Mailer returned to directing after nearly twenty years for this adaptation of his best-selling novel. Ryan O’Neal portrays an alcoholic writer living in Provincetown whose life goes haywire when he discovers a decapitated head. Compared to Tarantino for his stylized mix of grotesque violence and rapid-fire dialogue, Mailer described this puzzler as “a murder mystery, a suspense tale, a film of horror, and a comedy of manners.”