In 6th grade I loved to watch a program called Svengoolie and would plan my weekend around it accordingly. Svengoolie was a local Chicago program broadcasted on WCIU Channel 26 The ‘U,’ the same channel that brought us late night weekly re-runs of the defunct classic sitcom “Married with Children.” Svengoolie, played by Richard Koz, is a dying breed of horror hosts who dresses up as a ghoul and presents a horror film while simultaneously mocking it with long-running gags and diverse media. One such gag is the repeated phrase “Berwyn” at random moments throughout the broadcast, a reference to a Chicago suburb of the same name. Julian used to tell me about how his 6th grade class always enjoyed capitalizing on that joke, much to science teacher Ms. Binter’s chagrin. A student would say, “Beeeeerrrrrwynnnn,” and she would respond in a flash of rage, “Yes. Yes, BERWYN, a suburb of CHICAGO. And I don’t see why that is so funny to you!”
Apparently Richard Koz is my friend Brian Judycki’s mom’s cousin. I was so excited when I found that out, and even more excited when one day, after the showing of “House on Sorority Row” I could finally put that to the test when it was announced that Svengoolie himself was going to appear in a special chat room on the Internet to talk with his beloved fans. With the help of my dad, I got on and signed into the chat room and kept typing over and over again:
“Svengoolie! PLEASE respond to this! You are my best friend’s mom’s cousin! Are you related to a Judycki? This is NOT a joke!”
But Svengoolie never replied, and other chat room members just mocked me: “Oh and he is my aunt’s cousin’s dog’s sister’s boyfriend too.” Then, perhaps overwhelmed by his fan base, Svengoolie left the chat room and I was disappointed.
I went to band practice the next morning, excited to tell Dave about how the killer in the movie I watched on Svengoolie turned out to be a clown, and Dave had a fear of clowns so I thought that was just the coolest thing. He was really unresponsive when I gave him the synopsis and I was kind of bothered that he was not excited like me. A little while later I found out from his girlfriend Tiffanie that his dog Max had run away. She sat next to me in band because we both played saxophone. And truthfully, I felt quite embittered that Dave told his girlfriend about what was bothering him over telling me, his best friend. I guess I was instilled with that maxim of bros before ho’s early on. At any rate, Tiffany ended up breaking up with Dave not long afterward at the junior high Halloween Dance. Dave went all-out and dressed up as a Chiquita banana, and she broke up with him.
“The Leprechaun” series which includes “Leprechaun 3: In Las Vegas,” “Leprechaun 4: In Space,” “Leprechaun in the Hood” and the unfortunate sub-sequel “Leprechaun Back 2 the Hood” constitutes perhaps the biggest inside joke between David Carter and me, spanning many years and many changes. Imagine the amount of inside jokes that could accrue in a close friendship that has continued on strong since 1988* and then those specifically pertaining to this chain of movies concerning an evil sprite on an epic quest for his 100 gold shillings spanning Las Vegas, outer space, and inner-city housing projects… It would be a gross understatement to say that these disastrous movies brought Dave and me closer together.
“Leprechaun 3” was the first one I ever saw and incidentally one of my first horror films as well. The Judycki brothers had rented it shortly after it came out in 1995 and Alexei and I watched the movie one weekend afternoon over at their house. Some of the scenes of the movie haunted me for days to come, especially the part where the woman with enormous breasts comes out of the television (possessed by the leprechaun) and electrocutes some horny old man, or when Leprechaun chainsaws a magician in half in front of an audience. I always seemed to have an urge to describe to my mom the scenes that for whatever reason affected me most, as though telling her would release a sense of guilt, a lasting fear of retribution for the voyeuristic pleasure I received from the movie. Or maybe I was just scared, as any youngster should be. Look at me now, totally desensitized, it’s really sick.
Years later, after I had properly acclimatized myself to horror movie gore and violence, I watched “Leprechaun” with David Carter. At that time it was practically the greatest thing to ever happen to us. We were in late elementary school. One cold spring Sunday afternoon my dad must have been away on business so I was hanging out with Dave and we were roasting hotdogs over a small fire in my front yard. If I remember correctly we were waiting for one of the Leprechaun movies to come on at 3pm on UPN channel 50.We began after that first experience an annual two-man St. Patrick’s Day celebration. Every mid-March we would rent the first in the series and match this selection with one of the others and watch both in succession while stuffing candy in our mouths and fucking up the Carters’ basement. We also performed this really homoerotic act where one of us would be on top of the pool table while the other lay on his back beneath it. Then the person on top would pour some carbonated soft drink and try to aim it for the other’s mouth while the person receiving would gag and laugh with glee. We would switch off top and bottom. The results were sticky and messy and now you can probably imagine why I referred to it as ‘homoerotic.’
