Texas Frightmare Weekend 2014: Day Two

 

Saturday always seems to be the best day of this convention just because it's the longest and the craziest, with the most going on throughout the day with panels and movie screenings. I ran into my Tobin Bell line buddy Ryan again while we were waiting for the doors to open, and we talked about what our plans were for the day. I didn't even get a chance to see the other room the night before so I did a quick lap before getting in any more lines to scope things out. Ahhh! So much to see and do!

 

I stuck with my must-meet list as it stood and got in line to meet the badass T-1000, Robert Patrick! I have always loved this dude - his voice and face have always made him a stand-out in whatever role he's in. While I was close to meeting him in line, Scott Wilson came over to say hi to him and some lucky girl got to have both Scott and Robert in a picture with her. Jealous.

 

 

As a big fan of his and of Sons of Anarchy, I had to ask Robert if he was coming back for the last season of the show (he is!) and he started telling me about all the other TV stuff he's involved with. This guy is going to be all over the place - he mentioned True Blood (which I, um, have never watched... sorry, Robert), the From Dusk Till Dawn series and one other new one that I forget the name of. He sounded excited and was just such a cool guy to be around. I put my arm around his beefy manliness and got a great picture with him. Another great meeting!

 

 

 

As I'm walking around, I come to a dead stop at one of the vendor tables when I see that on the wall they have a freaking Battle Royale t-shirt. Gimme, gimme, gimme! Never seen a Battle Royale shirt before so this was a definite must have.

 

 

Then at another table I want this House on Haunted Hill (original) shirt that I see, but they don't have my size so I get this bitching Carrie one instead. 

 

In the corner of the same room is John Kassir, the talented and hilarious voice of the Cryptkeeper from Tales from the Crypt. Every once in a while, John would get on the microphone in the Cryptkeeper voice and laugh and say some of his cheesy puns - "Come on over here, we're DYING to meet you!" - which made me laugh every single time because I absolutely LOVE the Cryptkeeper.

 

 

BUT, just before I'm about to get in line to meet John, I randomly run into someone else I was looking forward to meeting. I have good online relationships with a couple of different horror authors because I've reviewed some of the books they've sent me, and one of those authors is Texas-based Brian Moreland. I loved his books Dead of Winter and Shadows in the Mist. I mentioned how I wished he had a table at the convention that year so that I could get an actual physical copy of one of his books (I've only read PDF versions thus far) and he actually runs out to his car to get me a copy of his most recent book, The Devil's Woods. Awesome! We talked more about the convention and his upcoming works. Very cool to finally meet him in person!

 

 

Also, we noticed that nearby where we were standing were these Nazi zombie life-sized statue things that look like they came straight out of one of his books, so we had to take pictures with them.

 

Cryptkeeper time! Stoked to meet John Kassir, and I tell him that practically the whole week before the convention I'd been watching Tales from the Crypt episodes to get pumped up for the event, and that makes him happy. Also mentioned how last year they had the Cryptkeeper doll at the FearNet table and how cool it was that he was there this year. He signs my picture "To Michele, My Ghoulfriend" (HAHAHAHAHA) and for his pictures with fans he has this cutout of the Cryptkeeper's head on a stick to hold up. While we're posing, John starts giggling like the Cryptkeeper in my ear and I can barely hold in my laughter to get a good picture! Seriously, love love love this guy!

 

 

 

I got lucky with my ticket purchase this year and was able to get a Premium Pass, which not only got me into all three days of the convention, but also got me the opportunity to use a line skip on two celebrities. I had to be a dick and use one of them for Scott Wilson, my beloved Hershel from The Walking Dead, and Eugene from Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon. Oh my goodness, what a doll. I told him that it was the saddest day on the show when he left and we talked about the possibility of the Behind the Mask sequel or prequel. We take our picture and I say thank you before trying to leave and let him get to the rest of the people in his line, but he won't let me leave without a hug! Ah, such a sweetheart.

 

 

 

 

Did I also mention how excited I was that he still had the beard and hair? He looks so good with it!

 

There were some pretty great costumes this year, including a group of Terminator and T-1000 guys to celebrate the reunion...

 

 

...and a very cool chick donning some sort of feminized version of Jigsaw's puppet.

 

 

Wow. Talk about bad angles.

 

Anyway, I had planned on meeting Linda Blair, which would have been awesome but I decided against it and just managed to get a sneaky pic before I was shooed away.

