Halloween 365, or Tom Atkins Always Be Trying to Sip on my Kool-Aid
I can’t believe Halloween has already passed by. The tail end of Autumn, my favorite time of year is racing away. Of course, I believe in celebrating the sixty-one days of Halloween, kicking off the season on September 1st with my annual viewing of Night of the Creeps starring that national treasure, Tom Atkins (more on that cat as my digressions ramble). But Sweet Christ, time has been flying at such a seemingly accelerated pace, I’ve been forced to extend my Halloween celebrations an additional two weeks to my birthday on November 16th.
In all actuality, it’s Halloween 365 at the Palacio de Polish Hammerino. I am a horror junkie. Books, movies, soundtracks, you name it. I can look around my study right now at the massive conglomeration of signed memorabilia from all the scary movies that informs the nostalgia of my misspent youth.
The highlight of my Halloween season every year aside from my daughter’s birthday is my yearly pilgrimage to Lexington, Kentucky for Scarefest, one of the largest horror conventions in the country. There’s usually close to a hundred celebrities from the horror genre spanning the last four decades in attendance, and sometimes Billy Zane shows up.
It was last year, at the 2024 convention, that I first met Billy Zane. The line for Matthew Lillard stretched clear out the door, down the street, and out toward Elizabethtown. The line for Billy Zane consisted of three confused girls dressed in Terrifier T-shirts asking Billy Zane if he knew where the bathrooms were.
“Billy Zane,” I said. “What the hell are you doing at a horror convention? Just because your performance in The Phantom was horrid shouldn’t make you eligible for a Scarefest booth.”
“My role couldn’t have been any harder to look at than that red leather jacket you insist on wearing. It’s gotta be eighty degrees in here, so I can only assume you’re making some sort of fashion statement or something?”
“Oh shit, Billy Zane cameos in Zoolander, all of the sudden he’s a fashion maven.”
“I know a thing or two about fashion.”
“I bet you wished you knew a thing or two about dancing, you might not have gotten drummed out of Dirty Dancing before they shot the first inch of film.”
“Who are you and who put you up to this?”
“The Polish Hammer, of course. But you can call me The Main Man of Superior Grooviness. I hear Ben Affleck was the bomb in Phantoms, but Billy Zane put the bomb in The Phantom.”
You could say this interaction has colored every other meeting we’ve had since.
Anyway, most of my dealings with celebrities not named Billy Zane at these conventions have been sensational. None better than the greatest genre actor of the eighties, Tom Atkins. I love Tom Atkins. He played Detective Cameron in the Citizen Kane of alien parasites infesting a college campus and turning students into roving zombies move, Night of the Creeps. To this day, I always intend to answer the phone with Atkins’ famous “Thrill me” rather than my usual “Fucking hell, what could you possibly want from me, now?”
Atkins played Dr. Challis in Halloween 3, Season of the Witch, a movie many people slept on due to its exclusion of Michael Meyers, but which I think is transcendent and finally getting it’s just accolades from the horror community. I love Tom Atkins so much I considered him the good guy in Creepshow, and that little Joe Hill bastard deserved to get smacked around for bringing those horror comics inside the house.
I first met him a few years back at a Nashville horror convention he attended with the likes of Ken Foree, Barbara Crampton, James Remar, and that hook-nosed woman who played The Nun in those Conjuring movies. Meeting Tom Atkins was a phenomenal experience. Later in the day, as I sat with my family, near the hotel area in the expo center, Tom Atkins ambled past and greeted me with a “Polish Hammer! How you doing?”
“He remembered your name!” My wife gushed.
“This motherfucker oughta remember my social security number as well, the amount of money I paid him to sign all those fucking collectibles.”
I don’t get starry-eyed over these celebrities, not like my buddy, Maniacal Mikey Bishop who still swears that he’s one come hither gaze away from fucking Felissa Rose. Now, Felissa Rose hasn’t missed a chance to attend a convention since 1984. You might remember her from Sleepaway Camp. She was of course signing at Scarefest 2025 which Maniacal Mikey Bishop also slipped into despite the restraining orders. He insists only his need to prove himself a gentleman keeps Felissa Rose from getting the ride of her life.
I find this to be a dubious claim.
“Felissa Rose,” Maniacal Mikey Bishop says “always gives me extra special attention.”
“She gives everyone extra special attention,” I tell him. “She’s pretty much best known for her endearing way of engaging with her fans.”
“She don’t flirt with you like she flirts with me.”
“She doesn’t flirt with you, you dumb bastard. She’s just nice.”
“She’s extra nice to me.”
“That’s only because she thinks you have the autism.”
“Why the hell would she think I have the ‘tism? It’s not like I ever popped a Tylenol in front of her.”
“It’s probably the way you smack yourself about the head with a rolled up poster when you get overstimulated, or when you flip the fuck out when you see the color green.”
“I so get uncomfortable if I’m confronted with too much aquamarine, but so what? That’s not autism, that’s just good taste shining through.”
I’m recounting this conversation with the delusional Maniacal Mikey Bishop only to show how objective I can be when describing my conversations with Tom Atkins. It’s not that I believe he thinks I’m super cool, it’s because I think that silver haired fox wants to fuck my wife.
“I think you’re the greatest actor to come out of the eighties, Mr. Atkins. I cheered for you in Creepshow.”
“Yeah, that’s nice.” His attention quickly shifts away from me to my wife. “And what’s your name, young lady.”
When my wife introduces herself it’s not as the Polish Anvil. I’m already getting nervous. When she met Richard Brake, she practically climbed up that Welshman’s lanky frame and she couldn’t even make it through the first five minutes of 31.
“Has anyone ever told you you look like Patricia Richardson?”
Oh, Christ. My wife immediately wants to know who Patricia Richardson is. She’s a beautiful, classy woman. Been in a bunch of movies. Couldn’t name one right now to save my life.
This guy slept with Jamie Lee Curtis within five minutes of meeting her in The Fog. For me, it never rattled my suspension of disbelief. Not in 1980, not now.
I’ve seen plenty of pictures of fans posing with Tom Atkins with his wry, half smile, looking adorable. In the picture with me and my wife, this motherfucker’s smiling so wide his dentures are about to pop out of his mouth.
Fast forward two years later, we’re at Scarefest 2025. We go see Tom Atkins. I have more memorabilia for him to sign.
“Mr. Atkins, it’s so good to see you, again.”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s nice. And what’s your name, young lady? Has anyone ever told you you look exactly like Patricia Richardson?”
Karl Koweski is a displaced Region Rat now living in rural Alabama. He writes when his pen allows it. He’s a husband to a lovely wife and father to some fantastic kids. He collects pop culture ephemera. On most days he prefers Flash Gordon to Luke Skywalker and Neil Diamond to Elvis Presley.
THE POLISH HAMMER POETRY CORNER is a weekly column, posted each Tuesday morning.
