And now, a special Halloween treat on this very special occasion: my one-on-one, exclusive, tell-all tête-à-tête with the infamous actor who starred in most of the AIDS Monster Movies, the great Count Randolpho de St. Mark Boyd.Count Randolpho (no relation?) was a faded B-movie star whose career was resurrected from the dead with the resurgence in popularity of the AIDS Monster Movies, now a big hit with a whole new generation.
I sat down at a table usually reserved for seances and right away, got down to business asking the Count the questions the world has been dying to know the answers for. Quite literally.
Randy Boyd: Count Randolpho, tell us why AIDS and the AIDS Monster is such a big hit in the world once again?
Count Randolpho: For those of you who were alive during the original AIDS Panic, you may or may not remember all the nightmares that made up the horrific dreams Americans had about AIDS, those worst case scenarios, the having-great-sex-one-minute-facing-your-death-the-next nightmares.
Q: I'm getting scared already. Do we have to go there?
A: Of course, those kinds of terrorizing images had been the stuff of grown-ups' dreams to their kids as recent as slasher greats like the original Halloween (1978), a superb film, by the way, and the equally disturbing early versions of Jason and the Friday the 13th franchise. And then there were their copycats, along with their 1950s predecessors, the ones hammered into the minds of the previous generation, you know, those beatniks and hippies that had all that free love on acid.
Q: Ah, the Sexual Revolution.
A: Exactly. From post-WWII baby boomed America, right on through to our Happy Days in the 1950s and our free love, drugs and rock n roll of the 1960s and 70s, America was gettin' its nut. Can I say that on this blog? Not only that, Americans were giving themselves permission to enjoy sex, male or female, and in many different combinations and varieties.
Q: Talk about a dream come true. Speaking of dreams—
A: And America loved it. Many of us reading blogs on the net wouldn't be alive today, reading blogs on the net, if somebody wasn't getting it on a couple of decades back. In the bedroom, in the backseat, in the passing night, in love, in rape and incest, with husbands and wives, strangers, relatives, people in positions of power and people in submission to power. With descendants of slaves, slave owners and immigrants. With men and women of all races with all kinds of backgrounds and blends and so on and so forth.
Q: Does all this have a point, Count, Sir?
A: You bet your impatient mind, it does.
Q: Pardon me?
A: Point is: America got off and shot a lot of wads. But then, all of a sudden, on a hot summer day in July of 1981, life was changed dramatically, especially when it came to sex.
Be sure to read more of "Interview with the AIDS Monster," part of the AIDS Monster Movie Marathon @ Randy Boyd's Blocks.
