Akron flashback: Gory little movie from 1983 unleashed on world on YouTube

One of the best times of my life was when a crazed killer hunted down my friends in a dark abandoned house. Nobody made it out alive, including me.

Grainy footage of the gruesome 1983 rampage has finally been released to the unsuspecting public. “The Light Ice Gang Massacre,” a nine-minute horror movie produced by college students with way too much time on their hands, is enjoying its world premiere this month on YouTube.

“I can’t believe it’s finally there,” my filmmaking buddy Tim Ricks told me.

Neither can I. We’re finally movie stars after nearly 40 years.

It was Tim’s idea to make a horror film after salvaging a Super 8 camera, movie projector, splicer/editor and lighting equipment that had been tossed into a trash bin at the Chapel Hill Sears where he worked. A customer had returned the used equipment and a store manager had decided to junk it.

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With all the charisma of a Sears salesman, Tim impressed upon me how fun it would be if we rounded up our friends and killed them on camera through the magic of movies. 

It wasn’t a hard sell. My pals and I used to go to dusk-to-dawn horror marathons at the Ascot Drive-in off State Road in Northampton Township (now Cuyahoga Falls). We would watch gory movies all night and then leave near sunrise. The few remaining cars had fogged-up windows. I’m not sure those patrons saw the films.

Anyway, we plotted our moviemaking career over fast food.

Our hangout was the Hamburger Station at 3275 State Road next to On Tap. We gathered every weekend to socialize, play the jukebox and devour burgers and fries. In an era before free refills, we ordered soft drinks with “light ice” to get as much soda as possible. The staff began to call us “The Light Ice Gang.”

“Right next to the Hamburger Station was an old abandoned house that had been vandalized and ransacked and we had actually explored ourselves a few times,” Tim recalled. “As soon as we got the camera equipment, we figured that would be the perfect place to film a movie after hours at night.”

Located on the edge of a cemetery, the old dark house was plenty scary. We didn’t know what we would find as we shined our flashlights down the corridors. What if something lived in there? And what if it craved blood?

Our imaginations ran wild. One night when we were poking around the cellar, I heard a strange jingling. To my ears, it sounded like the collar of a huge dog running toward me. The noise got louder until it seemed to be next to me, but I didn’t see a thing.

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I’d like to say that I bravely faced the supernatural threat, but that would be a lie. I turned around and ran away, then got wedged in the basement door between two friends who also were trying to escape. It looked like “The Three Stooges.”

To this day, I don’t know what I heard, but it frightened the heck out of me.

Another time, we were on the top floor when we heard bloodcurdling screams in the basement. With pounding hearts, we went downstairs to investigate — just like stupid kids do in horror movies. The shrieking wasn’t supernatural. Two girls who knew Tim had sneaked into the house to scare us. Well, they succeeded. 

So, yes, the house was a good place to film a mad slasher movie. Tim and I recruited the Light Ice Gang and got to work.

The Hamburger Station’s night manager, a friendly guy named Lee, was surprisingly receptive to our crazy idea. Initially, we were going to have him be the killer, but his schedule wouldn’t allow it, so he lent a Hamburger Station T-shirt to our friend Doug Smith, who became the villain.

Lee played a dastardly restaurateur who tricked customers into exploring the old house next door in search of a lost treasure. Doug, the evil henchman, then stalked the greedy customers one by one for nefarious purposes.

The restaurant crew let us run an extension cord out the drive-thru window so we could use lighting equipment. The workers also gave us some raw hamburger meat for a particularly gruesome scene.

We created our own special effects on a shoestring budget, making blood out of corn syrup, red food coloring, tomato juice and red paint. What a sticky, splattery mess.

Paul Sink was thrown down a staircase, Glenn Stephenson was tossed out an upstairs window, Joe Del Medico was slashed with a knife, Tim was blasted with a gun, I was chopped with an ax and Steve Neff had the misfortune of running into a chainsaw, earning him the nickname “Stevie Mess.”