 

 

Last year there was this one booth with some amazing paintings, but I didn't get to meet the artist. Well, he was back this year with some equally great paintings covering all different kinds of horror movies, TV shows, and general horror icons. Look at this stuff! This guy is really talented, I almost felt bad for not buying any of his paintings. Couldn't bring them home, sorry!

 

 















 

I sadly only made it to two panels this year, and consequently they were back-to-back. First up was the Night of the Demons reunion panel with stars Linnea Quigley and Amelia Kinkade and director Kevin Tenney, with moderator Kristy Jett. Lots of great stories from all of these guys about the overall making of the movie, how the shot with the broken mirror was accomplished, what it was like for the actors to work with the prosthetics and makeup, and antics behind the scenes. Since I didn't meet any of these guys either, this was such a great panel to go to!

 

 

 

 

Right after this panel was one with just Scott Wilson (again moderated by Kristy Jett) where he of course talked about his career, In Cold Blood, Behind the Mask, and The Walking Dead. I just loved his attitude all weekend - he seemed to be having a really good time and genuinely enjoyed meeting and talking to his fans. I got to ask him the last question of the panel, which was about who on The Walking Dead would replace him as the sort of moral compass or conscience for the people left on the show. His response? Lil' Asskicker. So sad I'm not going to be able to see him on TWD every week now! Love this guy.

 

 

 

Soon after this panel I head toward Cenobyte Row, where they were having a Hellraiser reunion with Barbie Wilde, Nicholas Vince, and Doug Bradley. And who should already be in Doug's line but my friends from last year, Heather and Acacia! I saw Acacia for a little bit on Friday but it was so good to run into some friends after being on my own for most of the past two days. We hung out with each other while we all got the autographs we needed and caught up a little bit on the last year. Yea for convention friends, that's all I gotta say!

 

Did I mention that I met Doug Bradley, Mister Pinhead himself? Yes, I did! Hellraiser has always been a huge favorite of mine and there was no way I was passing this opportunity up. In hindsight, I guess I should have gotten autographs from all the Cenobytes but I was trying to hold onto my money at this point. No matter, I still got to tell Doug about my admiration of him and his voice in Hellraiser and I got a great picture of him signed!

 

 

I hadn't really planned on going to any of the movie screenings this year because I wasn't sure if time would allow, but Heather and Acacia talked me into meeting up with them later to catch the Spanish comedy flick, Witching and Bitching (Spanish title: "Las Brugas de Zugarramurdi," or "The Witches of Zugarramurdi").

 

 

Oh, how I loved this movie. Great comedy, great effects, great acting. The story moves fast and never lets up the momentum and it was completely unlike anything I was expecting. Witching and Bitching - keep this one on your radar, folks!

 

After the screening, I was done for the night. Twelve consecutive hours of awesome is too much even for me. But my goodness, there was still another day left! More stories and celeb meetings! Could it get any better???

 

 

 

Read my Day One recap here!



 

Movie Roundup: All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, Rites of Spring, and Ritual

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane (2006)
Wait, what? That's it? That's the movie people have been waiting some seven-odd years for and are calling a great "throwback" to the classics? I must have missed something because all I saw was something so boring, tedious, and melodramatic that I wonder why they even bothered trying to get the movie a US release date in the first place. It wasn't really worth the wait because this just wasn't my kind of movie. The story is thin and unrelatable, and the characters... man, they couldn't die fast enough, and that's including the ones that are supposed to be all sympathetic and shit. Why do all the boys love Mandy Lane? Why? I don't get it, and I don't get what the whole point of this movie was. It tried to be very arthouse and maybe a bit smarter than other movies with a similar plot, and just doesn't deliver. Some of the kills are deliciously nasty and unexpected, and that was nice but not enough. There's no tension, mostly from the fact that the killer is revealed way too soon and it is way too obvious even before that. The twist? Don't even care. Sorry to any diehard fans of Mandy Lane, but I just wasn't feeling this movie at all.

Rites of Spring (2011)

Though Rites of Spring is quite different and atypical of other horror movies, I quite enjoyed what it had to offer. It deals with two parallel stories happening at the same time - one about a couple deep in debt who decide who kidnap the daughter of a wealthy business man, and one a typical horror story about two girls kidnapped and offered up as sacrifice to some kind of harvest demon. As the stories go on, more is revealed that connects the characters in both of them, and I thought it was interesting to watch this unfold. Rites of Spring is not overly gory or action-filled, but rather it is more of a quiet and methodical approach that is both well shot and acted. One of my new favorites AJ Bowen plays one of the reluctant kidnappers, and I loved his approach to the character - he makes a great opposite to his greedy and sadistic friend who helps them with the deed. The appearance of an actual creature that The Stranger (who kidnaps the girls at the beginning) is sacrificing virgins to was a bit off-putting because I was hoping for a more realistic story, but it's handled in a mature way so it's not too crazy or ridiculous. I also really love the retro look of the poster, which is what first attracted me to the movie, actually. Rites of Spring won't be everyone's favorite, but if you think you'll like something a bit different, I say give this one a chance.

