trying to run poor Dennis Weaver off the road.
With it's allusion to lynchings, this still from the end credits to Night of the Living Dead, creeps me out more than any damn zombie ever could.
It may not be from a horror film, but this scene just ruined me! I guess Woltz should have forgiven Johnny Fontaine after all. 
...so your stuck in the window of this creepy old house, and you see this nut case coming at you with a a couple of sharp objects...
MIIIIKKKEEEEEE! 'nuff said.
William Castle might have been a big old hack - but this scene scared the bejesus out of me when I was a kid. It's one of the reasons I love horror films to this day!
Creepy little girls crawling out of wells and television sets always freak me out. 
