I am so exquisitely empty
May. 21st, 2006 06:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vovatThis was the weekend for the most recent Monster-Mania Convention in Cherry Hill. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bethje and I have gone to all of five of these conventions, although pretty much all we did the first time was check out the dealer tables. While we had three-day passes, there was hardly anything to do there on Sunday, so we ended up only going Friday and Saturday. In past years, there had always been SOMETHING other than movies on Sunday, so I have no clue why they're apparently phasing that out. After we got there, we found out that they were back to giving out the wristbands that you're supposed to wear for the entire convention, rather than the pins they had last time. That was pretty annoying, but at least we got to take them off a day earlier than usual this time around. Friday just had movies and no panel discussions, but the films usually have introductions by someone involved with them. They're SUPPOSED to, anyway. Sometimes the celebrities can't take five minutes to say a few words, which really strikes me as pretty lazy, considering that they're getting paid to be there and all. One of several reasons why I have to give props to Gunnar Hansen, who was at the second Monster-Mania Convention, is that he did an introduction to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre WITHOUT being asked. He really needs to come back to the convention. Anyway, getting back to the recent past, we saw most of The Devil's Rejects, but missed the introduction. On the other hand, we saw Richard Brooker (who played Jason) introduce Friday the 13th Part 3, but didn't stay to watch the movie, which we'd both seen before. (We'd also both seen The Devil's Rejects before, but that was worthier of being seen twice.)
Saturday was the big day, as well as the day when Dorothea accompanied us. We started out by watching Pumpkinhead, and then listened to Doug Bradley's introduction for Hellraiser. At one point, someone in the audience yelled out, "JESUS WEPT!", to which Doug replied, "Indeed. But not often, apparently." We didn't actually watch the movie again, but instead went downstairs for the presentations and panel discussions. We caught the tail end of special effects guy Greg Nicotero's talk, and then saw "Men and Women Behind the Mask and Makeup," a session that's been at every convention (well, I'm not sure about the first, but definitely every one since then), but with different people. The "and women" was added for this time, despite the fact that there was only one woman (Eileen Dietz, the possessed double for Linda Blair in The Exorcist), and there was no mention of "and women" when Elvira was part of it. I mean, just try and tell me that's fair! Anyway, in addition to Dietz, the panel consisted of Richard Brooker, Andrew Divoff (from Wishmaster), David Naughton (from American Werewolf in London), and Tony Todd (Candyman). These mixed panels can be somewhat hit-or-miss. This time, I hadn't seen two of the movies represented, and I thought Naughton got too many questions, and Tony Todd (easily my favorite of the group) far too few. I'm sure I also said this when reviewing the LAST Monster-Mania, but the standards for deciding which celebrities should be alone and which should be in a larger group aren't always that sound.
The next panel featured Sid Haig (Captain Spaudling from House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects), Bill Moseley (Otis from the same movies), and Diamond Dallas Page. The first two had been there before, and were really cool. I actually think Sid was a little more subdued than he's been in the past, but he was still amusing. Diamond was about as dumb as you'd expect a professional wrestler to be, but since he WAS in Rejects, at least there was more reason for him to be there than there was for other wrestlers who've attended in the past. (None of them had been in panel discussions, though, as far as I can remember.)
Next came Jeffrey Combs from Re-Animator, which I've never seen, but probably will at some point. Jeffrey was kind of a dork and kind of full of himself, and made a point of saying how stupid he thought the R-rated version of Re-Animator was. Mind you, he's probably right about that last thing. I almost fell asleep during parts of his session, but I think that was more my fault for not getting enough sleep than it was Jeffrey's.
The next guest was George Romero, and I have to say that I probably would have enjoyed his discussion more if I'd seen more of his movies. I've seen Night of the Living Dead, and Beth and I were going to see the one he put out a few years ago (Dawn of the Dead, I think?), but we ended up not doing so, for whatever reason. Romero was still interesting, though. The first person to ask him a question was a lady who bowed to him (literally), followed by a conversation that went something like this:
Woman: You should stop having fast zombies in your movies. Slow zombies are so much cooler!
Romero: They've all been pretty slow in my movies.
Woman: What about in the Night of the Living Dead remake?
Romero: I had nothing to do with that one.
Woman: Well, don't use fast zombies anyway!
After Romero came Lance Hendriksen, who was in Pumpkinhead, as well as Aliens, Millennium, and a bunch of other things I've never seen. His character in Millennium was named Frank Black, and whenever he mentioned it, Beth looked over at me, and I had to mumble "not THAT Frank Black." Sort of the opposite of the picture at the bottom of this page, actually. {g} For what it's worth, I believe the Frank Black in Millennium was named after the musician.
