Smokebreak Psychology: Blood, Bodyslams, and Babysitting

I tried to write this column last October. It’s something I’ve wanted to do, but I just can’t seem to make it work.

No matter how I approach it, I always end up in the same place. I get to the end, I hate it, I delete it. I step away for an hour or a day. I take a smoke break. I fill my coherence with THC, try another approach, and end up with something different that I hate just as much.

So let’s try again, and this time let’s go with it.

There are few things in this world I enjoy more than wrestling when it comes to entertainment. I have my own Mount Rushmore, and it’s pretty simple: wrestling, music, basketball, and anything having to do with horror.

I love horror, and I don’t just mean love. I mean LOVE.

Let me put it into perspective.

I was about seven years old when I watched my first true horror movie, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. That movie, back in 1987, kept me up that night, and I was immediately hooked on the adrenaline rush of it. The safe fear. Being terrified of something but knowing I was safe. It was exhilarating, and I’ve never looked back.

My left arm is riddled with horror tattoos, everything from Jason Voorhees to Art the Clown. I’m a movie collector, and my current collection of horror movies sits at 3,023.

Not 323. Three thousand and twenty-three.

It’s a collection I’ve spent decades building. Some of my favorite books include American Psycho, IT, The Long Walk, The Silence of the Lambs, I Am Legend, and Dracula, just to name a few.

Thus, it’s easy to imagine how much I love Halloween. What I want to do with this column is celebrate the crossroads of horror and wrestling by bringing some attention to a few movies that combine the two.

That’s it. That’s the column. I don’t know why I’ve spent so much time fighting with it.

Monster Brawl

This movie is so simple and fun. It’s almost the reverse idea of a cinematic match. While a cinematic match is wrestling trying to be cinema, Monster Brawl is cinema trying to be wrestling.

The concept is very basic. A one-night, King of the Ring-style tournament featuring classic monsters like Frankenstein, a werewolf, a mummy, Cyclops, and Witch Bitch, with each match fought to the death. It’s held in a graveyard, because where else would you hold it?

It’s presented with a full commentary team featuring Dave Foley and Art Hindle. Jimmy Hart is involved, Herb Dean officiates, and the cast includes Kurrgan as Frankenstein and Rosemary as Witch Bitch.

What makes this movie fun is the presentation. Yes, it’s a movie, but it doesn’t really have that movie feel. It’s shot like a wrestling pay-per-view, with that classic ’80s cartoonish feel I grew up with.

And I mean that as a compliment.

I don’t need an elaborate explanation for why these monsters are wrestling. I don’t need Frankenstein working through some personal issues before he can focus on the tournament. Just give me the monsters, put them in the ring, and let me watch.

There’s something about the whole thing that brings me back to being a kid. These are the kinds of ridiculous fights you’d come up with while playing with your action figures, except somebody actually went out and made a movie out of it.

It knows what it is. More importantly, it delivers on what it is.

This movie was just a fun good time.

Dark Match

Dark Match goes in a different direction, although it starts with something I’m sure plenty of independent wrestlers can appreciate: taking a booking because the money is good.

A small wrestling company agrees to work a show in a remote community, only to discover that the people putting it on are a cult with plans of their own. Chris Jericho plays the cult leader, a former wrestler who has found a considerably worse use for his microphone time.

Now, agreeing to travel somewhere unfamiliar because somebody promised you a good payday is already a situation with some potential for horror. Finding out you’re working for a cult certainly doesn’t help.

The wrestling matters here. This isn’t just a horror movie with a wrestler making a cameo. The show is part of what the cult has planned, and the wrestlers have walked into it without knowing what they’ve agreed to.

That’s what makes the premise work for me. There’s already something uncomfortable about being somewhere you don’t know, surrounded by people you don’t know, and realizing that something is wrong. By the time these wrestlers understand just how wrong it is, they’re involved.

It also gives Jericho something a little different to do. He isn’t simply showing up as Chris Jericho so wrestling fans can point at the screen. He gets to be part of the reason everything has gone to hell.

So if the monster tournament sounds a little too goofy for what you’re looking for, this takes the wrestling connection somewhere nastier.

Here for Blood

And then there’s Here for Blood, which is absolutely willing to be goofy.

Shawn Roberts plays Tom O’Bannon, a professional wrestler who takes over his girlfriend’s babysitting job while she studies for her exams. He needs the money, she needs the time, and looking after a kid for the night sounds simple enough.

Then masked cult members show up, and the night turns into a bloody mess.

The important thing here is that this is a horror comedy. Don’t go into it looking for the same kind of movie as Dark Match. The ridiculousness is a big part of the appeal.

Even before you get into the blood, there’s something funny about this big wrestler trying to handle a perfectly ordinary babysitting job. Then the movie gives him a problem that being a big wrestler might actually help solve.

Poor Tom just wanted to make some money. Now he’s dealing with people whose plans for the evening go well beyond getting the kid to bed.

And once things get going, the movie isn’t particularly interested in showing restraint. There’s blood, there’s absurdity, and there’s a sense of humor about the whole situation. The violence is part of the comedy rather than something the movie expects you to sit through with a straight face.

That matters to me. I love horror that genuinely gets under my skin, but I also love horror that lets me laugh at how completely out of hand everything has gotten.

Not everything needs to leave me staring at the ceiling afterward. Sometimes I want to watch a wrestler have the worst babysitting experience imaginable.

Here for Blood is that kind of movie.

Happy Halloween

These aren’t three movies I’m putting forward as the greatest horror films ever made. That wasn’t what I wanted to do here.

I wanted to write about some fun movies that bring together two things I’ve loved for most of my life. Maybe one of them gives you something to watch this Halloween. Maybe you’ve already seen all three.

Either way, I finally got through this damn column.

I’m going to take roll a joint before I change my mind.

Until the next smoke break, be excellent to one another.

My current Halloween horror movies/series I’ve watched this season:
Bride of Frankenstein, Creature From the Black Lagoon, Martyrs, Devil’s Mouth, Spider Island, Ice Cream Man, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, Passenger, Insidious: Out of the Farther, Buzzkill, I Blame Society, VHS Mixtape, Nightbreed, The Haunting, Five Nights at Freddys 2, As Above and So Below, Crystal Lake (Mini series), Carrie (Mini Series), A Nightmare Before Christmas