The series of articles that will hereby commence are not in any way, shape, or form intended to “explain” Forrest J Ackerman. It would be futile for anyone to attempt such a feat, let alone one who personally knew the man a scant two years. Even that seems uncertain to me because, in retrospect, I wonder whether I really knew him at all. Yet no single individual is as responsible for more change in my life than he, the Ackermonster, Mr. Sci-Fi, the Boy Who Was Born on Mars – the man whose hand I held as he passed from this earth nearly a year ago.
I so vividly recall the first time I became aware of his existence. I was ten-years-old at the time, living a generally unhappy existence in Newport, Kentucky. My parents had divorced two years earlier; and the trials and travails of those proceedings lumbered along their miserable course. I lived with my mother in a two-story brick house, the top floor of which contained my bedroom. Not having the means to amass a collection of the sort I’d later find in the Acker-mini-mansion, my proudest possession, an autograph of Vincent Price purchased for $50 via mail order, stood out lonely and distinguished on the otherwise bare walls. This was the setting into which, one late October night in 1990, The Horror Hall of Fame came beaming.
THHF appears to have been, more or less, an attempt by Universal to create a horror aficionado’s version of the Oscars. Fright flicks of the past and present, along with their creators, were presented not with a golden Deco Adonis, but rather a grimmer than grim reaper, hood down, atop a slab of marble for achievements in various fields of genre-related endeavor. The show was hosted by Robert Englund and featured a particularly moving appearance by Vincent Price; the sickly actor was still a sport, accepting his award from Roddy McDowall via satellite.
What most captured my imagination, however, was a profile on one of the other inductees into the Horror Hall of Fame, a man I’d never heard of before, someone called Forrest J Ackerman who lived in a grand mansion in Hollywood that was filled from top to bottom with sci-fi (a word he’d invented!) and horror memorabilia. My eyes grew wide with fascination as the camera prowled down the mind-bogglingly overstuffed hallways of his Ackermansion. I wanted to drink in every angle, every detail no matter how fleeting. I found him ten times more fascinating than any of the feature films discussed on the program that night. Here was a man who lived, breathed, ate, and slept the things that I loved and made a living doing it in faraway, fairytale Hollywood, CA. It was absurd to even think that I’d ever make my way to sunny SoCal, let alone cross paths with this curious character.
And yet, somehow I just knew…some faint but firm voice was whispering into my ear, “Here lies your destiny.” And so it was.
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