’Darth Vader of the rink’
Youngblood villain reflects on legendary role,
CICERO, N.Y.— One of the meanest villains in hockey movie history welcomed a visitor into his pristine home and insisted they keep their shoes on. Fresh coffee was already brewing, a dozen assorted doughnuts had already been purchased from a local coffee shop, and were waiting in an unopened box.
“I’ve got a movie for you to take back,” the movie villain said. “Are you spending the night?”
His visitor had spent the previous night in a hotel near the airport.
“Why didn’t you call me?” he said. “You should have called me. I would have taken you around. You should have said something to me. If you were here last night, it would have been great.”
George Finn would insist on buying lunch at a friend’s restaurant nearby, and would insist the visitor return to his waterfront home in the summer, after the ice had broken up on Maple Bay, on the southern shore of Oneida Lake in central New York.
“I got a couple movies here,” he said, in the meantime. “I’ll sign ’em for you. You didn’t come all the way down here for nothing.”
Finn, 53, grew up in Rexdale and was a real-life enforcer in the Ontario Hockey League, but his most famous misdeeds were in character for a Hollywood movie marking its 30th anniversary.
For moviegoers of a certain age, Finn provided the scowling, bearded face of Carl Racki, the remorseless antagonist who cracked Patrick Swayze’s skull and tormented Rob Lowe in Youngblood.
Filmed largely in the Toronto area — with Ted Reeve Arena holding a starring role — Youngblood was the story of a young American hotshot (Lowe) struggling to crack the hardscrabble world of Canadian junior hockey. Finn was the goon who crosschecked Lowe in the face and knocked him to the ice with a single punch — all within the first 10 minutes of the movie.
Critics savaged it, with the Chicago Tribune calling it “the Karate Kid in knee pads and hockey gear,” and with the Los Angeles Times suggesting it was more like “Flashdance on ice.” The Times referred to Racki as the “Darth Vader of the rink.”
Still, among the hockey set, the movie developed a cult following. Finn said he is still often recognized whenever he watches a hockey game at any of the local arenas. A few days earlier, he said, he mailed a DVD to a fan in New Jersey who had written requesting an autograph.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime,” Finn said, “to see what Hollywood’s all about.”
He got to fly to Los Angeles and stay for two weeks. He went to a comedy club with Swayze, who was the veteran sage on the team until Racki knocked his helmet off from behind, slashed his feet out from underneath and sent him crashing head-first to the ice.
Racki seemed to save most of his rage for Lowe, who played the title character. They fought more than once, including the marathon final bout. (Spoiler: Racki loses more than the fight — he loses a tooth.)
“Rob was good about it,” Finn said. “He said, ‘Don’t be shy, hit me so that it looks real.’ ”
Lowe was only 21 years old when the movie was released, in January 1986. He spent months trying to learn to skate for the role, and during a promotional tour, he told the Canadian Press there were times “I just wanted to throw my equipment in the air and scream ‘I am an actor — I am not an athlete.’ ”
“I didn’t hit him the way I should hit him as a hockey player,” Finn said. “He did the same thing, too.”
In filming some of those scenes, he said, some of those punches actually landed.
“The funny part about it is: I was a bad person on the ice,” Finn said. “I was an enforcer. I remember playing with Keith Gretzky in Windsor. Nobody could go near Keith, because they knew there was going to be a problem.”
Finn had bounced around in junior, from the Belleville Bulls to the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds to the Windsor Spitfires. He had two 20-goal seasons with Windsor, where he spent time on a line with former Maple Leafs forward and executive Claude Loiselle.
But he could never find a stable home in professional hockey.
Without a playing career — and without much interest in any more acting work — he settled into working life in central New York. Finn worked in environmental clean-ups. He was licensed to handle asbestos, as well as other hazardous materials. He could operate a forklift.
In 2009, he was driving out to a job in a pickup truck when he was struck by another vehicle.
“A truck put me through the window,” he said.
He said he was taken to a local hospital but released six hours later, diagnosed with simple whiplash, a concussion and some muscle injuries. Six weeks later, after a flurry of appointments, he learned he had actually broken his neck.
“They finally realized that I had a broken neck, and they said, ‘You’re lucky to be alive,’ ” he said. “I was walking around with a broken neck for six weeks.”
He said he has a double titanium rod in his neck. He cannot work and lives with chronic pain. He could not shake a visitor’s hand because his right hand was badly swollen, another residual effect, he said, of his injuries. The swelling comes and goes, he said, sometimes from hand to hand, or from foot to foot.
“My feet are always numb,” he said. “Always, always numb.”
He was married once, but was divorced a decade ago. Finn, who walks with a limp, lives alone, and he said he enjoys it: “I have many friends, it’s very quiet here.”
Mementos from his life in hockey and film fill the main floor of his home, warm and clean and panelled with stained pine. In his office, just off the kitchen, a framed Racki jersey hangs above his desk. He said two other jerseys were stolen from the set, and that director Peter Markle gave him the remaining jersey to keep.
In the end, he allowed his visitor to remove their shoes, rather than track slush and mud across his clean floors. The visitor was also able to convince Finn he did not have to buy lunch. But an autographed copy of the DVD was non-negotiable.
Finn signed the front side of the disc in a clean cursive.
On the left side: “To Sean, Best Wishes, George Finn.”
And on the right: “#20, Carl Racki, Youngblood”
He was also resolute his visitor should return in the summer.
“This is what life’s all about,” he said, motioning out to the water. “You’ve got a million dollar view. I’m not taking this to the cemetery. So you have to enjoy life.”