When I was six years old, I was already an avid professional wrestling fan. It’s the first memory I have from my childhood, my first love. I’ll never forget the first time I saw Vampiro walk out on my tv screen on World Championship Wrestling. He looked so cool to me, with the white make up and the long black dreads. I instantly made a connection with him just by the way he carried himself. As his WCW years went by he did some cool stuff with Sting and at one point brought in the Misfits and wrestled with them. As I got older I realized that his WCW run wasn’t all it cracked up to be, but it was cool to me. I realized he had this full crazy career in Mexico and that’s when I realized that Vampiro wasn’t just a cool punk dude who wrestled, he was a true Icon to the Lucha Libre fans and to some people he was like their god.
Director Michael Paszt brings us Nail In The Coffin: The Fall and Rise of Vampiro. This documentary gave us a full look at the man being the face paint and makeup, Ian Hodgkinson. Like most of us, Ian started out as a fan. Ian was just a Canadian born punk kid who decided he wanted to wrestle and traveled to Mexico to do so and became a larger than life star to many. I also want to note that he also toured with Milli Vanilli for two years... just go see this! This film starts out documenting the backstage interactions at AAA’s TripleMania XXV event where Jeff Jarrett got drunk and decided to throw tortillas in the crowd...... anyway. We caught a glimpse that showed us Ian was so much more than Vampiro the wrestler. Ian was producing the show and working out some of the matches. Name a role in wrestling, whether it be in the ring, commenting, booking, producing, or being an agent; Ian has done them all. But we also saw that he was taking on an even bigger role than all of those, being a father to his teenage daughter Dasha. At one point it shows Ian interrupting a work meeting to answer his daughter's phone call. And as the film goes on we see that he did what he did for so long for her, he kept going until his body was just in pieces to support her. He says in the film that he’d put his daughter before God and he shows us that first hand by the way he drops everything wrestling related when she needs him. I had to mention all of that first because some wrestlers have a tendency to put being a father second and it’s nice to see how a child changed Ian’s life the way it did.
Another thing this film was heavy on was showing the toll wrestling has taken on his body and his brain. By the time he was 23 he already had knee injuries and the injuries just stacked up one after another and by the time he was 50 he was hardly able to walk. In 2019 it was announced that he had developed Alzheimer’s and was seeking treatment but it didn’t stop him from being able to get in the ring one last time last year with his rival Konnan.
This film gave us the perfect glimpse of what it’s like to be yourself and follow your dreams as yourself. And it showed us the hardships you’ll meet on the way and how to deal with them and show us that there's hope to overcome.
Nail in the Coffin is just another great wrestling documentary to come out in 2020 and did a great job at documenting one of the most charismatic and groundbreaking talents wrestling has ever seen.
RORSCHACH RATING
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Victims and Villains is written Josh "Captain Nostalgia" Burkey (and produced by), Caless Davis, Dan Rockwood, & Brandon Miller. Music by Mallory Johnson and others. Nail in the Coffin is property of Epic Pictures. We do not own nor claim any rights. This review was edited by Cam Smith. Nail in the Coffin is available now on all digital platforms.
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