FANGORIA’S WEEKEND OF FUN

Prior to Fangoria’s Weekend of Horrors in Los Angeles, Creation Entertainment Co-CEO Adam Malin called 2008’s event, which ran April 25-27, “the big one.” Luckily for horror fans and PollyStaffle.com, who attended the event for the first time, the convention lived up to the hype.

After 25 years of holding the event in cramped hotels, Fango moved to the Los Angeles Convention Center. Though some attendees felt the event lost some of its intimacy with the switch, we don’t see how it was able to function at any smaller place and feel Fangoria is where it belongs. The word is it will return to the convention center next year. We’d like to see it stretch out for a couple of more days as there really is too much to see over the course of a weekend.

So much so that we only managed to catch one panel – Eric Red’s “100 Feet” - and didn’t see a single movie or browse through any of the merchandise for sale. We were too busy meeting, talking to and taking photographs of the more than 1,000 celebrity guests and filmmakers in attendance.

Here’s a quick rundown of who we saw, met and or interviewed:

The coolest interviews we managed to get were with Kyra Schon of “Night of the Living Dead,” Sid Haig of “House of 1,000 Corpses,” Scout Taylor-Compton of Rob Zombie’s “Halloween,” Brian O’Halloran aka Dante Hicks of “Clerks,” Lew Temple aka Adam Banjo of “The Devil’s Rejects,” and last, but not least, Betsy Baker, Theresa Tilly and Ellen Sandweiss, who are the ladies of “The Evil Dead.”

Other people interviewed include Natasha Talonz of “Black Devil Doll,” Stephanie Miller of “Zombies! Zombies! Zombies!,” Emily Hardy of “XII,” screenwriters Joe Moe (“Red Velvet”), Sean Clark (“The Black Waters of Echo’s Pond”), as well as the filmmaker Sean Cain (“Naked Beneath the Water”), and John Gonzales and Slava Siderman - the creators of the horror comedy short film series “Roadside Killer.”

Celebrities we met or saw, but didn’t get to interview include the Babysitter Twins of “Grindhouse” - Electra and Elise Avellan, Charles Band, James Duval of “May” and “The Doom Generation,” Eric “The Hitcher” Red, Shane “Amateur Porn Star Killer” Ryan and his co-star in the film’s sequel Kai Lanette, film producer and music supervisor Sean Fernald, After Dark Horrorfest spokesmodel Mistress Malice, Ken Foree (“Dawn of the Dead”), the official “Muthafuckin Puppet” from “Black Devil Doll,” David Naughton (“An American Werewolf in London”), Cristen Coppen of Cameron Romero’s “Staunton Hill,” Eric Jungmann (“Killer Pad”), the legendary George Romero, Michael Paré (“Eddie and the Cruisers”), Gunner “Leatherface” Hansen, the man that created Vampirella and coined the term sci-fi Forrest J. Ackerman and many others.

Somewhere in the shuffle of the weekend we missed meeting Shawnee Smith and Missi Pyle, as well as Clive Barker, David Slade and Steve Niles. But we did see the screenwriter of the 1984 cult movie “Ninja Busters,” got a hug from the always entertaining Chuck Williams and got yelled at by Richard “Jaws” Kiel of the James Bond movies, while Markowitz the Amazing Thug Armadillo from WhatUpThug.com got hugs, kisses and compliments galore from all the ladies.

All in all it was a pretty damn fun couple of days. If you consider yourself a fan of genre films, this is a must attend convention. We didn’t take in half of what Fangoria had to offer, and were still totally exhausted and completely satisfied with the event - not only as a journalist, but also as a huge gore hound. Most of all, we can’t wait to go back next year.

- CCF, May 2008