GenXnerd

Remember folks you can listen to the interviews and our thoughts about our Horror Hound experience by clicking play on the player bellow or following this link! Also don’t forget to check out the hundreds of photos we snapped at the show in our Horror Hound Weekend photo gallery.

This was the first Horror Hound convention that I was both aware of and attended and I was impressed from start to finish. We traveled to another horror convention earlier this year and it was half the show Horror Hound turned out to be. Granted the other show is still young and growing and learning HH really seems well-organized and had nice execution. I really like how they screened their films and laid out the show spread around the east side Marriott. Greymattersplat and I were both granted press passes and we walked the halls all three days and night. Something at these conventions I will never get use to is almost all of the famous people are right out in the open for the fans to see. There were a couple hidden behind doors but for the most part everyone I wanted to see were approachable.

MuGumBo (Lewis) with Elvira (Cassandra)

Right off the bat when I arrived I noticed Cassandra Peterson’s (Elvira) location and got my picture with her right out-of-the-way. I know she isn’t in her Elvira costume but I don’t care. I honestly liked meeting her out of character and later had the chance to watch her in character during the film awards. We really spent Friday checking out everything and figuring out where everything was located. I found the Dear God No guys (James Bickert and Dusty Booze) and helped to lighten their cooler for a bit. While checking out the exhibit room we found the Dead Weight guys (Adam Bartlett and John Pata) and discussed their film for a few minutes and decided to pick it up with the special edition cover. It was at this point we made a mental note to not miss the screening of their film.

Before the Dead Weight screening was a short film by the name of Burn and Mike and I showed up early enough to catch it. It might have been right at about 5 minutes long but that was enough to have a “holy shit” moment. The short was created by Hunter Perschbacher and it is a story derived from an OLD joke that has floated around in many versions for decades. Basically father tries to teach a boy messing with his daughter a lesson and puts penis in a vice. He pulls out a knife and the boy asks the father if he is going to cut his penis off and the father says “no you are” as he sets the garage on fire. Now normally it would be rude for me to spoil a movie/ short like that but it was far from an original idea but it was well done.

So we got comfortable and dug in for the feature film Dead Weight and what a ride it was. Adam Bartlett and John Pata really put together an amazing film and did it without any hook like monsters or crazy FX. What these two guys did was tell a seriously dramatic zombie story without zombies and without known actors. After watching the film we discussed it with the creators and found out the lead actor (Joe Belknap)  had never acted before and was a school teacher by day which was a surprise. Belknap put on an award winning performance and for never acting it blew us away. My guess is Adam and John must have sacrificed a creature to a dark demon to have pulled this film off, and it was worth it.

Immediately following Dead Weight was a new cut of Dear God No and good lord did the extra 5-7 minutes change the dirty factor of the film. Granted this movie already gives you the urge to shower afterwords but this makes you want to do it with Lava soap. This viewing of Dear God No was probably the last party for James Bickert and the boys since they are moving into filming their new feature film Frankenstein Created Bikers. We look forward to any and everything these guys put together in the future.

So all in all my first Horror Hound adventure was great and I have not touched on every experience we had while in attendance. I plan on writing up some words on the winner of Elvira’s Horror Hunt, FOUND, and a local movie that was released for the first time at HH, Darksyde: Hell Walks the Earth II. I can’t really have an opinion on either of these since I haven’t had the time yet to view the copies I picked up at HH.

If you would like to hear the interviews we did with the creators of Dead Weight, Darksyde: Hell Walks the Earth 2, plus other fun items then check out our podcast Traumatic Cinematic.