Texas Frightmare Weekend 2014: Day Three

If Saturday is the best day of TFW, then Sunday is the worst day - because it's the last! But I still managed to pack in a whole new group of memories and experiences.

 

One of the first things I see that day are a couple of great Jigsaw puppet costumes, complete with red tricycle. The kid was seriously adorable.

 

 

I still needed to get Tom Savini to sign my Dawn of the Dead poster, but he wasn't at his table yet, so I took the opportunity to do a few quick laps around the rooms and commit to some of the swag I wanted to get. One booth had a plethora of 11x17 available for the best deal, and it took me a while but I finally picked out the four I wanted: Child's Play, Return of the Living Dead, The Omen, and Shaun of the Dead.

 

 

Speaking of The Omen, at the booth next to the one with the posters is another booth that does original t-shirt designs. And they have an Omen t-shirt! As one of my bestest horror movie buds, I had to have it. Thank you again to the vendor for this awesome shirt!

 

 

And here's just some more random cool artwork and costumes!

 

I saw my friends again when I went back to go meet Tom Savini, and as my photographer she got some great pictures of him signing my Dawn of the Dead poster. For some reason, Savini still made me nervous as hell, though, and Heather actually tells him that I am scared to death of him! It's true, I don't know why. It actually broke the ice a little bit for me, good thing! I told him what a wonderful job I thought he did with the Night of the Living Dead remake and he seemed very appreciative. Our pictures are a little fuzzy but I don't care.

 

 

I don't have a picture or anything but it was around this time that I decided that I have to at least talk to Sharni Vinson, and tell her how much I loved You're Next. What a darling! She asked me what I thought of A.J. Bowen and when I tell her that I love him too and he's one of my new favorites, we just end up gushing over him, and also Ti West, Simon Barrett, Adam Wingard, and Joe Swanberg. She tells me that I absolutely have to see The Sacrament, which I had forgotten was coming out around this time. Will do, Sharni! Thank you for the reminder, and thank you for being so sweet!

 

As I'm hanging around the Terminator area of the floor, I get to be almost front and center for one of those wonderful candid convention moments. Robert Patrick was having fun getting on the microphone and announcing the other guests - "On the floor we have Scott Wilson, one of the greatest living actors!" "Michael Biehn, star of THE TERMINATOR!" and then he says "Also on the floor we have Linda Hamilton! Star of... KING KONG LIVES!" Apparently Linda didn't like that, and I got this great video of her running after Robert and pushing him around. I can't seem to get my iPhone videos to load on here, but Texas Frightmare Weekend shared it on their Facebook page if you want to watch!

 

Now it was time to use my last line skip to meet the one and only Sarah Connor - LINDA HAMILTON! I had thought earlier that it would be cool with me if I didn't end up meeting her, and I am so glad I changed my mind! This woman was awesome!

 

Another great convention moment happened right before it was my turn to meet Linda. Her Children of the Corn co-stars Courtney Gains and John Franklin came over to her table to say hi, so everybody that was nearby got an impromptu Children of the Corn reunion picture! Killer.

 

Sweetheart Linda was of course a joy to meet, all smiles and giving everybody kisses and talking to the fans like she already knew them. TFW can invite her back any time they want, I'm sure everybody else who got to meet her would agree! Loved her to death, and I love the picture I got of us holding up our lady guns.

 

 

My last meeting of the event was with Jen and Sylvia Soska, the Twisted Twins. What awesome chicks! They greeted everyone who came through their line with a big hug and were so nice and easy to talk to. I complimented them on American Mary, and told them how hot it made me for Katherine Isabelle, which they readily agreed with. I'm pretty sure it was Jen who said that she gave her a lady boner, and I am totally with her on that. Anyway! I chatted with them as quickly as I could, but I really could have talked to them for so much longer about Amerian Mary. I wasn't sure what to expect of the twins before this, and I'm so glad I got the opportunity to meet them and find out. They were sincerely nice and appreciative, and really seemed to be there for the fans. Loved them, I really did, and this was a great final meeting for the convention! Thank you, Twisted Twins!

 

 

 

After this, things were pretty much over. I had some money left so I went over to a vendor table that was selling DVDs for a pretty good price yesterday and an even better price today - 99 cents! I picked out four DVDs, but three of them were multipacks with more than one movie on them, so I really ended up getting 19 full movies for 4 dollars. Badass.

