The Bite #54

Happy Birthday ROWDY RODDY PIPER, Spend the Summer at the Camp from FRIDAY THE 13th VI, and More!

April 16, 2019

In this issue:

Horror History: Happy Birthday to the Bubblegum Man
Image of the Week: Foul Play
Tiny Bites – This Week’s Best Horror Headlines
Things We Love: Evil Dead does Darko
Hey, That’s Us! – Shudder in the News

HORROR HISTORY: HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE BUBBLEGUM MAN

We have come here to chew bubblegum and praise Rowdy Roddy Piper … and we’re all out of bubblegum!

April 17 marks the anniversary of wrestling legend Rowdy Roddy Piper’s nativity upon this Earth that he enriched by his presence upon it, and that he defended from alien, Reaganite Yuppies in John Carpenter’s classic 1988 film, They Live.

Piper made a number of movies before his death in 2015. He was the titular Sam Hell of Hell Comes to Frogtown, about mutant amphibians in a post-nuke USA preying upon fertile human women. He did guest turns on Silk Stalkings and Highlander: The Series. He played Himself in Pro Wrestlers vs Zombies. And who can forget his turn as Da’ Maniac on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia?

But for all his film and TV work, it’s his role in They Live that has been etched into popular awareness, through countless memes and gifs, and in the form of his classic, crowd-pleasing, popcorn-tossing line, “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass … and I’m all out of bubblegum!” A line that Piper wrote, and that he asked Carpenter if he could use.

How many wrestlers-turned-actors have a line from a movie that’s entered the popular lexicon as deeply as that one? Yes, Andre the Giant has some good ones in The Princess Bride, like “I just want you to feel you’re doing well. I hate for people to die embarrassed.” But those felt like the screenwriter’slines.

What is central to the iconic success of Piper in the hero’s role in They Live as Nada (“Nothing,” in Spanish) is the exact opposite of the 17th Century Nobleman airs he took while addressing wrestling fans as “peasants” and “sheepherders.” Unlike a lot of wrestlers turned actors, who typically maintain their larger-than-life personae while in a role, Piper toned down his persona, to play an Everyman kinda dude trying to slog his way through late 1980s America. Piper could turn larger-than-life into “slice of life.”

And that was exactly the reality that They Live needed to establish to become the scathing social satire that it is. Without Piper kicking ass — and bubblegum — we wouldn’t have that cultural treasure.

IMAGE OF THE WEEK

Foul Play

Richard Brooker takes a break from slashing teens as Jason Voorhees to sink a few balls on the set of 1982’s Friday the 13th: Part III.

TINY BITES

BEETLEJUICE SNEAK PEEK, CTHULHU FOSSIL & MORE

The Guardian warns that if you fail to expose kids to horror “you risk raising a generation unable to cope with the slightest trauma.”

A mortician — who blogs as Little Miss Funeral — reveals how she makes corpses beautiful.

David Harbor says the first thing he did after being cast as the Right Hand of Doom was visit a sporting goods store, buy a wetsuit and hockey gloves, and assemble “the worst Hellboy cosplay you could imagine.”

Robert Englund — aka Freddy Krueger — will host a docu-series investigating the “frightening, odd and creepy” parts of American history.

Check out 10 must-watch films from the late B-movie auteur Larry Cohen.

The four real-life stunt cats behind the undead cat ofPet Sematary have their own Instagram accounts. (Of course they do.)

This summer, you can spend the weekend at the same camp that served as the setting for Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives.

Nathan Ballingrud’s Wounds will “no doubt be remembered as one of the most disquieting and memorable short story collections to come out this year.”

The first trailer for the animated Addams Familymovie reminds us why Gomez and Morticia are the most romantic couple in horror.

15 writers share 12 books that terrified them. (Why only 12 vs. 15? Stephen King overlap, of course.)

How The Blair Witch Project changed horror forever — and why it could never happen again.

Listen to two new tracks from the Broadway-boundBeetlejuice musical. (Neither one of which is the “Banana Boat Song.”)

Here are 7 horror movies which do more than scare — they unsettle and disturb.

Tom Doherty Associates, publisher of Tor, Forge, and other popular imprints, has announced Nightfire, a new line of horror books.

Scientists name a newly discovered 430 million-year-old tentacled sea cucumber after Cthulhu. Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!

THINGS WE LOVE: EVIL DEAD DOES DARKO

Whether you get up on the right or wrong side of the grave, you’ve still got to get dressed — and that’s where Nacho Scratcho’s two new Evil Dead T-shirts come in. One does double duty by also including a Donnie Darko homage, while the other features a macabre Mickey Mouse stepping in for Ash. Choose wisely — and then go get those Deadites.