"KEEP BUSTIN'."

R.I.P. Lou Perryman

Some terrible, fucked up news. Lou Perryman, who played Stretch’s faithful hick sidekick L.G. in TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE PART 2 died Thursday, murdered by some random scumbag. I feel a little weird because he died under such horrible circumstances and I only know who he is because of the spectacular way he was killed in the movie. But he wasn’t a horror guy – he just ended up in that one and POLTERGEIST because he worked with Tobe Hooper (he was assistant cameraman on the original TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE).

I actually met Perryman just last year at a small horror convention. I don’t usually go to those type of things but this one lured me in with the promise of “Rowdy” Roddy Piper and three of the stars of CHAINSAW 2. And you know how obsessed I am with that movie. I’ve mentioned before that I don’t really like talking to my movie heroes, because I don’t want to try to be the guy who comes up with the one really interesting question or cool thing to say. Usually it’s a hopeless endeavor. But I did actually talk to Lou Perryman for a minute and told him I was a big fan of Chainsaw 2. He was polite. Then I mentioned that I had seen him in this excellent low budget independent Austin movie called LAST NIGHT AT THE ALAMO. I wasn’t trying to show off or anything but I really liked the movie, and clearly so did he. His eyes lit up instantly, he offered his hand and asked “What is your name?” He talked enthusiastically about a DVD release of the other movie he did with the same director, THE WHOLE SHOOTIN’ MATCH, which is now available. (I haven’t seen it yet, but Roger Ebert says it’s great, an endorsement Perryman was happy to repeat.)

So it was just a brief encounter, but he seemed like a really nice guy and a funny good ol’ boy just like he played in movies, mostly obscure independent Texas stuff but occasionally something like BOYS DON’T CRY. (And apparently he’s “man in bar” in THE BLUES BROTHERS, but I haven’t found him in there yet.)

It’s too fuckin bad, man. I hate it when shit like this happens. Sorry Lou, it shouldn’t have happened like that. You will be missed.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 4th, 2009 at 10:32 pm and is filed under Updates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

3 Responses to “R.I.P. Lou Perryman”

  1. Hey Vern, did you see the interview the Onion AV Club re-printed in honor of Lou Perryman? I know the AV Club is basically a hipster EW, but the interview was hot shit and gives a good glimpse of how awesome Perryman was.

  2. Well they did alot of coverage of THE WHOLE SHOOTIN’ MATCH coming out on DVD so good for them. I’ll have to check out that interview, I heard it was a good one.

    By the way I found out those same two guys, Perryman and Sonny Carl Davis, also starred in one called FAST MONEY where they’re marijuana smugglers or something. The funny thing is it was another one of those talky independent Austin movies but on video it was released as part of “Sybil Danning’s Adventure Series” with a big picture of Sybil Danning going on an adventure.

  3. solongyoubastard

    May 18th, 2009 at 11:18 pm

    So it turns out Ken Evert (grandpa in TCM2) also passed away, just last year. Haven’t found out any details but he was young, not even 60. Tom Savini talks about him with such reverence on the “Gruesome Edition” doc I looked him up and found out he’d died. Really sucks.

    And Perryman comes off like such a sweet guy in that doc. “I built you a fry house, honey.” A real fucking shame. I wish the worst possible sentence on the asshole who killed him.

Leave a Reply





XHTML: You can use: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>