Tales from the Crypt Presents: Ritual (2006)
Ritual is an odd duck of a movie. I only wanted to watch it because it is one of the three films created as a spin-off movie to the Tales from the Crypt series, the others being Demon Knight and Bordello of Blood. Now those two movies are great, but Ritual, first released in internationally in 2002 and not out in the U.S. until 2006, is something entirely different. Mainly, the tone of the movie is all wrong and it doesn't feel like a Tales from the Crypt story at all. We don't even get to see the Cryptkeeper doing his little introduction or anything (at least in the version that I watched) and that was mighty disappointing. The story definitely had the potential to be campy and hilarious like we love from Tales from the Crypt with all the stuff about voodoo, but Ritual was sadly not funny at all. I don't even really know how to categorize it if I had to, maybe as more of a thriller or mystery. Definitely not action because absolutely nothing happens worth talking about. I got excited during the nasty and bloody, albeit hallucinatory, death of the doctor at the beginning, but nothing as cool happened after that and the movie just got more boring instead of better. The characters are all fun and interesting, though, and having competent actors play them does help the movie some. Other than that, Ritual is pretty forgettable and uninteresting.

Movie Review: Bordello of Blood (1996)

Netflix: Hey, Michele. What do you feel like watching today?

Michele: Hard to... concentrate... First horror convention... only 10 days away... Norman Reedus... Chris Sarandon... Heather Langenkamp... Tom Savini... All are so close to me now... Please give me a fun horror movie to... distract me!

Netflix: Ever seen Bordello of Blood?

Michele: Actually... no. But... Tales from the Crypt?... Vampires?... This could work...

Netflix: Just hit play, Michele.

Michele: Okay...

It worked! So, so sorry, guys, but this whole convention thing has gotten me into quite a tizzy as the event draws ever nearer. Of course, Bordello of Blood turned out not to be able to distract me that much, because Netflix failed to inform me that Chris Sarandon is in this movie, too. Teasing motherfucker. Will meet Chris... in 10 days... Jerry Dandridge... Prince Humperdinck... Cannot wait... any longer! ... Okay, I'm back. So anyway - loved Bordello of Blood! As the second full length feature based on the HBO series, Bordello of Blood is a joyous comedy and gorefest with a gungho cast, a fun story, and some really great effects gags.

The story here is that after being awakened from the dead, the mother of all vampires Lilith is back in business, running a house of ill repute secreted away inside a mortuary. Private investigator Rafe Guttman threatens her plans when he visits the bordello looking for the missing brother of a client.

Dennis Miller headlines this show as Rafe - and he plays the role just like he does every other role I've seen him in. He's witty and sarcastic with a dry-as-a-desert sense of humor that you think would get old after a while here. Fortunately, it does not. Miller is hilarious the whole way through, his character's cavalier attitude making the whole situation of vampire prostitutes just as funny as it should be. Angie Everheart as Lilith is also beyond awesome in her role. She is a gore-geous woman who just seems to be having a good time playing the baddest bad bitch in this movie. Yes, every word out of her mouth is some kind of pun or double entendre but she manages to pull (most of) them off without sounding (too) cheesy. Alright, it was often quite cheesy but I didn't mind it so much. Everheart has her comedic moments here and there too, so give her points for that. Erika Eleniak, Corey Feldman, and Prince Humperdinck also all give hilarious performances, though the guy playing the funeral home guy, McCutcheon, was a big favorite of mine.

Right at the beginning of the movie, we are given a wonderful taste of the awesome comedic gore gags to come. Treasure hunter Vincent brings Lilith's dried up corpse back to life by reconnecting the four pieces of her heart and putting it back inside her. As soon as she wakes up, she's hungry for blood and Vincent feeds her his tour guides. She punches her fist through one guy's chest and rips out his heart; squishes another guy's head with her bare hands until his eyes pop out; and does something probably pretty nasty with her tongue to the last guy, even though we don't see it. Later on in the film, there is a cool sunlight-explodes-vampire scene (which includes a weird cameo from Whoopi Goldberg for some reason) and another great death involving Lilith's extendable tongue, another man's heart, and some serious French kissing. Also - holy water squirt guns. Always fun. And Prince Humperdinck looks pretty awesome with one.