“For the scene where I get shot, we used two packets of blood — one in my hand and one taped to my back,” Tim said.  “And for the much more blood-related scenes where Mark gets his arm cut off and Steve gets his head cut off, we used a garden sprayer to simulate the pulsating of a human heart.”

Did I mention this wasn’t a Disney movie?

We initially attempted to record sound for the film, using equipment from our rock star friend Mark Ohm, but it soon became clear that it would take double the amount of time to set up the gear. We agreed to dub in the sound later, which never happened.

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We spent five or six weekends that summer on location. Most of us didn’t have girlfriends — big surprise there — so we had plenty of time to focus.

“My predominant memory is how serious I took this project,” Glenn recalled.  “I believe that I shared the seriousness with the majority of the gang.

“As silly as it may seem, I really wanted to put forth my best effort to make a ‘quality’ project. This same passion was evident with Tim and Mark. We were really creative in preparing for the special effects.  

“So much thought went into certain aspects, while we neglected other factors, which are evident postproduction. Why doesn't Steve hear a chainsaw coming at him?”

Glenn was so gung-ho that he volunteered to tumble down the steps as a stunt double. That would be too risky, we decided, so we made a human-sized dummy stuffed with old clothes and topped with a baseball cap to hide its plastic foam head. When we hurled it down the stairs on a practice run, it looked realistic.

Then we started filming. 

Doug threw the dummy just like in rehearsal, but this time it folded in half like an omelet, rolling lazily down the steps. Naturally, this is the take that made the final cut. We didn’t know how bad it looked until the film was developed, and then we roared with laughter.

In retrospect, we should have pushed Glenn down the stairs.

“As I recall, I won the fight to be thrown through the window to a roof instead of Doug just throwing the dummy,” Glenn said. “I was selfishly eager to risk quality over safety!  It is funny how age, experience and perspective highlight the ignorance of youth.”

We enjoyed many laughs over the mistakes in the film.

During the entire shoot, Tim had instructed everyone not to look into the camera. And then when we saw the movie, he was the only actor caught gawking into the lens.

Playing a corpse, Glenn was supposed to lie still after supposedly getting tossed out a window, but as he rested in the grass, his arm twitched involuntarily. On every subsequent viewing, we pointed out the twitch and laughed.

And getting back to that chainsaw: Sure, Steve doesn’t hear it coming in the movie, but if you look closely, it’s an electric chainsaw that isn’t plugged in!

“My favorite scene is Mark getting his arm chopped off,” Glenn said. “It was our best special effect, in my opinion.”

I’d like to think it’s the incredible acting.

The movie’s final scene in the Hamburger Station leaves open the possibility of a sequel that never transpired (at least not yet). Our friend Mark Ohm plays the apparent next victim. We won’t spoil the ending for you, but you can imagine the unappetizing twist.

After wrapping the shoot, Tim began to edit the Super 8 film, splicing scenes together with tape. Most of us lost interest in the project, but Tim persevered. He wrote film credits on brown packaging paper, shot them in his living room and spliced them into the movie. It sat unwatched for years. Tim had it transferred to videotape and later DVD.

Decades later, he found a California company that restored Super 8 movies frame by frame, so he sent our film away and got it digitized. With the aid of iMovie and other software, he created new credits, wrote subtitles, added license-free music and uploaded it to YouTube.

After 38 years in the making, “The Light Ice Gang Massacre” is finally done. Eat your heart out, Steven Spielberg.

The free movie is available to view at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jLzTYxHX3g just in time for Halloween.

The Light Ice Gang is forever indebted to the Hamburger Station crew of 1983 for giving us one killer summer.

“Lee and the guys, wherever you are, we hope you are all doing great and this gives you a big laugh,” Tim said.

Mark J. Price can be reached at mprice@thebeaconjournal.com.