The final panel that we watched was the Hellraiser reunion, featuring Doug Bradley (Pinhead), Simon Bamford (Butterball), Nicholas Vince (Chatterer), Barbie Wilde (Female Cenobite), Peter Atkins (screenwriter of some of the earlier films), and Gary Tunnicliffe (special effects designer). This was actually a really good panel. They all knew each other, and the majority of them were goofy British guys (Barbie was the exception to that rule in two important ways) who played off each other and made a lot of bawdy jokes. They told one story about how Gary managed to finish applying Doug's Pinhead makeup in an hour and nine minutes, and someone wanted to (or maybe even did) give him a T-shirt that said, "I sixty-nined Pinhead." Atkins admitted that Part 4 hadn't ended up much like he'd wanted it to, but apparently Part 3 did, even though my personal opinion is that 3 is much worse than 4. Oh, well. I also learned that Parts 5 through 7 were originally unrelated scripts that were tweaked to fit into the series, which makes a lot of sense when you think about it.
After that panel, we went to eat at Friendly's, where I had a shrimp basket that was good, and a strawberry shortcake sundae that wasn't. The cake was so hard that I couldn't eat it. I'm not sure if this is typical of that sundae, or if its badness this time had to do with our ordering them after the restaurant had closed.
And that's about it, really. For Monster-Mania, anyway. I'm probably going to write another post on other subjects in the near future.
EDIT: Oh, I forgot to mention that Coreys Haim and Feldman are supposed to be guests at the next Monster-Mania. They pretty much always advertise some people who don't come. Actually, they were saying that William Shatner was supposed to be at the most recent one, but the closest we got was Jeffrey Combs doing a really lousy Shatner impression. I pretty much knew he wouldn't be coming, though. On the other hand, I doubt the Coreys will have anything better to do, unless Michael Jackson goes on trial again.
bethje and I have gone to all of five of these conventions, although pretty much all we did the first time was check out the dealer tables. While we had three-day passes, there was hardly anything to do there on Sunday, so we ended up only going Friday and Saturday. In past years, there had always been SOMETHING other than movies on Sunday, so I have no clue why they're apparently phasing that out. After we got there, we found out that they were back to giving out the wristbands that you're supposed to wear for the entire convention, rather than the pins they had last time. That was pretty annoying, but at least we got to take them off a day earlier than usual this time around. Friday just had movies and no panel discussions, but the films usually have introductions by someone involved with them. They're SUPPOSED to, anyway. Sometimes the celebrities can't take five minutes to say a few words, which really strikes me as pretty lazy, considering that they're getting paid to be there and all. One of several reasons why I have to give props to Gunnar Hansen, who was at the second Monster-Mania Convention, is that he did an introduction to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre WITHOUT being asked. He really needs to come back to the convention. Anyway, getting back to the recent past, we saw most of The Devil's Rejects, but missed the introduction. On the other hand, we saw Richard Brooker (who played Jason) introduce Friday the 13th Part 3, but didn't stay to watch the movie, which we'd both seen before. (We'd also both seen The Devil's Rejects before, but that was worthier of being seen twice.)Saturday was the big day, as well as the day when Dorothea accompanied us. We started out by watching Pumpkinhead, and then listened to Doug Bradley's introduction for Hellraiser. At one point, someone in the audience yelled out, "JESUS WEPT!", to which Doug replied, "Indeed. But not often, apparently." We didn't actually watch the movie again, but instead went downstairs for the presentations and panel discussions. We caught the tail end of special effects guy Greg Nicotero's talk, and then saw "Men and Women Behind the Mask and Makeup," a session that's been at every convention (well, I'm not sure about the first, but definitely every one since then), but with different people. The "and women" was added for this time, despite the fact that there was only one woman (Eileen Dietz, the possessed double for Linda Blair in The Exorcist), and there was no mention of "and women" when Elvira was part of it. I mean, just try and tell me that's fair! Anyway, in addition to Dietz, the panel consisted of Richard Brooker, Andrew Divoff (from Wishmaster), David Naughton (from American Werewolf in London), and Tony Todd (Candyman). These mixed panels can be somewhat hit-or-miss. This time, I hadn't seen two of the movies represented, and I thought Naughton got too many questions, and Tony Todd (easily my favorite of the group) far too few. I'm sure I also said this when reviewing the LAST Monster-Mania, but the standards for deciding which celebrities should be alone and which should be in a larger group aren't always that sound.
