Sometimes real life feels like a body slam
Ian Hodgkinson is a sad but exciting story.
That story is told as reality in the documentary Vampiro: Angel, Devil, Hero. It is also exploited as pulp fiction in the bloody thriller The Dead Sleep Easy, starring Hodgkinson in a role loosely inspired by his own life.
Both arrived on widescreen DVD this week. Both are directed by Ottawa’s Lee Demarbre, known for schlock such as Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter and Harry Knuckles.
Hodgkinson is a former goalie prospect drafted by the Kingston Canadiens in junior hockey. He is also an abuse victim who, as a boy, was raped by a neighbour, then sexually assaulted by the Catholic priest he turned to for solace while growing up in Thunder Bay, Bay. Ont.
Fueled by anger, Hodgkinson eventually became a brutal thug, a petty drug-peddler, a drug abuser, a womanizer, a bodyguard for Milli Vanilli, a punk-rock musician, a Guardian Angel in New York City and something else altogether.
This lanky, 6-foot-2 lug from Canada became the biggest star in Mexico’s famed lucha libre wrestling world in the 1990s. He is the legendary El Vampiro Canadiense.
Vampiro tells that story with passion. This is a saga of heartbreak. The warts are all here, too. Hodgkinson has led a toad’s life, for all his fame.
As a doc, Vampiro is awkwardly framed and organized. The material, however, is so compelling you don’t mind as the film lurches from Mexico to Canada and on to Europe. The wrestling insights here also reinforce the accuracy of The Wrestler, Mickey Rourke’s movie.
The Dead Sleep Easy is an interesting companion piece to Vampiro. Hodgkinson plays a former wrestler working as an assassin for a English mobster in Mexico. But he is a terrible actor.
And the movie is horrible, especially because of Martin Kove’s pretentious Pekinpah subplot. Yet Dead is so awful that it is guilty fun, like an EdWood movie with buckets of blood.
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