There we were—me and Frankie The I—no more than 14 years old, prowling the waxed linoleum pathways of the Ethertown Mall like a two-man biker gang without wheels, crashing into a world of overpriced CDs, stale Auntie Anne’s pretzels, and the vague scent of Spencer’s Gifts incense and rebellion. That was 2000. And that DVD we clutched—Boogeymen: The Killer Compilation—was nothing short of scripture.
It sat on a rickety rack in some now-defunct video store, probably adjacent to a bootleg Slipknot shirt and a rack of barely-legal anime VHS tapes. The cover alone hit like a chainsaw revving in your face: Jason, Freddy, Michael, Chucky, Pinhead, Leatherface—our anti-heroes, our saints. And it had that gloriously sleazy design that promised nothing except exactly what it was: a mixtape of murder. Greatest hits from our cinematic boogeymen. Who needed a plot when you had clips of dream stalkers and masked madmen set to low-rent metal riffs?
Frankie? He lived for this kind of thing.
He was a Sicilian tank in a beat-up OZZY T-shirt: the kind of kid who could quote Burroughs and Biggie in the same breath and somehow make it sound like scripture. He had a sardonic smile, always just this side of mocking the absurdity of everything—especially authority. But underneath that smirk was this fierce loyalty and curiosity. He wasn’t just a slacker with a heart of gold—he was dedicated. Whether it was dissecting the sociopolitical rage in a Dead Kennedys song, or memorizing every line from Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Frankie went all in.
I remember watching the DVD back at his place—his basement, filled with empty Arizona tea cans and blacklight posters, walls vibrating with Ice Cube basslines and Bad Brains shredding. We sat in the glow of the tube TV, cross-legged and reverent. The clips rolled on like war footage from a dimension we both wished we lived in—blood, mayhem, maniacal laughter. We howled, cheered, quoted lines with dramatic over-commitment, and paused every few minutes to argue over which slasher had the most philosophical edge.
“Freddy’s a surrealist, bro,” Frankie declared once, chomping on a Funyun like it was a communion wafer. “He’s like Dalí if Dalí wanted to watch the world burn from a boiler room.”
“And Jason?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Jason’s the revenge of the quiet kids. He’s what happens when nobody listens.”
We didn’t even know it, but we were building our own language—equal parts blood-splattered, street-slang, and beat poetry. Frankie would later write verses that read like a cross between Bukowski and Scarface, but back then it was all instinct. All survival. This was how we made sense of being smart, poor, angry, creative, and alive in a world that wanted us to pick just one.
And it always comes back to that DVD.
It was dumb. It was glorious. It was essential. Boogeymen: The Killer Compilation wasn’t just a collection of horror icons—it was a time capsule of who we were. It was midnight logic, punk ethics, metal-fanged myth. And I swear to this day, when I see that red-slashed title, I hear Frankie The I laughing in the background, somewhere between a Beastie Boys verse and a Bukowski monologue about America’s mean streets.
I think about those day all the time. Not in some soft, tearful way—but in the way your bones miss the pressure of the weight they used to carry. Frankie was that weight. Heavy with soul. Heavy with spirit. And man, did he know how to make a moment burn bright.
Frankie The I—this one’s for you. From one horror freak to another.
In the name of Jason, Freddy, and Chucky.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment