THE WIZARD OF LA-LA LAND

AIDS victim Kenny Gotch, a.k.a. Harriet LaRue, is sinking fast over at the Angeles Hospice, but not fast enough for whoever came in and stuck a surgical blade into his throat just in time for him to die, throwing up blood, all over one-eyed sometime PI Mike Rialto. It's a particularly undeserved bit of bad luck for Rialto- -who recovers from his terror of contagion just in time to be picked up by the police—since he was only meeting Gotch for the first time, following a rumor that Gotch knew who'd killed and mutilated a friend's niece ten years earlier. Now that Gotch has died without confirming the rumor, however, there's no reason why Rialto's even scruffier colleague, Whistler, shouldn't pick up the trail, which begins with a mummified child's finger stuck in the back of Gotch's desk drawer and a programmable telephone whose numbers summon up a mulligan stew of prostitutes and perverts. Unfortunately, we already know exactly what Whistler will find: a coven of closet Satanists headed by Jonas Kilroy (Comparative Religion/UCLA); blade-wielding photographer Bennu Rahab (nÇ Raymond Raditski); and Whistler's old enemy, senile potentate Walter Cape. Campbell's stylish storytelling gives way to tabloid-speak (intrepid Whistler ``was afraid to close his eyes because he might see visions so terrible that he might never erase them from his memory'') as his tale hurtles toward a climax that reads like it's assembled from outtakes of The Exorcist. As you'd expect from veteran Hollywooder Campbell (Sweet La-La Land, 1990, etc.), there's crisply paced narration and a memorably grotesque supporting cast, but the penny-dreadful wallows sink them all in the end.