They say you always remember your first time. I remember being just six years old in 1979 when I came face-to-face with the most beautiful thing I had ever seen… Issue #1 of a magazine called FANGORIA, complete with Godzilla on its cover. Holy magical fuck-nuggets, Batman! I had no idea what this mag was or what was inside, but I knew that I HAD to have it.
Yet my love affair with all things spooky began about three years earlier, when I had my defining moment at an impossibly young age. Sound weird? You betcha! It is so weird that I gave FANGORIA the first-ever exclusive excerpt from my book, A Comedy of Tragedies (in stores and online everywhere on December 10).
Before I get into that, I must be very transparent about something: I never intended to write any book, much less an autobiography about the shit-show that was my life. You see, I had demons. A LOT of demons. They were banging around inside my head for as long as I can remember, and once I dealt with one, they invited two friends. Then they told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on and so on, until I had a straight-up demonic ’70s shampoo commercial rattling around in my skull. (If you don’t get that reference, sorry, I’m old. Look up “Prell commercial” on YouTube or some shit. I promise it’ll make perfect sense.
Where was I? Oh yeah! Demons. After living with them for so long, I decided that maybe I should do the “psychological thing” and put them down on the page. That way, when I was done, and they were out of my system, I could burn them, and they’d be gone.
To fully get them out of my head or exorcize them, I went into everything as deeply as possible. No detail would be spared. If I remembered it, it was going in there. I had never intended for anyone but me to read it, so I opened every door I had kept firmly locked in my mind for decades.
After writing about half of it, my life exploded as it does now and again. Before realizing what was happening, I moved from California to back east. The book, at that point, was about halfway finished.
Things started happening, and I married a woman totally out of my league. As Kane Hodder once told her, “You should really re-evaluate your life-choices.” Her name is Danielle, and she’s the reason you’re reading this. One day, she approached me and asked, “Hey! Do you still have that book you were writing?”
I nodded.
“Can I read it?”
“What in the fuck for?!?!,” I asked. “You married me. You already know everything!”
She said she was just curious, and reluctantly, I sent it to her. I’d hear her laughing and crying intermittently for the next few hours. I thought to myself, “What the fuck did I just do?” Once she came down, I was fully expecting her to ask me for a divorce. Instead, she sat across from me and said, “You cannot burn this.”
Shocked, I asked, “Why?” She looked at me and said, “This book. I have read a lot of things, but I have NEVER seen anyone touch upon these subjects the way you do. This could help someone. Help someone feel less alone. Help them realize that no matter how bad shit gets, they can make it through.”
This reaction was one I was not expecting. After thinking about it, I decided to finish it. It’s all in there—life as a kid. Life living in the movie business. Life with legends like George A. Romero and Sid Haig. There are lots of industry stories, lots of laughs, and lots of heartfelt moments.
That being said, here we are! You’re reading about me right here on FANGORIA. This is very much another full circle for me, and words cannot begin to describe how grateful I am for it.
If you had told six-year-old me that one day, the incredible FANGORIA would feature my name and a snippet of my life story, I’d have told you that you were crazy. Then again, life is nothing if not crazy.
Please indulge me in this honor by digging on the following story…
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I am a night owl. Always have been, always will be. Even at a young age, I knew that the night was a special time. All bets were off, man. Reality took a backseat to the darkness. Anything could be there… creeping through the world at all ungodly hours. I dug the possibilities. I was never scared of the dark and I was always curious as to what it may be hiding. As children we used to have a simple MO: When my brother Rob and I would hear our parents snoring, it was our queue to run to the living room and pop on the TV. The coolest shit ever would play in the middle of the night. I loved old ’50s and ’60s horror and sci-fi, and monsters were magical to me.
Like unicorns. I always related to Frankenstein’s Monster. He never asked to be here, yet here he was… forsaken by his father. How could I NOT understand him? Late night TV was like forbidden fruit to me and Rob, and we’d watch it as much and as quietly as possible. This night though… I was alone.
