TEXAS FRIGHTMARE WEEKEND 2016: Day One

Texas Frightmare Weekend 2016 was absolutely amazing, my fellow horror fiends, and I cannot wait any longer to tell you all about it! So let's just jump right in and talk about all the awesome that this past weekend had in store for me.

The show ran from Friday, April 29 to Sunday, May 1, but my weekend really began on Thursday night. I got to the hotel, and then later on that night, I met up with three of my online horror friends who I was seeing in person for the first time. Joseph, David, and Shaddai are Dallas natives who run a podcast called Cinefreak Critique, and I've actually been a guest on that show twice now (on the first show, we talked about Diabolique, and on the most recent show, we talked about Sleepaway Camp 2). They picked me up from the hotel and took me out dinner at this amazing place where we had the best burgers and sweet potato fries (marshmallow fluff dip, holy shit). It was so cool to finally meet them all face-to-face and we got on like we'd been friends for years.

But of course Friday night was when the awesome really began. I had again purchased a VIP ticket for the show, so I headed down into the main room to pick up my wristband and goodies. Here's what was inside my VIP bag:

Official TFW Day of the Dead inspired program.

Bub artwork.

Lots of movies!

TFW koozie and a Scream (TV show) cell phone cleaner pad.

Random goodies and magazines.



Official TFW t-shirt, and a shirt from Arrow Video promoting their
American Horror Project releases.

 

When the show actually started and we got to head into the rooms, I honestly spent much of my time just wandering around and feeling totally overwhelmed! This was my fourth year at Texas Frightmare Weekend, but I really didn't have much of a plan this time of what I wanted to do or what order I wanted to meet people. The first thing I ended up doing was meet up with a previous TFW friend Chris (who actually took me to Wal-Mart earlier that day - thanks again!), and we hung around the Full Moon table. Chris had a great Puppet Master record that he wanted Charles Band to sign, so we waited for our moment. We both had a great chat with Band all about Puppet Master and other Full Moon awesomeness, but unfortunately did not get a picture with him.

 

Actually, we had a wait a bit to talk to Band because he was chatting with TFW founder and showrunner, Loyd Cryer. I had met Loyd last year and got to thank him for what an amazing show he puts on every year, but for some reason I didn't ask for a picture then! I had a goal to catch Loyd sometime this weekend to remedy that, and was so happy that I got him first thing on Friday night.

 

 

After this and doing some laps around both of the rooms to take everything in, I was finally ready to get that first meeting under my belt. Since I had my Chucky doll with me and was wearing my Child's Play 2 t-shirt, I knew the first one had to be Mr. Gerrit Graham, who played Andy Barclay's foster father Phil in CP2 (he was also in Chopping Mall, hell yeah!). This guy was great, so high-spirited and engaging, and what he wrote on my picture was exactly what I was hoping he was going to write! And so I have added another awesome picture and autograph to my collection of Child's Play people! Yes!

 

 

Around this time, I caught a picture of a hilarious Dinosaur Freddy cosplay...

 

 

...and another great cosplay from one of absolute favorite movies, Carrie.

 

 

One big thing that I had to get done that night was my professional photo op with Robert Englund. You guys. ROBERT ENGLUND. I didn't actually meet him at his table until Sunday, but he wasn't doing photos at his table for the show (probably because they knew he was going to be crazy busy) so I couldn't pass up this opportunity. While waiting in line, I saw some of the pictures that other people were coming out of the room with, and was unbelievably excited to find out that he was wearing the Freddy glove for the pictures! One guy was like, "You're going to love it, he's having so much fun in there!" And it was definitely true. Robert was rocking the glove, putting each person in a different pose for their pictures, and just really getting into it and giving everyone a great experience. I love, love, love how the picture turned out! This shit is getting framed for sure.

 



 

I met up with Joseph, David, and Shaddai again as they were covering the show for their podcast and we spent some time enjoying the show, until I suddenly ran into my long-time TFW friend, Acacia! I met Acacia and her sister Heather at my very first Frightmare and we see each other every year, and hang out with each other as much as possible while we're at the show. I seriously love these chicks, they're so wonderful.

 

Now, I had changed into my Pet Sematary shirt (and put the Chucky doll away) because of the next person I wanted to meet, and that's where I was heading when I met Acacia. But while we were catching up, he left his table and I thought that I would have to get him later. Luckily, though, he was only gone for a bit and came back after about an hour, so now it was time to meet... Miko Hughes! Miko was of course Gage Creed in Pet Sematary and also Dylan in Wes Craven's New Nightmare, two more of my favorite movies ever, so I was ridiculously excited to meet him. The guy meeting him in front of us actually had a pretty badass Pet Sematary tattoo with Gage on it, and Miko loved it. When it was my turn, I couldn't decide which picture for him to sign and asked him which one was his favorite and he jokingly said none of them. I finally decided on the one below, and he was like, "That's actually my favorite one, I was testing you." So cute. I told him how great it was to meet him and that those two movies were so important to me. We also talked about the upcoming Pet Sematary documentary, which I cannot wait to see. Miko was so sweet, and when I asked for a hug, he hugged me back like he really meant it. Amazing guy!