“Leprechaun in the Hood” came out in junior high, a direct-to-video production that Dave and I were eagerly awaiting when we found out about it on the Internet. Our fellow classmate from Mexico named Joaquin told us he had a bootleg copy and we thought that was the funniest thing. A couple years later, after we’d already watched “Lep’ in the Hood” (part 5 in the series) for perhaps the third time, an inane sequel came out bringing the toll to six: “Leprechaun Back 2 to the Hood.” I don’t remember the first time we watched it, but from what I remember the little mean green guy was barely in it, yet for the sixth time actor Warwick Davis of “Willow” fame reprised his role.
Dave, Ryan Nicholson, and I were in Family Video the autumn of our senior year of high school, stoned undoubtedly, and browsing the movie selections. Dave picked up “Leprechaun Back 2 the Hood” and started to dramatically read aloud the back cover description in the well-known movie trailer voice-over. He was getting real into it until Ryan abruptly snatched the video from his hands and said exactly though unintentionally in the voice of a 5th grade teacher, “David, you are making a scene!”
It stopped there. I didn’t hear about Leprechaun for years to come until my last day in Nanjing, China, December 13, 2008. I went to a pirated DVD shop on the other side of campus in the late afternoon. The sky was clear that day and the winter sun felt good. I was looking for Christmas presents for Seth and Dave. The gift I found Seth (refer to Sleepaway Camp) came right before the gift for Dave in a big stack of completely random DVDs. There it was, Leprechaun 1 through 3 in DVD amidst a sea of others and in my mind’s eye I saw Dave’s dreamy blue eyes and blonde locks of hair and I knew.I brought it back to the States, carefully wrapped it and victoriously presented it to him upon our reunion, but unfortunately the films were the wrong DVD region code, and would only play in a German DVD player. And that was the last I heard of the Leprechaun series, probably the last I will ever hear. We were drunk off Crown Royal brushing the Christmas tree aside in Dave’s living room and fiddling with the DVD player.
“I don’t think this is gonna work,” I said at last, regretfully. Dave called several video stores including the local Blockbuster and Family Video. "Hi," he said very charmingly, "Do you happen to carry 'Leprechaun 3'?"
Pause. " 'Leprechuan 3.'" Pause "No, I'm not looking for that one, I need 'Leprechaun 3' specifically," he said in a perfectly serious tone. "No, I'm actually not looking for 'Leprechaun 2', I need 'Leprechaun 3.'"
*Dave and I had periods of closeness and periods of, well, not-so-closeness. Looking back I see now it always depended ultimately upon whether or not we had the same home-room teacher. It seemed to switch every year. I always used to think it was a conspiracy conjured up by the school board to keep the two of us apart. In first grade we were both in Mrs. Devick’s class and were close as could be. The following year I was in Mrs. Satterthwait’s class while he was in Mrs. Benioff’s class. That year I thought Dave was a real prick, an attention-whore like no other. Everyone loved and idolized him and I was jealous. My family went to Sanibel Island, Florida that year for one last vacation together, and by that I mean both my parents went. This was a while after they had divorced, but they still hated each other and were at each other’s throats the whole time. Julian was a recluse in those days, but I remember I did an impression of Dave pompously walking across the schoolyard with everyone following him that had Julian laughing really hard. Dave is still an asshole to this day.
Somewhere in middle school I wanted to watch this movie, especially because of its PG-13 rating I knew my mom wouldn’t take up an issue with me renting it. I had seen the first “Troll” at Seth’s house during a typical sleepover with his whole family and for some odd reason I wanted to see the second installment. Back in those days I enjoyed keeping a little List of Movies To See with different fonts I developed for each title in the back of my journals as a sort of appendix. “Troll 2” was one of them. I remember part of a summer in Waterloo, IA Alexei and I were aimlessly hanging around the playground of our mother’s elementary school. Alexei was a bad-ass in his early teenage years. I was mucking about on the jungle-gym and he was smoking a cigarette, most likely a Marlboro Red, and we were talking. I rambled on about “Troll 2” by giving him a full synopsis of the first one and then transitioning my lecture to include my desire to watch the sequel sometime in the near future.