 

 

I also loves me some buttons and FINALLY found some cool ones that I wanted to add to my collection.

 

 

People started packing up and another fantastic convention experience was over. I was actually worried that I wouldn't be as excited about my second convention as I was about my first - PFFT! It was a totally different experience this time around and though there were a few panels that I missed out on, I still could not be happier with all the things I was able to accomplish and all of the amazing people I met - celebrities, vendors, and other attendees.

 

I had promised myself that this year I would make more of an effort to talk to more people, and because I did, it really deepened the convention experience for me. This is something that we can do to connect with other fans, where we can geek out and totally be ourselves and not have to sort of censor what we say sometimes, lest we be judged by non-horror fans. I'm definitely addicted to conventions now, and if anybody wants to find a good one to go to, I really think that Texas Frightmare Weekend is it.

 

Once again, I'd like to give a shout-out to everybody that helped make Texas Frightmare Weekend possible. Everything ran smoothly and it was organized and there was just an aura of fun everywhere you went. Next year will be TFW's tenth convention and I cannot wait to see what they have in store for that celebration! Until 2015, thank you TFW and everybody that attended or was a guest or vendor, for a weekend of pure horror geek bliss!

 

 



Movie Review: American Mary (2012)

Even after being less than impressed with Dead Hooker in a Trunk, I was still highly curious about the next venture by the Soska Twins, sistahs in horror. It was easy to see their true love for the genre with that movie, and also their willingness to have fun with it and themselves. American Mary proves that they can also be serious about horror, and that they have the talent to make it happen in their own way.

Mary Mason is a young medical student who is strapped for cash when she's offered a lot of money to perform an unusual procedure for a woman. Becoming increasingly disillusioned with her career and life after a traumatic event, Mary throws herself into becoming an infamous underground surgeon for people who want extreme body modification procedures.

American Mary is a good ten steps above Dead Hooker in a Trunk in just about every respect. They got a fantastic actress to carry the entire film; the look of the film is beautiful with many stand-out (and sometimes shocking images); and heck, I can even see the costuming as becoming somewhat iconic. Love that black jacket that Mary wears. Anyways, I'm still a little stuck on what the title might mean, as I'm of the mind that filmmakers usually try to make their work mean something. Is it Mary's gruesome journey toward the good old "American dream" of making money and being successful? That's all I can really think of. You got thoughts, let me know.

Katharine Isabelle, who worked her way into the loving hearts of horror fans as Ginger in the werewolf film Ginger Snaps, absolutely kills it in American Mary. I'm not afraid to say that I found her sexy as hell in the role, and I think it was because she played a more subtle kind of sexy, not flaunting anything.  She wears heels even while performing surgery, and tight-ish clothes that flatter her body, but there's nothing at all slutty about her. She simply comes off as a confident woman who knows and likes herself, and there's nothing more appealing than that. Mary never loses that even after what she goes through and actually seems to use it to her advantage to make other people uncomfortable, rather than make herself more confident.

Isabelle makes the character of Mary an actually pretty fascinating one - from her turn as an intelligent woman with drive to a woman who has completely stopped caring about anything. She has a sense of humor, a sense of wickedness, but also vulnerability and emotion. At first disgusted by what she does and sees of her first two patients - Ruby and the guy that Billy tortured - after Mary is raped by one of her professors, she goes deeper into the macabre than she probably thought possible. She does what she does for the money, helping other people express themselves, but she's not doing anything to help herself. Mary rejects the obvious consolations of Billy and Detective Dolor, even though she seems to have a strange sense of loyalty or something to Billy. She's sure a quirky one, that Mary.

The film was surprisingly not as hardcore or bloody as I was expecting it to be, and it wasn't even all that disturbing. Okay, that one shot of what Mary did to Dr. Grant definitely got a little yelp of shock out of me but everything else was presented in a much more emotional way, rather than a shock you way. I liked that. The rape scene is even dealt with in such a way - it's in-your-face and it's emotionally heartbreaking as you can almost watch Mary's humanity and spirit leaving her. The whole movie is strange way to tell the story, for sure, but the Soskas manage to make it work for their purposes and their personalities and I have to give them props for that.

Though I was a little disappointed at the unceremonious end of our anti-hero and in relation the abrupt end to the movie, I still have a good feeling about this movie. It is a no doubt intriguing sophomore effort from these two filmmakers who probably have a few more gems up their sleeves before they are done with us horror fans.