Oh, what else to say? Love the stuff with the Cryptkeeper and William Sadler-mummy at the movie's bookends - the Cryptkeeper of course has the best one-liners in the whole thing because, well, delivering extremely bad puns with a delicious cackle is why we all love the Cryptkeeper so much. "She's knows that the best way to a man's heart - is through his rib cage!" So, so bad and yet so awesome at the same time. I also loved the perfect Tales from the Crypt ending that I sadly did not see coming but totally should have. I see now that many critics and reviewers did not like Bordello of Blood so much and that's just bullcrap. No, it's not scary nor is it even a particularly good horror flick but I guess you have to see it for what it is, and I think genre fans are the ones who really get a kick out of it. It's Tales from the Crypt. You shouldn't be expecting any highbrow art in the first place because you won't get it. What you will get, though, is a campy good time, a movie with a real sense of humor about itself that easily makes fun of its own ridiculous situations.

You also have Prince Humperdinck as an Evangelical preacher playing an electric guitar. Seriously, what the hell else do you want from a movie?

Anthology Quest: Tales from the Crypt (1972)

Call me the worst horror fan on the planet, but um, I always thought Tales from the Crypt was just the HBO series... I never knew for the longest time that there was an earlier British movie from the 70s of the same name. A girl needs to know these things, people. I know the series is not based on this movie particularly - they're both based on the EC Comics - but I still think I should have seen this earlier in my horror career, just for reference.

With five separate stories, I don't want to get all windy like I usually do in my reviews. So I'll try to keep it snappy - or as snappy as possible. Which means it probably won't be at all. Anyway,  the movie starts with a group of people taking a tour of some old catacombs or crypts. Five get separated from the main group and end up in a room where they meet a man in a monk's robe (the original "Crypt Keeper"). The strangers are confused about why they are there and the Crypt Keeper tells each of them what happened to them - specifically, how they died and why they deserve to be there.

"...And All Through the House"

This first tale is of course very familiar to me because it is quite popular as an episode of the Tales from the Crypt television series, which I've seen a few times. Now it's time for the original starring Joan Collins as a woman who kills her husband on Christmas Eve - the same night that a killer dressed as Santa Claus has escaped from an asylum. This story is perfectly creepy and cheeky and should be told every year as the horror fan's "'Twas the Night Before Christmas." There's no real explanation for why Joan kills her husband other than money (or why she kills him on Christmas Eve while her daughter is upstairs - harsh, much?) but it makes for a good explanation for why she can't call the police when Evil Santa shows up. I absolutely love that reveal of the daughter ringing the bell through the curtains and saying, "Look, Mommy, it's Santa! I let him in!" The audience is scared of what is going to happen to Joan (and the daughter - seriously, he must have killed the daughter, too, right?) and at the same time thinking that this bitch is getting a good lesson in karma because of her actions. All around wonderful story and wonderfully executed - except for the bad red paint blood when Joan kills her husband. Always hate that.

"Reflection of Death"

The conclusion of this segment made it not so much my favorite, despite some of the smartly shot earlier scenes. Here, a man leaves his wife for a better model and as they are driving together one night, he has a terrible dream of them getting into a car accident, only to wake up and have the accident happen again for real just like in his dream. I liked the bulk of this one simply for the scenes of the man, Carl, wandering around after the dream accident. It's all shot from his perspective and starts to get very strange after people keep running away from him in terror after looking at him. Oooooh, he must look so very disgusting! I can't wait to see it! The reveal of this is nice because in his dream, Carl goes to see his mistress Susan after he's been messed up and she doesn't see him because she was blinded in the accident. Carl sees his reflection in a mirror and screams, which wakes him up from the dream. He doesn't really look like he should after being in a car accident, but more like he had been rotting in the ground for a while - which I guess would go along with what happened in his dream, but I was still a little disappointed. This segment has a lot less shock value and cheekiness than the rest of them. The whole dream-comes-true thing is not that clever but don't worry - the stories get a lot better from here on out!