I did rent it from Pyramid Video just as I had envisioned on a hot and humid night that summer after I had gotten back to Illinois from Iowa. My mom and I were the only ones home at that time; my brothers were in different places. I watched the movie in my stuffy bedroom and actually got a little scared and I don’t know why. I think it was because I imagined myself in the role of the tragic protagonists as trolls turned them into green food. Afterward I went to bed feeling unsettled and had a difficult time sleeping as I stuck to the sheets in my bed, the night insects’ drone sounding up the night.
When I was a little boy my mother used to take me to the tiny independent video store down the road called Pyramid Video. This was during the age when VHS was at its peak, not long after Beta had been made obsolete. They had an adult section in this video store sectioned off from the rest of it. As a child with a strong morbid curiosity I often took a guilty pleasure in passing by the horror genre of the video collection, nervously making sure my mom would not notice my wandering eye scanning the VHS cases stacked so lightly in front of their heavy black videotapes. I didn’t want my mom to think I was sick and depraved after all, and I was attracted by my fear of the box covers: the blood, the discomforting and ominous fonts, the incomprehensible expression of delight of ravenous lunatics. My mind could barely contain the imagination I had of what disturbing sights and actions lay within those uniformly-formatted videotapes resting hidden behind their tattooed skins.
Years and years later, many of these films’ macabre box cover art still remained engrained in my memory as though I had passed them in the video store just the other day. Among these, the cover art for films like “My Bloody Valentine” and “Happy Birthday to Me,” both self-centered and Canadian-born titles, stuck out in particular. The latter mentioned had a grainy black cover with the picture of a young man eyes and mouth wide open in terror as a shishkabob skewer no doubt stacked with meat, peppers, and onions is being forcibly shoved down his throat by a black leather gloved hand. The tagline, food for the creative imagination of a little boy like myself, read: “Six of the most bizarre murders you will ever see.”
I finally watched this movie one rainy, lazy afternoon in Eugene, Oregon at the fresh age of 20. I remember sitting in my attic space room of an 8-bedroom house putting off my pressing need to study organic chemistry, messily eating a pomegranate, chatting on Gmail with my brother Alexei, and watching “Happy Birthday to Me” fragmented into several parts on Youtube. I wondered if I was wasting my time, especially when my brother asked me what I was up to and I said I was watching a Canadian slasher movie from the 80’s and it was a Friday afternoon. I remember him typing before he left, “Well I gotta go man, enjoy your Canadian horror movie, and your weekend.”
“Black Xmas” was one of those movies I wanted to see when I just needed some junk-food for the brain. When it came out on December 25th, 2006 Chicago Tribune gave it a ½-star rating and I never really had any intention to see it. But when I was at Family Video with Seth some time later perusing their movie titles and the two of us were not able to agree on anything, I suggested “Black Xmas,” which was immediately vetoed by Seth. So for my horror movie watching body of experience this movie was shelved until winter of 2008 when I came back from China.
When I was in the last couple of weeks of my 4-month sojourn abroad I believe I heard word from Seth that he was finally willing to watch the movie. I spent less than 30 minutes watching the original “Black Christmas,” split up into 10-minute segments on Youtube. I was sitting in my bleak dorm room with a sore back knowing for sure I was wasting time, but I looked out the large window at the city immersed in dream-like smog; that pollution index with a head cold was combination enough for me to decide to stay indoors.
Sure enough, shortly after I returned to the States, Seth and I made our way over to Family Video and this time took no time to dawdle, simply grabbed the movie, paid a dollar and left. There was a snowstorm in Chicago that night, and the video store parking lot was filling quickly with white wispy powder that had my pant leg bottoms wet and cold. We went back to Seth’s house and vegged out in his room until late watching this movie, which is a ridiculous mess of gruesome eye-stabbings. That was indeed the central motif that seemed to tie the film together: ceaseless eye-gouging. Seth’s ceiling fan made my eyes dry but otherwise I was comfortable. I recall thinking the movie must have made me 5% dumber.
“The Return of the Living Dead” is truly a gem; one of those rare horror-comedies that delivers successfully to both genres. I didn’t realize it was ultimately a spoof until the first time I watched it. I think I was a sophomore in high school the very first time; I watched it alone in my room late one night. It had recently been released onto DVD after years of being out-of-print. For my 16th birthday my dad and his 4th wife at the time took Julian and me out to a giant sushi and seafood buffet restaurant named Todai which was in Schaumburg, IL near the legendary Woodfield Mall. Julian had recently been graced with a new used Ford Escort, beige-colored, shortly after totaling a red Ford Escort on Lake Shore Drive.
