Two Days of Terror
If you're wondering what that headline means, it means I simply couldn't come up with anything catchier. But I promise it'll make sense in context.
Here in Kentucky, there's an annual horror and paranormal convention known as "The Scarefest." This year marks their fourth year of existence, and since I had so much fun last year, I had to do it again. This time around, it hit the place on Saturday and Sunday to give myself two days to take it all in. I'm hoping to pull the hat trick next year and go all three days, but we'll have to wait and see how things go in 2012. As for 2011, though, I had the time of my life.
The fun actually began on Friday night, with a midnight screening of The Return of the Living Dead. I absolutely love the movie, but I've never actually gotten to see it on the big screen. So after I got off work that night, me and some friends piled into my car and headed up to the Kentucky Theater. And even though I've seen the movie a million times, it was almost a new experience for me. I haven't seen the movie with its original soundtrack in almost 20 years, thanks in large part to the DVD having had some of the dialogue and music altered. But the print played at the theater had the original audio, and it almost felt like a different movie. And although it's a movie I've seen dozens of times, it's one that never gets old for me. I could watch The Return of the Living Dead once or twice a week every week until the day I die and I'd never get sick of it.
But let's get to the actual Scarefest itself, beginning with Saturday. I actually talked my mom into going, if you can believe that. But she really wanted to meet the guys from that Ghost Adventures show on the Travel Channel, so hey, it gave her a reason to go. And while I can't totally speak for her or the friends of mine who I'd met there, I had an absolute ball. I kinda embarassed myself when meeting Zack Galligan from Gremlins, accidentally giving him a $5 bill for his autograph instead of a $20, but outside of that, it went off without a hitch.
There were two parts from Saturday that I think I'll remember for a long time, though. One was seeing my friend Amy meet Lea Thompson. Amy got all starstruck and emotional and stuff as soon as she said hello, and Lea immediately got up, gave her a hug, and told her how happy she was to meet Amy too. That right there really made my appreciation for Lea Thompson go up by about a million percent. And she was a total sweetheart too! That's what I really liked about a lot of the celebrities there, that they all felt like they were really happy to be there and really appreciative of their fans. Seeing them goof around with one another while interacting with the people there to meet them and engaging in a little good-natured heckling of one another made it all the more entertaining to see.
And that ties into the second thing from Saturday I want to remember. They had Q&As, seminars, and movie screenings all weekend, but the only one I had the chance to go to was the Q&A with Felissa Rose and Jonathan Tiersten from the original Sleepaway Camp. It only lasted about an hour, give or take a few minutes, but it was so much fun that I can hardly put it into words. And it was capped off with Tiersten doing an acoustic cover of Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes." I told him later that I wish I'd had a boombox so I could have imitated that iconic scene from Say Anything... while he played the song, which I'm glad he thought was a funny idea. And I'm happy that somebody put videos of it up on YouTube, because I want to watch it again sometime.
I did most of my celebrity meet-and-greets on Saturday, my short conversations with Linnea Quigley, Beverly Randolph, and Ernie Hudson being really fun highlights. So I spent most of Sunday (with both my parents tagging along to boot) visiting the different vendors, trying to see everything I hadn't seen previously. Mainly, I picked up some bootleg DVDs. I could have easily just downloaded them off the Internet and burned them to DVDs myself, but I was caught up in the moment and figured, "Yes, I could use a DVD of The Star Wars Holiday Special." And if I'd had twenty or thirty bucks more, I'd have probably come home with more bootlegs. But hey, there's always next year.
But the best experience of them all? Getting to wear a proton pack from Ghostbusters on Saturday. I've wanted to do that since I was seven years old, and the fact that I finally got to, even if it was only for a second, was a memory that I'm going to hang onto for a very long time.
And yeah, I know I'm not doing a very good job describing my weekend at the Scarefest. But it's one of those things where the phrase "you just had to be there" works. If you're a fan of horror movies or the paranormal, you really should go to the Scarefest next year. I had an absolute ball from start to finish on both Saturday and Sunday. And if you're into this stuff, I'm sure you will too.
