Pulp Features

Over the years, Johnny Legend has been involved in many things. This California-based musician, film producer, memorabilia show merchant and wrestling manager has worn several hats. Likewise due to his strange appearance, being thin as a rail and with a beard one would expect to find on combatants of the Hatfield-McCoy feud, or more recently, ZZ TOP, he has landed various small parts in films. Like a pimple, he keeps popping up everywhere and has become a mainstay in the world of Independent cinema.

Legend likewise owes a brush with fame to the fact his sister was the celebrated girlfriend to the late Andy Kaufmann. Like the ill-fated actor, Johnny shared a passion for wrestling and weird films. They have similar, twisted tastes in comedy as well.

Among his various film exploits, Legend has produced some of his own material, including “Born to Bleed”, a wrestling spoof, and “I Am legend”, a documentary about himself and his exploits in his various career choices.

You can see him in one of his early film roles as a zombie in “Bride of Reanimator”. While “Reanimator” was, in my opinion, a great film and this sequel, one of the worst movies of all time, legend at least looks impressive, lumbering about with a dazed look on his face. At least he was supposed to act brain-dead. One can’t say the same for a lot of the other cast members in this bomb!

More impressively, though with a dubbed voice, Legend appears as The Street Prophet, a fanatical cult leader preaching to the homeless in “Severed Ties”, a Fangoria production of much greater interest than “Bride of Reanimator”. Legend steals the show in his role as this lunatic preacher. In the film, Legend demands people “testify” before being allowed to enter his domain, “testify” meaning confessing “Sweet Jesus, I’m a piece of shit,” to which the response is, “You may enter.” A lesson in blunt humility you won’t find with many of the more mainstream religions!

Par for the course though, Johnny doesn’t last long in this and dies, though his moments in front of the camera are both funny and frightening.

Legend also had a small part in “Children of the Corn III” and as a healer in “Man on the Moon”, the Kaufman biography.

Aside from such roles in horror flicks, Legend has been big on the club circuit with a rockabilly band. He has also done such risky things as presenting an El Santo film festival, in the heart of Los Angeles and arranged other low budget horror screenings; featuring movies that not even the worst of late night comedy hosts would run. Attendance has varied. Sometimes he has an astronomical turnout, at other times, well…

Too thin to become a wrestler (though he did do a brief stint as an inter-gender champion), he spent many years as a wrestling manager, mainly for the California based AIWA of Ed Ahrens. Appearing regularly in Los Angeles suburbs such as Maywood and Cudahy, he worked in the corner of a number of freakish wrestling idols from the regional scene. The cast looked like something from a John Waters movie. The Time Traveller, Rainbow, Dr. Jerry Graham, Bad Boy Bubba Storm, Outlaw Mark Kissell, The Universal Playboy, Lightning Cheryl Russa, The No-Mercy Man and Handsome Jack Studd were some of them, though not exactly WWF prototypes Legend and crew constantly pushed the crowds at these small town shows to riot pitched frenzies, at times having to require police escorts back to the safety of the locker room.

Legend later took things one step further, when he created Incredibly Strange Wrestling. Playing to adult audiences in bars, where profanity, sexuality and violence could be emphasized, he started presenting shows and then selling videos of the same. While he occasionally managed on these cards, he stayed more in the background while another whole cast of freaks performed in the ring. Among the luminaries this time were Harley Racist, Vandal Drummond, John “The Rapist” Pierce (no relation to this writer), Cletus The Fetus & The Abortionist, The Drunk, The Mistress Of Domination, and more. It wasn’t something you’d find on prime-time TV, but he managed to build a cult following during the time it lasted.

Legend remains active to this day, though his age has forced him to curtail most of his wrestling work. He has placed much more emphasis on his music, his re-introducing of forgotten horror films to the fans and occasionally taking part in a movie. Under his real name he also writes wrestling and film articles for varied magazines. None-too-surprisingly, the name of Johnny Legend has a habit of cropping up in the text.

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