The birthday present given me by my dad’s 4th wife was a copy of “The Return of the Living Dead.” My immediate reaction in my head was “Ohhh great.” I think the only thing I had even remotely in common with her was an interest in zombie movies, but I think she had me beat since she was practically a zombie herself. And this movie was her absolute favorite, she used to tell me about it over and over again.
As for the second viewing, I introduced the movie to David Carter during the dismal winter of 2004 (late February) which found us in our junior year of high school. I was your typical uber-depressed and moody adolescent in those days who smoked a lot of pot and read Nietzsche with a profoundly un-entitled sense of pretentiousness. Another boring night Dave and I spent driving around the suburbs getting high we took back roads all the way to Berwyn just short of the city. We passed by a massive 24-hour laundromat called Laundry World that lit up the night with its fluorescent-decked interior and big, attractive neon sign reaching into the high heavens. I liked the way it appeared and wanted to go inside, but knowing the two of us would make a scene, Dave and I decided to go back to my house and watch a movie. We got back to Downers Grove around 10:30 pm and smoked another bowl before entering my house. We walked in and past my mom who was still awake watching some television program. Innocently we told her we were going to watch a movie for lack of anything better to do, and we trudged on up the creaky old stairs to my room and put on “The Return of the Living Dead.” I wasn’t feeling depressed at then; usually when I was around Dave I was happiest during those times.
Years later, in 2011, Dave sent me a text message that read something like: "What was that zombie movie we watched with those assholes from the future?"
I responded with the title and corrected him. "It wasn't the future. It was set in the 80s."
I’ve never really liked vampire movies. There was this kid who was the son of a contractor for Seth’s parents when they had that massive two-storey addition to their house who said he believed in vampires and I thought he was a tool for that. I was a vampire slayer for an afternoon. I think it was the same summer of Seth’s house addition. Seth had acquired a life-size cardboard stand-up of his aunt who had recently celebrated a marriage or birthday. Seth stood it up in his yard near his tree fort and carved wooden daggers that we both used to fling at the cardboard stand up from various distances. I remember when Seth hit his cardboard aunt in the face with one of the stakes, his mom was on the porch watching us in silent perplexity. Aside from that afternoon of exhaustive slaying practice, I never really found much interest in vampires. In fact, that theme is among the lowest of my priorities when it comes to watching horror films. “The Lost Boys” was by and large my favorite vampire flick until I saw “Fright Night” quite recently. Where did I first encounter “Fright Night”? When I was in 8th grade my mom and brother went out to Portland, OR to visit family for a week while I stayed behind with my step-dad. That was the week my step-dad slumped into a frightening alcohol binge; when my mom came back she brought me the Videohound Movie Guide that had brief reviews of essentially every movie made. I discovered “Fright Night” therein and ever since had wanted to see it, but never really had a reason to. On the eve of the eve of my 22nd birthday I watched the movie with Shawna in her apartment in Portland, Oregon and I decided then that it was without a doubt the best vampire movie I could think of. There is something else rather special about “Fright Night” and that is, for better or for worse, many many years down the line I will most likely remember my 22nd birthday because of its connection with this film
It is sort of embarrassing to admit that I have a favorite "Friday the 13th," as though one could genuinely enjoy any of the 12 movies from this unending franchise. The fact that I know the 7th installment involves a girl's telepathic link with Jason Vorhees, the 8th finds Jason in Manhattan and the 10th in outer space is also substantially embarrassing. How do I know this? I always ask myself this question whenever I'm talking with someone about horror movies and I veer out of control into trivial minutae.
Truth be told, this is the best in the series, the supposed "Final Chapter" which actually constitutes the 4th. It is the best for two reasons: 1) you get to see Jason's face which is always a titillating feature of any horror movie that uses a masked murderer; and 2) I watched this movie at one hell of a middle school party: Ryan Nicholson's birthday party. That party was total chaos from what I remember. We watched "The Final Chapter" early on in the evening. Chance dictated that this would be my first real hardcore slasher movie. Afterward the party became a mess. We wreaked havoc in Ryan's grandparent's basement until practically 7 am. Recently I texted Ryan and asked him for the purposes of this vignette which birthday it was that we celebrated that time. He called me back, drunk and alone on his couch in Cedar Rapids, IA at 3 am CST to tell me he didn't know, but "what was that movie we rented, 'Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter'?" I gave a confirmation and didn't forget to mention, that that was one hell of a party.