My parents were snoring up a storm. I got out of bed and tiptoed to the living room, ninja-style… this was my mom’s inner sanctum. She was a neat freak who could literally find footprints on the carpet, so I had to comb the rug when I was done or I’d be busted. No evidence of my late-night habits could be left behind. I popped on the old Sylvania, and that familiar warm glow would fill the room. What wasn’t familiar, though, was what would appear on-screen. This was no monster or kitschy tale of private eyes. This wasn’t a war movie or a Three Stooges short. Tarzan would not be swinging from his vine, and Charlie Chan and Number One Son were obviously off on some adventure that I wasn’t privy to. This was a newscast… and the most terrifying one I had ever seen.
“It has been established that persons who have recently died have been returning to life and committing acts of murder,” said a news reporter. “A widespread investigation of funeral homes, morgues, and hospitals has concluded that the unburied dead have been returning to life and seeking human victims. It’s hard for us here to be reporting this to you, but it does seem to be a fact.”
My jaw hit the fucking floor like an anvil being dropped from the Roadrunner onto the head of the Wile E. Coyote. The reporter went on about having to “get to rescue stations immediately.” HOLY. SHIT. It was the middle of the night.
Everyone was sleeping, and only the people like me who were awake enough to see the news knew what was going on. WHAT LUCK! I had to save my family! We had to find Rob. A million different things started going through my head. I had to move and do so with the utmost urgency.
I sprang up from the floor and dashed into my parents’ bedroom as if the heated licks of a five-alarm fire were hot on my tail. I switched on the light…
“WAKE UP! WAKE UP! THE DEAD ARE COMING! WE GOTTA GO!” I screamed frantically while tugging on my mom’s arm. She woke up dazed, and my dad had also begun to stir. I was being a hero. A budding Bruce Campbell, if you will. “GET UP! BOTH OF YOU! WE NEED TO GET TO THE RESCUE STATIONS!”
“Stevie, you’re having a nightmare,” said my mom.
“NO, I AM NOT! IT’S ON THE TV!”
“What the fucking fuck?” asked my visibly annoyed dad. “Go back to fucking bed, will ya?”
“NO! WE GOTTA GO! COME, I’LL SHOW YOU! WE HAVE TO GET ROB!”
Finally, my mom sat up, and I dragged her by the arm to the living room with my dad, aggravated and in tow. At this point, I think he was just more curious than anything else. We made it to the living room, footprints on the rug be damned, and I pointed to the TV and exclaimed, “LOOK!”
Of course, what was on was George A. Romero’s 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead.
“You woke us up because of a movie? A FUCKING MOVIE?”
I was dumbfounded and even worse, I was in trouble. BIG TROUBLE. Not only was I up late, not only did I leave footprints on the sacred rug, not only was I watching TV, but I woke up both the Green and the Brown Gargantua, and the words were about to get stuck in my throat, and promptly stuffed up my ass.
Punishment was imminent.
My mom immediately got out the vacuum because fuck waiting for the morning like a normal person. Those footprints had to be smoothed out IMMEDIATELY, if not sooner. While she was doing that, my dad took me into my bedroom and grabbed his heavy leather belt, and whipped me on the ass until I could no longer even feel the pain. That was the first time I felt agony—the first time I was actually hit. Violence was also about to become a close friend of mine, and this was my first meeting with him. He sucked.
After getting his licks in, my dad shut my room light off. I heard the vac cease and then heard them muttering to themselves until their bedroom door shut. As I lay there with my newly tanned ass throbbing, I became aware of something… I was terrified, but I was also 100 percent safe. How fucking cool is that? The pain subsided after a few moments, and it wasn’t long before the monsters had gone back to slumber on Kong Island. Sounds of their sleeping filled my ears, and I did what any other kid in my position should NOT have done… I made my way back into the living room to finish the movie.
It was at that moment that “Uncle Creepy” had been born.