 

 

The convention was over for the night shortly after this, but I still had the annual Friday Night Party to go to! The theme this year was for Halloween II, so the MC and other people were dressed up like doctors and nurses, and there was a cool hospital backdrop in the room where people could take pictures. I ran into another old TFW friend at the party and he ended up being my dance partner for the night, which started with the whole room singing "Bohemian Rhapsody." Then there was lots of dancing, a costume contest with some even more amazing and fun cosplays, and I got a picture with the winner! Great idea for a cosplay from Dream Warriors!

 

 

At about 2 o'clock in the morning, I had to call it quits because Saturday is the craziest day of the convention and I knew I needed to get at least some sleep! Everything I got to experience so far had been so amazing, but the best was still yet to come in the next two days! Stay tuned for more awesome!

 

Franchise Review: Puppet Master (1989)

 

I have sometimes suffered greatly for this little blog. I put my faith in the Wishmaster series, only to be thoroughly crushed with each inept installment. I slogged through all of the Howling sequels - though that was sometimes fun. And now I will attempt to tackle another series that I am not quite familiar with: Puppet Master! I picked up a DVD pack with all the films (except the last one) for just 99 cents at my last convention, so hopefully the only thing I will be wasting is time if they end up sucking.

The first film opens with the Puppet Master himself, Andre Toulon hiding away his puppets in the wall of a hotel before two assassins can get to him. Why they are there to assassinate him is never really explained, but he ends up killing himself first anyway. I found out later that they were Nazis, which opens a whole other bag of questions that I hope gets explained later on... Anyway, in the present day, a group of psychics gather at the hotel and are one by one slaughtered by the puppets, who are controlled by a colleague of theirs who discovered Toulon's secret for eternal life.

I'm sure that I've seen at least one of the Puppet Master films... or perhaps it was the Demonic Toys crossover film... Either way, you're going to have bear with me as I go through these films, because I've not seen them before, and I've heard that the timeline of the series is all kinds of jumbled up. So far, my impression of this first film is not really that great.

The main thing is that the movie is quite boring. I don't recall any of the Puppet Master films ever being described as overly gory or anything like that, but one would think that movies with puppets who are alive would be a bit more entertaining than this. It takes the movie almost a good thirty minutes to get to what is really the meat of the plot with all the psychics and stuff. I did actually like this part of the story - that all these people had similar, yet different, gifts that bonded them together. This is what makes them targets of their colleague, Neil Gallagher, so that he will be the only one who knows Toulon's secret magic. Apparently, he wants Toulon's puppets to kill them all because they will be able to read his mind - even though none of them have gotten any kind of inkling of his plan thus far. It's a shaky plot point at best, but let's just go with it because we have to.

At the very least, Puppet Master can boast that it is the film that introduces some very interesting and deadly little toys to audiences. The leader of the pack is Blade, the white-faced, black trench coat wearing puppet with a hook for one hand and a knife for the other. Barbie's worst nightmare is Leech Woman, a sweet little female doll who is able to vomit up huge leeches out of her mouth. Jester is the puppet that Toulon is working on at the beginning of the film, although he apparently doesn't get his actual jester hat until later. Pinhead (not that one) is an interesting little dude with a tiny head and huge, human-sized hands, and Tunneler has a large cone-shaped drill coming out the top of his head. There are a couple others that are not featured as much, so maybe we'll get to see them in future installments.

The film rightly has a dose of comedy in it, but it is careful about not going too far. There are a lot of exaggerated or comedic sound effects having to do with the puppets and the sounds they make. None of them actually talk, but they do make funny little grunting and squeaking noises - plus there was that part where the little "plop" sound effect was used when Pinhead's head was removed. The deaths that the puppets inflict are equally gross and funny, too, so that keeps up the comedic undertone. But that's sadly the only thing interesting about any of the death scenes, because they are pretty tame, and most of them are not even shown.

As for the human characters who are the victims of these boring deaths... well, they suck. They're all either really annoying or really uninteresting, and the acting isn't that much better either. And since no one would watch a Puppet Master movie for the riveting character drama anyway, we can just leave it at that.

It's not a particularly stellar start to the Puppet Master series, but I do still have hope that these pint-sized freaks will eventually bring me something truly entertaining in future installments. One down, nine to go... let's do this!