As a child in the south suburbs, Barry Kaufman was fascinated with operating toy trains–until he discovered even greater pleasure in destroying them. “When I was six years old, I saw a movie on TV called The Giant Gila Monster,” says the 32-year-old Kaufman, owner of Wicker Park’s new horror-movie memorabilia store, House of Monsters. “There was this scene where the creature destroys a train trestle and eats the train. The special effects weren’t terribly convincing, but I thought it was pretty ingenious, even though I knew it was a toy train. In fact, that’s what I thought was so cool. So I started making cardboard cutouts and clay monsters and putting them on my model train set in various positions of destruction.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Kaufman’s fascination with horror movies bred a lifelong habit of collecting, nurtured by a mom who gifted her kid with plastic model kits of classic creatures and copies of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. Spurred to share his happy habit with others, Kaufman put out two fanzines of his own. One, a “journal of the obscure horror cinema” called Demonique, reviewed little-known, hard-to-get horror films that Kaufman had to obtain from small mail-order houses. “But the only way I could order one was to order 25. The distributors didn’t want to sell them singly. Meanwhile, people were asking me how they could see these films. So I started inventorying these titles and sending them out through the magazine as a marketplace.”
The search for space led Kaufman to the Flat Iron Building, at North and Milwaukee, an ad hoc artists’ colony that houses several galleries and a makeshift theater or two. “It was the perfect place, old and atmospheric. The high ceilings and big windows are just right for displaying our inventory.” Indeed, House of Monsters is almost as much a museum as a marketplace. The walls are covered with oversize movie posters and out-of-print magazines, racks of videos and laser discs cram the aisles, and the shelves are adorned with everything from tiny ceramic Godzilla toys to foam-filled latex masks of the Creature From the Black Lagoon and Vincent Price’s blood-spattered Prince Prospero from The Masque of the Red Death. These cost several hundred dollars each. “They’re for displaying, not wearing,” says Kaufman, noting that he sells cheaper, wearable masks as well. But House of Monsters isn’t exactly a discount store–which is why Kaufman’s installed a no-interest layaway plan. Some items aren’t even for sale–for example, the elaborate resin scale-model diorama at the store’s entrance. Sculpted by master movie-monster maker Ray Harryhausen, it depicts King Kong throttling a tyrannosaurus.
The House of Monsters, 1579 N. Milwaukee, is open Saturdays from noon to 6 and Sundays from noon to 5. For more information, call 773-292-0980. –Albert Williams
