When I started Horror Yearbook, I knew the day would come when someone we knew, someone who may have become a friend of mine and the site, would have a project that would become my job to review. That day has come, and the friend I speak of is a very close one of Horror Yearbook, Greg Lamberson.
His multi-media project Johnny Gruesome has been over 20 years in the making. It is a project I was lucky enough to see unfold before my eyes. It started as a simple concept: Johnny Gruesome, a teenage “head banger,” is killed off by his “friends” and comes back from the dead to get revenge. All it took was one little character sketch on Lamberson’s website, which I saw when we first interviewed him almost a year ago, and I was sold.
Johnny Gruesome, in my opinion, was a missed opportunity. He should have crawled out of his grave in the 80’s when hair metal was on MTV, and when the slasher film was the big Friday night film in movie theaters. However, if he was going to come back a little late, then he couldn’t have come back at a more perfect time. As my generation scrambles to re-discover their little red wagon, and Hollywood cashes in by remaking our beloved childhood films, in a time when horror fans are crying for something new from something old, there seems to be no better time for Johnny to climb into his Death Mobile and come screeching back onto the scene. Greg may have missed his chance 20 years ago, but he’ll be damned if he will miss it again. The question at hand is not if it was time for Johnny, but if Johnny can deliver, and today I will try and figure that out.
Johnny Gruesome did not come back to us as a feature length film as Greg first envisioned, but rather as a novel, music CD, and mini-movie starring Erin Brown (Misty Mundae), as well as other various incarnations that you can check out on Lamberson’s website HERE.
Today I am just going to look at just the three I mentioned.
CD: I am not a music critic, nor am I an expert on music, so I can go only go on what I like. It would have been better to pass the CD off to our music reviewer Shane, but I was not giving up my Johnny Gruesome CD because simply put I love it. In fact, I may love it a little too much. My morning routine normally involves wake up, turn on laptop, make coffee, smoke and go to work. Now you can add listen to “Grueome” to that list because ever since I got my copy of the ten track CD by Giasone and Marcy Italiano, I have listened to it every morning. When Greg first told me of his idea to do the album I thought it was a novel idea, but thought it would be one of those things you would buy, listen to once, then file away with the other dumb novelty crap you wasted money on in the past. I was very, very wrong. Even though it is a companion piece to the book, the CD is something that stands on its own. In short it is great. It brings you back to the days of horror movies when you not only wanted a copy of the film but you needed the soundtrack as well.
Like any CD it has its ups and downs, and like most, the title track “Gruesome” is the best, with “Death Mobile” being my least favorite. The ten tracks do include two non-musical tracks, which are the “Introduction” (which like books I always skip) and “Sorry Mary,” but the rest of the tracks are just cool rock songs, and deserve the honor of being on Guitar Hero. This may be an insult to a musician, but a complete 100% honor coming from a non-musician who is obsessed with Guitar Hero.
A better description is it is the kind of music that makes you want to jump into your bitching Camaro, pick up your girlfriend Crystal, and drive to the Jersey shore. Its something you would drive fast to, or when no one was looking, might even pump your fist in the air and make the devil sign. Not as good as the classic “Trick or Treat” soundtrack, but if you know what I am talking about, then “Gruesome” would be the album you would put in after you watched that film. Another name I’d toss out there just to paint an image is “Black Roses,” and here at Horror yearbook those are HUGE compliments. In short “Gruesome” would get an “A” if I gave out ratings.
Mini-Movie – This may have been unnecessary. The only reason for it would be to show me something I have always known, that Greg Lamberson can direct. I always wondered what Greg would have accomplished if he had a longer list of movies to his credit. I think he would have turned out a few more horror classics. The mini-movie was just a chance for Lamberson to return to the director’s chair, and feature the great music from the “Gruesome” CD, something he couldn’t pull off with the book. Unless the book was like one of those musical cards you wasted too much money on once for someone who didn’t deserve it.
It was great seeing Johnny Gruesome come to life, and it did make me want to see a complete film, one with a little more of a budget, but you do get the general idea of what we could get by watching it. It was also great to see Erin Brown in the role as Gruesome’s girlfriend. If Lamberson ever does get the chance to make a feature length Johnny movie with Erin Brown, featuring the music from the Gruesome CD, watch out! Seriously it will be one of the coolest fucking horror projects in a long time. Right now as it stands though the mini-movie is like those concept sketches you see for films, which you really don’t kind of care about. You look at them and go “cool, but when does the movie come out?” They’re fun, but at the end of the day are just showing what could be, and what the artist who made it can do.