Here in Kentucky, there's an annual horror and paranormal convention known as "The Scarefest." This year marks their fourth year of existence, and since I had so much fun last year, I had to do it again. This time around, it hit the place on Saturday and Sunday to give myself two days to take it all in. I'm hoping to pull the hat trick next year and go all three days, but we'll have to wait and see how things go in 2012. As for 2011, though, I had the time of my life.
The fun actually began on Friday night, with a midnight screening of The Return of the Living Dead. I absolutely love the movie, but I've never actually gotten to see it on the big screen. So after I got off work that night, me and some friends piled into my car and headed up to the Kentucky Theater. And even though I've seen the movie a million times, it was almost a new experience for me. I haven't seen the movie with its original soundtrack in almost 20 years, thanks in large part to the DVD having had some of the dialogue and music altered. But the print played at the theater had the original audio, and it almost felt like a different movie. And although it's a movie I've seen dozens of times, it's one that never gets old for me. I could watch The Return of the Living Dead once or twice a week every week until the day I die and I'd never get sick of it.
But let's get to the actual Scarefest itself, beginning with Saturday. I actually talked my mom into going, if you can believe that. But she really wanted to meet the guys from that Ghost Adventures show on the Travel Channel, so hey, it gave her a reason to go. And while I can't totally speak for her or the friends of mine who I'd met there, I had an absolute ball. I kinda embarassed myself when meeting Zack Galligan from Gremlins, accidentally giving him a $5 bill for his autograph instead of a $20, but outside of that, it went off without a hitch.
There were two parts from Saturday that I think I'll remember for a long time, though. One was seeing my friend Amy meet Lea Thompson. Amy got all starstruck and emotional and stuff as soon as she said hello, and Lea immediately got up, gave her a hug, and told her how happy she was to meet Amy too. That right there really made my appreciation for Lea Thompson go up by about a million percent. And she was a total sweetheart too! That's what I really liked about a lot of the celebrities there, that they all felt like they were really happy to be there and really appreciative of their fans. Seeing them goof around with one another while interacting with the people there to meet them and engaging in a little good-natured heckling of one another made it all the more entertaining to see.
And that ties into the second thing from Saturday I want to remember. They had Q&As, seminars, and movie screenings all weekend, but the only one I had the chance to go to was the Q&A with Felissa Rose and Jonathan Tiersten from the original Sleepaway Camp. It only lasted about an hour, give or take a few minutes, but it was so much fun that I can hardly put it into words. And it was capped off with Tiersten doing an acoustic cover of Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes." I told him later that I wish I'd had a boombox so I could have imitated that iconic scene from Say Anything... while he played the song, which I'm glad he thought was a funny idea. And I'm happy that somebody put videos of it up on YouTube, because I want to watch it again sometime.
I did most of my celebrity meet-and-greets on Saturday, my short conversations with Linnea Quigley, Beverly Randolph, and Ernie Hudson being really fun highlights. So I spent most of Sunday (with both my parents tagging along to boot) visiting the different vendors, trying to see everything I hadn't seen previously. Mainly, I picked up some bootleg DVDs. I could have easily just downloaded them off the Internet and burned them to DVDs myself, but I was caught up in the moment and figured, "Yes, I could use a DVD of The Star Wars Holiday Special." And if I'd had twenty or thirty bucks more, I'd have probably come home with more bootlegs. But hey, there's always next year.
But the best experience of them all? Getting to wear a proton pack from Ghostbusters on Saturday. I've wanted to do that since I was seven years old, and the fact that I finally got to, even if it was only for a second, was a memory that I'm going to hang onto for a very long time.
And yeah, I know I'm not doing a very good job describing my weekend at the Scarefest. But it's one of those things where the phrase "you just had to be there" works. If you're a fan of horror movies or the paranormal, you really should go to the Scarefest next year. I had an absolute ball from start to finish on both Saturday and Sunday. And if you're into this stuff, I'm sure you will too.
posted by Matt Sutton at
2:50 PM
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