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| Images courtesy of HorrorHound and Mike Pfeiffer |
In addition to publishing a horror magazine and podcast, the great folks at HorrorHound put on a killer horror convention usually twice a year. This past weekend, I attended their Indianapolis HorrorHound con which was loaded with great celebrities, vendors, panels and more. Here’s a little rundown on how I tried to fit as much horror con fun as I could in one day.
Indianapolis Convention Center is a sprawling structure with HorrorHound taking up one end. The vendor room included several horror studio/collector edition companies like Synapse, Severin and Troma. It’s cool to see all the great special DVD/Blu-ray packages in person. There are also smaller horror film companies like Rock Bottom Studios with all their movies on display. What makes a con special is being surprised by the unique, handmade paraphernalia for sale. One booth had flannels with large horror patches sewn on. Another had horror movie figurines from Frankenberry to the Fly.
Maskfest is part of the con and has a separate vendor room. If you’re looking for a mask that will have your friends in complete awe this is the place to find it. The room is filled with mark artists that design monster masks of all sorts. Jordan Patton of Deadneck Studios designs his own special masks that also have their own comic book. Fittingly, special effects master Tom Savini had his booth here, where you could easily walk up to him and have a conversation about his time on the Prowler set (my favorite Savini special effects work).
When I need a break from the vendors and crowd, I like to check out the panels where celebrities and artists talk about their life. This is an interesting time for panels, with the Actors and Writers strike, panels cannot talk about upcoming movies. The Skeet Ulrich/Jamie Kennedy panel ended up being one of the best and funniest panels I’ve attended. Each of them spent time in the audience with a mic taking questions and jibes at each other. The other panel I attended was Lauren Laverna and Catherine Corcoran from Terrifier 1 & 2. We got to hear what it was like working with David Howard Thorton as Art the Clown and the long days they spent making the movies.
The horror con community is a great community of like minded fans that take their horror movies seriously but also know how to have a great deal of fun. For many of the guests at HorrorHound that translates to a dedication to cosplay. This year we had Friday the 13th’s Jasons from all the different stages, from the sack to the cracked hockey mask. Seeing new movies inspire cosplay is also a real treat, this year we had several M3GAN cosplayers. It’s the clowns that scare me most, whether its Art the Clown from Terrifier or the zany Clowns from Outer Space. The end of Saturday is celebrated with a cosplay contest. My favorite part was the kid dressed as Halloween’s Dr. Loomis shouting “I shot him six times! I shot him in the heart, but... he's not human!”
A few final shoutouts from the con that I’m going to continue to follow are cosplay host and cosplay extraordinaire, Lady Glamorstein, podcasters: Discover the Horror Podcast, Film Seizure and, of course, the Horror House gang that pour their heart into this con!
- Mike Pfeiffer aka Digital Racket