"Poetic Justice"

James lives in a nice, but snobby, neighborhood where a more eccentric older man, Grimsdyke, is ruining their beautiful facade. James tries to push Grimsdyke away - scaring away the neighbor children from going to hang out with him, taking away his beloved dogs, sending him horrible and mean Valentine cards - until Grimsdyke commits suicide. One year later, though, Grimsdyke can still get his revenge! From the somewhat dull first part of this story, you would never expect that the conclusion would be this awesome. Seeing Peter Cushing crawl out of the ground as a zombie was enough to make me very happy. Cushing's makeup is delightful, all dark eyes and sunken cheeks and gray, nasty skin. Total horror fan giggle scene right there (if that made any sense). Then to top everything off, Grimsdyke's revenge includes him leaving James's heart in a valentine card saying "You were mean and cruel right from the start; Now you really have no" and James's actual heart completes the poem. The reasoning for Grimsdyke coming back to life is flimsily explained by a book on the occult on his desk, but for all this awesomeness, I'm not going to complain. 

"Wish You Were Here"

A classic short story gets an even more horrific treatment in "Wish You Were Here," with very strange but still satisfying results. Inspired by "The Monkey's Paw," and in fact referencing it several times (as if the audience wasn't smart enough to figure out where the idea for the setup came from), this story follows Ralph and Enid, a couple in financial trouble who stupidly try to solve all their problems by using a Chinese figurine that says that it will grant them three wishes. The story is at first very similar to what happens in "The Monkey's Paw," but there is a horrible twist at the end that had me thinking bad thoughts for the rest of the day. Basically, Enid wishes for money but only gets it because Ralph dies. Then she wishes him back to life, and then she wishes him to live forever. Problem is, Ralph apparently is going to live forever as an embalmed corpse and in immense pain because Enid tried to save him by hacking him up with a sword. Quite possibly the worst fate of anybody I've ever seen in a horror movie. The effects work on Ralph's bloodless innards was quite gross, almost worse than if they had been all bloody because it looks so unnatural and disgusting. I really didn't think Ralph was that bad of a guy to deserve this, so that made his fate hurt me all the more. Should have happened to his wife, the greedy bitch. Anyway, liked this one a lot. Not as many iconic or memorable images (except for the bloodless innards) as some of the other stories but still a nice addition to what is already a pretty kick ass anthology movie. The best is yet to come, however(!)...

And because I always like to slip a Buffy, the Vampire Slayer/Angel reference in wherever I can, I'd just like to point out that the guy who plays Charles in the beginning is Roy Dotrice. Dotrice was in a fifth season episode of Angel where he played Roger Wyndam-Price, Wesley's father. You get that little piece of trivia for free. You're welcome.

"Blind Alleys"

Oh my gosh, you guys. I loooooooooved Blind Alleys SO MUCH. Totally the best segment of Tales from the Crypt and the best one to serve as the ending to a very satisfying movie. First of all, I got major excited when I saw Patrick Mcgee, aka the guy I always refer to as the wheelchair guy from A Clockwork Orange. The bushy-eyebrowed, crazy hair man is back in one amazing short story about a cruel superintendent at a home for elderly blind men whose carelessness and neglect ends up costing him big time. Mcgee is the unofficial leader of the other blind men and when one man dies under Major Rogers' supervision, he gets them together to hatch a very deliciously elaborate plan for revenge. Don't ask me how they did it, but the blind guys built a maze for Rogers to traverse from one side of the room to the other - including through a hallway that gets narrower as you go and is lined with razor blades (hell yeah!) - where they eventually release Rogers' beloved dog on him, whom they have been starving for days. Too elaborate to be believable? I DON'T CARE. This short was fantastic, with the acting being really great from all involved - heck, even the dog - and the set up being one of the coolest things I've ever seen in horror flick or revenge tale. Just the anticipation of finding out what the hell those blind guys are doing building stuff (again, don't ask me how they accomplished it) gets the horror mojo flowing, and when Rogers is finally let out into his maze, you've never rooted for the protagonists more! I wanted to actually see this guy's own dog eat him, but sadly, that's mostly left up to the viewer's imagination. Still definitely my favorite! In fact, if I were rank the stories in Tales from the Crypt, it would probably go "Blind Alleys," "...And All Through the House," "Poetic Justice," "Wish You Were Here," and "Reflection of Death." 

What's the whole movie about? Bad people go to hell. Even if your own death was revenge for your bad deeds, the fiery pit of Satan's living room is still the only place you are headed, bub. The Crypt Keeper tells everyone at the end that he didn't really have anything else to tell them and that they're all going to hell - that's pretty mean, but apparently they all deserved it. Watching Tales from the Crypt has made me realize just how much I miss the HBO show and how little I remember of the episodes. As soon as my whole Anthology Quest is over (still have 3 more movies planned for review) I might just have to have to devote every spare minute to watching every single episode of that show. Sounds like it could be a really good time for me!