Postcards from Fangoria

My weekend (or what is a weekend to normal people; my Saturday and Sunday afternoons before work, and my Friday night after work) was largely spent at the Fangoria Weekend of Horrors convention in scenic Burbank. Oh gosh, people, it was neat. Fetching goths, beautiful makeup, random freebies, a T-shirt for sale with the face of Tom Atkins, models pretending to reenact scenes from "Hostel Part II" and "Fido" ... it was neat.

Some of the booths I patronized...
Haunted House Productions: Some lovely gothic/gory figurines. The usual stuff - bats, skulls - but nicely done.

Curioddities: Crafty goth, with many products based on cute/creepy black-and-white line drawings. I bought a T-shirt of the tiny Dracula with a big head. Adorable.

Lurker Films: Some nice Lovecraft people, responsible for the HPL Film Festival and also the new Zompire - The Undead Film Festival. If Prombie happens I may have to invite them.

Got to see Eli Roth do a panel on Hostel II. I'm not particularly interested in the movie but it was nice to see Eli and hear his great David Lynch imitation. He promises more Rotten Fruit cartoons in the future. Art Boy and I also saw Neil Marshall, director of The Descent, talk about his new movie, Doomsday. It sounds very 28 Days Later, which is probably not a bad thing. Someone in the audience asked him a great question about the role of gender in his movies - Dog Soldiers is a very guy movie; The Descent is all female - but he just sounded confused and said something like "I didn't set out to make a gender statement." Whatever. He was probably just being all delicate and politic, afraid of being misquoted; I bet if you asked him about it over beers he'd say something smart.

I also accidentally elbowed Voltaire in the ribs; shook hands with original Michael Myers actor Tony Moran (my God, does everyone but me have a MySpace page?); and stared shyly at the Ladies of the Evil Dead from across the room, unable to speak, but they were beautiful.

I also reprimanded a stocky male goth for surreptitiously photographing the posterior of a woman in a zombie-stripper costume with thong. And finally, while walking past a booth labeled "AUTOPSY," I was told by its proprietor: "It's so nice to see a normal person."