This had the chance to be the first film Erin didn’t show her titties in (actually she has appeared in other music videos before and did not get naked, but this is a “mini-film”), but eagle eyed perverts can catch a glimpse of them in the mirror when she jumps out of bed to do more coke! One of the most exciting parts of the film is that they’re getting drunk off good old Viper in Johnny’s Death Mobile before he dies, but no one explodes into any neon goop. It’s only 8 minutes and worth taking the 8 minutes to check out.
Johnny Gruesome: The Novel: Fuck I am just getting to the book now! Well one of the reasons I didn’t mention what happens in the movie, is because it is based on some of the great scenes in the book, not all the great scenes mind you, but some of them. So watch it and half my job is done for me.
My number one complaint about the novel is it is a little too long. It’s like a 2 and a half hour slasher film, which is way too long for a movie of that nature. The story of Gruesome is a good, but simple one, and Greg takes a little too long to set it up for my taste. I applaud anyone who wants to add as much story as they can to their characters, but to be honest I probably would have skipped ahead to the good stuff if it was not written by Greg. The “good stuff” is, however, worth reading the entire book for, or even skipping ahead too, depending on how you like to read your books.
Like I mentioned several times before, Johnny Grissom, is just your normal, bad-ass teenager, who on one snowy night is offed by his coke head friend while his best friend and girlfriend watch, and in the vein of” I Know What You Did Last Summer” they cover up his death by making it look like an accident. While on the slab at the morgue, being the rebel he is, Johnny decides to defy authority, one more time and come back from the dead to get some revenge, but not until after he has been embalmed and buried. That’s it, all you really need to know, the best parts are best read in the book, and include a priest with a cross shoved up his ass, a severed head made into a basketball, and tons of other mayhem that only someone known as Johnny Gruesome: Headbanger from Hell could cause.
Here is where I get dorky, I guess Johnny is kind of a zombie but this is not a zombie novel. It is more of a slasher back from the dead tale, like Jason Voorhees if he was not a retard and a lot cooler. In one scene the undead Johnny Grissom transforms himself into who we now call Johnny Gruesome, which if I had to describe in movie terms would be the part that would definitely call for an awesome music montage (good thing he’s got his own CD). Very much like the scene in “Return of the Living Dead 3” where that zombie chick gets all punked-out, or Elm Street when Alice becomes the Dream Master. Johnny is also the kind of villain you find yourself rooting for, he’s cool, nasty and a smart ass, and not in the too-many-bad-puns kind of way, thank God. You can’t wait for him to take his next victim down and you definitely can’t wait to see what fucked up way he does it.
Gruesome is not all T&A and cheap violence. That is just what I tend to focus on. Greg does a good job of setting up the characters of Johnny Gruesome, and makes an effort to flesh his book out to something more than just some “cheap scares.” He does touch on the dynamics of certain character relationships and also includes a few very interesting Frankenstein homages, which when done right never get old. For an “Egg Headed Destroyer” point of view he does develop his characters.
So does Johnny Gruesome the book deliver? Yes, yes it does. I was not looking for Steven King or some wordy, huge psychological epic, I wanted the Headbanger from FUCKING HELL and that is what I got. I do prefer Lamberson the director to Lamberson the author, but I am a bit more movie brained so that may have had something to do with it. The biggest compliment I can pay anyone is in my ADD riddled, fucked up alcohol soaked brain most things cannot hold my interest and Johnny Gruesome did. Yes, I may have wanted to skip a little of the build up to Johnny dying, but I was not disappointed when I stuck it through. I have forced myself not to skip parts of books before only to be disappointed that I didn’t do so. I was happy I did stick it out for Gruesome.
It may not be the book of the year, but it is not the kind that makes you want to punch yourself in the balls afterwards for wasting your time and reading. You can figure out exactly what you’re getting from Gruesome just from the title, and Lamberson gives us nothing less and a little more.
Johnny Gruesome rocks, in the rock & roll, dirty, bitchy, finger in the face, kind of way we all have come to love. So if you’re in the mood to put on your favorite Iron Maiden T-shirt and rock out to your favorite Metallica album in book form, then Johnny Gruesome is just your book!
- WIL Keiper
