In about 1986 my favourite show was THE GROOVY GHOULIES, you know, the animated one which featured all the classic movie monsters Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, The Mummy et al. They played in a rock band doing slightly altered versions of 60's hits and were really friendly and cool.
At this time my father worked in a distribution warehouse for Warner Bros and had access to a huge amount of VHS tapes (usually promo copies of stuff often with no covers and strangely, not always Warner titles) which he was regularly allowed to borrow. He would bring home all kinds of movies, cartoons for my brother and I and a lot of horror for my mother who was apparently a real gore hound in her day, I think I even remember CLASS OF NUKE 'EM HIGH being in our house at one time, I'm guessing not that many mothers settle in for an evening to watch Troma titles, my mum's cool like that.
Anyway the horror stuff certainly made me curious but I wasn't allowed to watch any of it. Not that it mattered much to me, at that time I was all about THE GROOVY GHOULIES or as I called it, plain old GHOULIES. So I begged and pleaded with my dad to bring home a GHOULIES video for me and after what felt like a life time, one fateful night he brought home a video with no cover and just a sticker on the tape labeled in fancy lime green font GHOULIES .
Awesome, I was crazy excited, I ran into the next room and popped that big hunk of black plastic into our ‘80s style top loading video player completely unaware that I was not about to be treated to some rock 'n' rollin' monster fun but rather to CHARLES BAND's GREMLINS knock off. As the opening scene of a frantic woman desperately trying to save her baby from ritual sacrifice began I immediately forgot all about THE GROOVY GHOULIES and was enthralled by this strange scene unfolding before me.
"Wow, my first real horror movie," I remember thinking, that was until the frantic woman turned around and revealed THE MOST TERRIFYING PAIR OF GLOWING GREEN EYES!!!
I freaked and ran screaming into the next room and through sobs and teary eyes explained to my parents "that's not THE GHOULIES. For about a week I blamed my dad for scaring the s*** out of me, what I didn't realize at the time was that for the rest of my life I'd be thanking him for a lifelong love of all things horror.
Thanks dad your simple mistake created a monster, and mum the mysterious videos and books you always had around the house piqued my interest long before I laid my beautiful baby blues on those ghastly ghoulish greens.
Awww! That was sweet. Your parents sound awesome.
Speaking of having crazy stuff laying about, my dad was a true crime reader and he'd always have something salacious looking sitting on the table. Then he'd say, "Don't read that… it will scare you," so I'd wait until he was done and sneak it into my room for late night readings. He made me crazy for true crime! But I admit, he was right about Zodiac. It scared the bejeezus out of me!
Oh I remember The Groovie Ghoulies & Friends! I used to have a thing for Drac as a kid. (Well, that's not as bad as my crush on the Transformer Bumblebee!) And I'd get so upset when the episode was mostly Lassie or MUSH rather then my darling GGs!
@stevil1981: Great Story! Sounds like you grew up with fun parents. Now, I hope this isn't considered Spam here, but after you get your daily nutritional support from Kindertrauma, take a moment to check out evilpuppets.com – or more notably, our facebook page – http://www.facebook.com/evilpuppetsrule
You'll find it's a grand home for 'Ghoulies' and just about any other "critter" you can imagine…