Killjoy

I was trying to think of a worthy topic to blog about as I was enjoying a PBR, and watching Killjoy. Since Killjoy consists of an almost entire African-American cast it reminded me of my grandpa. How does a Charles Band movie remind me of my grandpa you ask? This past summer I was informed that he was a bit of a racist, which that is still a topic that I am not completely buying. Now, before everyone gets all up in arms, this post isn't going to be racist at all, I wanted to do a post about my grandpa and I needed a segue. I’ll get to the part about Killjoy in a bit, but first I wanted to tell you a story about my grandpa.

During my childhood my family was broken out into four different sections. There was my Mom’s family, and my Dad’s family. Then there was my Grandma’s family on my Mom’s side, and my Grandpa’s family on my Mom’s side. Of those four sections there was one that mattered to me the most, and that was my Mom’s family. When I was young we all lived around either other. Hell, at one point, or another, I have lived in the same house as most of my Mom’s family. I won’t get into all of that right now. If I started on that this one post would be about 1,000 pages long. This post I’ll focus on one man, and to keep this post to a reasonable length, I will try to focus on one event.

I know that I said in my first post that I wasn't going to post about family. It turns out this is my blog, and I can do what I want, so every once in a while I am going to post about family. Don’t worry though I will leave out all of the drama.

My Grandpa Horn was a great man. One of the best I have ever known. When I was growing up, and after I was a grown man with kids, we spent a lot of time together. Even after he died, my family and I would go and spend a couple of weeks every summer with my grandma. That’s not including the countless weekends every year we would get together. Due to our closeness I was able to have some very unique experiences with my grandpa. I am not saying that nobody else has ever had the chance to experience similar things with their grandpa. But, I know that within my family, some of things we did together nobody else got to take part in them.

There was the fake fight in the car in the Kroger parking lot. Then the time we got into trouble for getting into the 50 year old booze while both of our wives were out shopping for lipstick. There were the daily lunches at the tavern when I was 13 and 14. Once I put a huge dent in his truck when I was 12, or 13, and never heard a word about it again. There were the countless political chats we used to have. There were the three conversations that we had, one when he got sick for the first time, another right before I got married, and the third when he got sick the second time. There was the time we watched porn while my aunt and grandma were sitting in the next room. There were a countless other things that happened, but I wanted to write about the one that I was able to share with my uncles and a cousin. Finally, there was Big Al’s.

After my Grandpa retired my Grandparents relocated about 4 hours south of where we lived. At that point I think I was about 11, or 12. Every summer I would spend as much time as possible with them. Now I am not exactly sure which summer it was, but I do remember that my Grandma was still working. Every day my Grandpa and I would watch Phil Donahue in the afternoon. One afternoon he had some of the strippers from ‘The World Famous’ Big Al’s on. You have to remember that this was about 25 years ago. At that time Caterpillar was thriving in Peoria, which is where Big Al’s is located. So, naturally Big Al’s did get a lot of business from Cat, and their business partners. I turned to my Grandpa and said that we had to go. He informed me that we wouldn't be able to go until I was 21. So, I made him promise that if we both made it until I was 21 that we would go. He made good on that promise.

As I went through my teens, and very early twenties, the Big Al’s topic was brought up frequently. Now this wasn't something that we were keeping under the table. Everyone knew about it. As my 21^st birthday was approaching we started to plan the whole thing out. Originally, it was supposed to be my dad, two uncles, one cousin, and grandpa. At the last minute my dad couldn't make it, so the other five of us went. The big adventure took place one week after my 21^st birthday.

Since I now a couple of the people that were involved in that excursion are going to be reading this, as well as some of their kids, I am not going to go into too much detail of the night. However, there was one story in particular from that night I wanted to share. This little slice on the evening doesn't actually even involve my Grandpa, other than he witnessed it take place.

The night started off with dinner at my Grandparent’s house. After dinner we headed downtown to Big Al’s. Over the course of the evening my cousin and I ended up belly up to the stage. While the dancers were dancing we were watching. While we were watching we were talking. During one of the dancer’s routines we became deeply engrossed in our conversation, and stopped paying attention to the stage. As it turns out strippers don’t like it when you are sitting at the stage, and not paying them any attention. This particular stripper had the DJ stop the music while she stood directly over me, and my cousin. There is nothing in the world like getting the stare down from a stripper in a crowded room. Just one piece of advice, if you are going to the strip club, either stay away from the stage, or be 100% focused.

Now that I got that little story out of the way let’s move on to movie. But don’t worry, I am sure there will be more down the road. I actually have a couple other posts started about different movies, but really felt this one was a fitting one to cover for this post.

Killjoy is a little bit out of the norm for the Charles Band line of films. It really is essentially a film that falls in the Blaxploitation genre. There have since been three sequels to Killjoy, and as the franchise progresses it does tend to lean more to comedy than horror. Don’t get me wrong though, Killjoy does have some pretty funny moments. Really the most important factors that you need to know about Killjoy are that it is a Blaxploitation film, the acting is horrendous, and the story is about a demonic clown.