The next panel featured Sid Haig (Captain Spaudling from House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects), Bill Moseley (Otis from the same movies), and Diamond Dallas Page. The first two had been there before, and were really cool. I actually think Sid was a little more subdued than he's been in the past, but he was still amusing. Diamond was about as dumb as you'd expect a professional wrestler to be, but since he WAS in Rejects, at least there was more reason for him to be there than there was for other wrestlers who've attended in the past. (None of them had been in panel discussions, though, as far as I can remember.)
Next came Jeffrey Combs from Re-Animator, which I've never seen, but probably will at some point. Jeffrey was kind of a dork and kind of full of himself, and made a point of saying how stupid he thought the R-rated version of Re-Animator was. Mind you, he's probably right about that last thing. I almost fell asleep during parts of his session, but I think that was more my fault for not getting enough sleep than it was Jeffrey's.
The next guest was George Romero, and I have to say that I probably would have enjoyed his discussion more if I'd seen more of his movies. I've seen Night of the Living Dead, and Beth and I were going to see the one he put out a few years ago (Dawn of the Dead, I think?), but we ended up not doing so, for whatever reason. Romero was still interesting, though. The first person to ask him a question was a lady who bowed to him (literally), followed by a conversation that went something like this:
Woman: You should stop having fast zombies in your movies. Slow zombies are so much cooler!
Romero: They've all been pretty slow in my movies.
Woman: What about in the Night of the Living Dead remake?
Romero: I had nothing to do with that one.
Woman: Well, don't use fast zombies anyway!
After Romero came Lance Hendriksen, who was in Pumpkinhead, as well as Aliens, Millennium, and a bunch of other things I've never seen. His character in Millennium was named Frank Black, and whenever he mentioned it, Beth looked over at me, and I had to mumble "not THAT Frank Black." Sort of the opposite of the picture at the bottom of this page, actually. {g} For what it's worth, I believe the Frank Black in Millennium was named after the musician.
The final panel that we watched was the Hellraiser reunion, featuring Doug Bradley (Pinhead), Simon Bamford (Butterball), Nicholas Vince (Chatterer), Barbie Wilde (Female Cenobite), Peter Atkins (screenwriter of some of the earlier films), and Gary Tunnicliffe (special effects designer). This was actually a really good panel. They all knew each other, and the majority of them were goofy British guys (Barbie was the exception to that rule in two important ways) who played off each other and made a lot of bawdy jokes. They told one story about how Gary managed to finish applying Doug's Pinhead makeup in an hour and nine minutes, and someone wanted to (or maybe even did) give him a T-shirt that said, "I sixty-nined Pinhead." Atkins admitted that Part 4 hadn't ended up much like he'd wanted it to, but apparently Part 3 did, even though my personal opinion is that 3 is much worse than 4. Oh, well. I also learned that Parts 5 through 7 were originally unrelated scripts that were tweaked to fit into the series, which makes a lot of sense when you think about it.
After that panel, we went to eat at Friendly's, where I had a shrimp basket that was good, and a strawberry shortcake sundae that wasn't. The cake was so hard that I couldn't eat it. I'm not sure if this is typical of that sundae, or if its badness this time had to do with our ordering them after the restaurant had closed.
And that's about it, really. For Monster-Mania, anyway. I'm probably going to write another post on other subjects in the near future.
EDIT: Oh, I forgot to mention that Coreys Haim and Feldman are supposed to be guests at the next Monster-Mania. They pretty much always advertise some people who don't come. Actually, they were saying that William Shatner was supposed to be at the most recent one, but the closest we got was Jeffrey Combs doing a really lousy Shatner impression. I pretty much knew he wouldn't be coming, though. On the other hand, I doubt the Coreys will have anything better to do, unless Michael Jackson goes on trial again.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Blasphemers!
Date: 2006-05-22 12:01 am (UTC)Daily!
from oper.ru
Yes, I will do PR for the Coreys until the day I die...
Date: 2006-05-22 02:16 am (UTC)number two: OMG COREYS IN CHERRY HILL! craps, i'll be in boston at this time. god damn curse.
number three: WHY do the coreys have anything to do with monsters? (seriously, though there are probably twelve billion joke answers).
Number four: corey and corey are freaking awesome. (tm).
Re: Yes, I will do PR for the Coreys until the day I die...
Date: 2006-05-22 05:35 pm (UTC)