As a big Garbage Pail Kid nut I often surf Ebay on the lookout for things to add to my collection. A few years ago I came across a peculiar post for Greaser Greg's head? I took a look and sure enough someone was selling the prop head of Greaser Greg from the Garbage Pail Kids Movie!
For those of you who never had the pleasure of viewing this film it is important to know that it's rated as one of the worst movies of all time. So bad it's good it has become a cult classic.
A lot of Garbage Pail Kids fans scoff at this movie, along with the never aired Saturday morning cartoon and consider it a disgrace. Kind of like the Star Wars nerds and the "holiday special".
Personally I love the movie and cartoon but that's just me.
Anyway, to get back to the story...
the midgets (or vertically challenged to be politically correct) wear full head masks in the film as the Garbage Pail Kids. The actor who played Greaser Greg was Phil Fondacaro who has played small roles (ha ha get it... SMALL roles!!!) in quite a few movies like Willow and Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (Ewok).
Like a lot of movie prosthetics, they are really only built to last throughout the duration of filming and Greg's head had taken a turn for the worse.
The Garbage Pail Kids in the movie already looked creepy enough to begin with but years of wear and storage had damaged the original mask and I found myself genuinely creeped out by the Ebay photos.
scene from the film with Greaser Greg in the lower left
Here are the photos from Ebay:
The original post on Ebay is long gone but if I remember correctly the seller had not hesitated to describe it's foul condition in his description. I think he had even stated that it smelled bad.
God knows who bought it or for how much, I was lucky enough to snag the photos before it was gone.
To be perfectly honest if I could have bought it back then I probably would have. I probably would have stored it in a large jar like a Silence of the Lambs thing.
This leads me to the second portion of the post. If you think Greg aged badly, consider the unfortunate case of Hoggle...
For those of you who haven't read previous posts I am also a big fan of the Jim Henson movie Labyrinth.
Hoggle, one of the main characters in the film (also played by a midget) in the same style never made it home after filming. Instead he was packed in abandoned luggage and eventually stored in an unclaimed baggage center until some poor sap discovered him. I guess the guy got quite a scare. It took a bit for them to figure out who or what they had found but when they did, they displayed his rotting remains at the unclaimed baggage center which is a thrift store/tourist trap in Scotsboro, Alabama.
Here are some photos of the before and after Hoggle:
Pretty gross. But the story sort of has a happy ending because a guy who does restoration on dolls decided to take on a restoration of the full costume. I have some photos of the restoration process and him posing with the full restored Hoggle. He even got some of the animatronics working again.
I read a few articles online regarding the restoration. I found the whole thing kind of creepy but interesing. In one of the interviews with the guy who brought Hoggle back to life, he comments on how Hoggle talked to him guiding him through the process (Twilight Zone music cued).
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