Henry Lee Diedrickson was one of those people whose countenance and demeanor just scream psychopathic, an unsettling persona formed early in life. Every Doniphan, Wisconsin, school yearbook suggested it because every grade-level thumbnail looked identical, just a year older, with that same sardonic grin of devious satisfaction, like he had tortured a squirrel that morning just to find something to smile about.
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His eyes, onyx and cold, evoked a detached emotional ambiguity–was he thinking of the release of the new horror flick coming to the Doniphan drive-in next weekend . . .or hatching a plan to bomb the school lunchroom? Nobody ever really knew for sure, because nobody ever really knew Henry Lee Diedrickson.
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In interviews much later in life, classmates remembered him as a strange and quiet kid, kept to himself, mostly; only seen out in public either leaving the town library or the Doniphan Blockbuster, but always straining with a stack of books or video tapes under his skinny, pale arms, probably his only exercise.
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It was actually Sam Tuckman, in fourth grade, who bestowed his classmate with the forever-sticking moniker, Scary Harry, after an afternoon recess. Forced to at least stand on the sidelines while the rest of the class ran and ducked and sidestepped and got welted, Henry mumbled to Sam–no, it was more absent-mindedly to himself–that he’d love to paint Coach Larson’s face on one of the dodge balls, then deflate it fast with a ten-inch hunting knife.
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Yes, he dressed the part of the brooding loner–quite well, as it turns out; yes, they admitted, they were only half-kiddingly relieved that they survived high school–literally, because nobody ever really knew what was going on in the mind behind those Bic pen scrawls of nooses and knives and blood and gore that they craned their necks in class to sneak peeks at.
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In the dinner leading up to senior prom, Scary Harry Henry Lee Deidrickson was voted, in absentia of course, “Most likely to need a full deck of Get Out of Jail Free cards.” The day after graduation he was spotted at the bus depot, dressed the part of the brooding loner in black, with a drifter’s ticket out to LA, was the gossip, and was mostly forgotten about . . . until he became known the world over.
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Henry Lee Diedrickson felt right at home in the city slithering with thousands of other brooding loners; he rented a cheap dive downtown and spent his time reading and watching movies and plotting and planning. He compulsively compiled reams of spiral and drawing notebooks, bulging with written and visual depictions of all kinds of horrors, and all kinds of ways to commit them, from all kinds of angles, and chomped at the bit until his time was ripe to finally manifest them.
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After four years of eking out a minimal existence on piss-slick, Skid Row sidewalks focusing on his intended purpose, it was finally put-up-or-shut-up time to set his lifelong plan in motion. Henry Lee Diedrickson graduated from the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts and got a job as an associate producer for a company that cranked out low-budget thrillers. He learned the ropes, then formed his own production company that made millions making millions squirm and scream.
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His movie and merchandise franchising seeds were planted in fourth grade when he pretended not to hear the titters of his new nickname directed his way—the nickname that would make him one of the richest people in the world one day. Even back in grade school, he thought the moniker Scary Harry cool as hell—perfect—although he never let the brooding loner character he created just for fun, let anybody know it.
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He wasn’t really anti-classmate, just shy and introverted, and the brooding loner was just a kid he created–a defense mechanism to avoid any kind of uncomfortable contact with them; besides, they would really have gone off on him had they known he was planning to become the next Wes Craven. Henry Lee often thanked his Doniphan HS classmates, especially Sam Tuckman, for their billion-dollar put-down while overlooking Griffith Park from his Hollywood Hills mansion.
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His first film, Meet Scary Harry, set box office records for the slasher genre. Then came Scary Harry II, III, IV, V, VI, and VII; Scary Harry Goes to Grade School (inspired by real events), Scary Harry Goes to Middle School, Scary Harry Goes to High School,Scary Harry Goes to Night School, Scary Harry Goes to Beauty School, Scary Harry Goes to Med School, Scary Harry Goes to Divinity School, Scary Harry Goes to Culinary School, Scary Hardy Goes to Art School, Scary Harry Goes to Driving School; Scary Harry Goes to Barber College, Scary Harry Goes to Community College, Scary Harry Goes to a Four-Year University, Scary Harry Goes to Harvard;Mr. Scary Harry Goes to Washington; Scary Harry Goes to Hell, Scary Harry Goes to Heaven, Scary Harry Goes to Nirvana (for the untapped Buddhist market), Scary Harry Goes to Kolob (for the untapped Mormon market); Scary Harry “Scores” a Wife, and it's blood-letting sequels, Scary Harry’s “Messy” Divorce,Scary Harry Goes Polygamy: Twenty Brides On a Utah Dart Board (because Scary Harry Goes to Kolob was such a huge hit); The Death of Scary Harry, The Resurrection of Scary Harry, Scary Harry’s Final End, and We’re Not Kidding: Scary Harry Really Stays Dead this Time, with three other Scary Harry zombie-themed sequels squeezed out after that. There were the holiday moneymakers: Scary Harry’s (Blood Type A-) Christmas Carol, Scary Harry’s Thanksgiving Dinner, Scary Harry’s Easter Dinner, Scary Harry’s New Year’s Day Brunch, Scary Harry’s Special Mother’s Day, Scary Harry’s Bleeding Hearts (for lovers), the Halloween classic, Scary Harry’s Trick, Treat, or Tourniquet and five Scary Harry Trick, Treat, or Tourniquet sequels after that. There were Scary Harry dolls and action figures that spewed red-dyed water; calendars marking days with bloody fingerprints, blood stains, smears and dribbles; a line of “blood-splattered” clothes, you name it.
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Oh, yeah, one last thing. The "voted most likely” joke he heard floating down the high school hallway as he was clearing out his locker, Henry Lee thought hilarious (although he couldn't betray his brooding loner alter-ego with his mouth drawn upward). It was the defining moment that made him realize that people were actually buying his pseudo-psycho schtick; it gave him confidence that he just might be able to pull off his crazy dream of making slasher movies out in Hollywood. That turning point in time is memorialized with a gold and platinum Monopoly board he had custom-made that glistens on the coffee table next to the Best Special Effects Oscar he won for his landmark film, Houston, We Have a Problem — Scary Harry Goes to the Moon.
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