So long, Conan! Farewell, Frankenstein!

Conan O' Brien stepped down as host of The Tonight Show with grace and wit tonight, and provided a memorably energetic, fun final episode for viewers. It was a bittersweet end to a stupid screw-up by NBC, and a fine farewell to his fans.

I'll miss him. No past host of any late night talk show has been red-haired AND featured Frankenstein as a recurring character! And no future host is ever likely to be a fellow "carrot-top" and Frankie fan!

Frankenstein (actually, his Monster, of course) would usually appear in a repeat bit called Frankenstein Wastes a Minute of Our Time. Frankie was enthusiastically played by comedy writer Brian Stack as a big smiling man-child with a childlike fascination with trivial things around him. (Hey--that kinda describes me and my blog!)

Stack describes the creation of the repeating bit in this video round table of comedy writers. He also relates a funny encounter while in the monster makeup with legendary news anchor Walter Cronkite!

Image source here.

Image source here.

This bottom pic of Stack as the Monster comes from "The Ten Greatest Conan O'Brien Characters of All Time" at the site Manofest.com. On the same page you can watch one of the Frankenstein Wastes a Minute of Our Time segments from O'Brien's earlier program, Late Night With Conan O'Brien.

As Conan mockingly says in the clip about the show (and it applies to his Tonight Show as well), "When you got Frankenstein, you know you got the goods." How right you were, Conan!

Thanks for all the laughs, Conan. Good luck to you and all your writers and staff.

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Related Link: A podcast of Stack discussing his career, and the characters he's played--including Frankenstein--can be heard or downloaded here.

Countdown Day 29: Memories of Making a Monster

Frankensteinia is the internet's premier site for information and commentary on all things related to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. It's the blog of comic artist and writer Pierre Fournier .

Today, with pleasure, I feature a monster reminiscence by Pierre.

Here's a true story about the day Pierre became a monster...
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My Career As a Monster Maker

I was a first generation Monster Kid, hooked on monsters. I was raised on Shock Theater and Famous Monsters magazine, Aurora kits, the whole deal, and I was fascinated with special effects and monster makeups.

I would read up on and study makeup effects. I sent away for Dick Smith’s how-to magazine published by FM’s Warren Publications. I bought collodion and perfected my scar technique. I got some liquid latex, a thick, brownish-red substance with a sickly-sweet smell, and made some decent skullcaps and simple appliances. I even found a way to color the latex by mixing a few drops of it with acrylic paint. I experimented with grease paint, crepe hair and spirit gum.

One day, I found a formula for “plasticine”. Using flour, water, baking soda — I forget the exact recipe — you got a type of dough that could be sculpted, and it would harden as it dried. It wasn’t really any good as a substitute for clay or plasticine, but fooling around with it, I discovered that a freshly mixed batch was sticky enough to apply to your face, and if you worked quickly enough, you could shape it and give yourself a deformed monster face.

It was a lot like the character in Doctor X who slathers goop on his face, mumbling “Synthetic flesssssh!!!”. Best of all, gravity and the heat from your face would cause the false face to droop slowly, as if it was melting!

So one Halloween evening, in my mid-teens, I was hanging out with two pals and we decided to pull a joke on a friend of ours. I mixed a batch of goop and slapped it on. I remember my pals reacting wildly to my appearance. The mixture was a dull white, giving me a puffed, deathly pale complexion, and it sagged slowly, right on cue, turning me into The Boy With The Melting Face. I completed the effect with a pair of thick white gardening gloves. I stuffed some cotton into the fingers giving myself big knobby knuckles.

We headed out, using the back alleys, staying away from the busy sidewalks, and we walked a couple of block to our friend’s place. When he answered the doorbell, my pals stepped aside, revealing me, standing in the moonlight. Our friend was properly startled, as planned, we all had a laugh about it, and then we headed back to the apartment so I could pull the stuff off. That’s when it got interesting…

Cutting back through the alleyway, there was a garbage truck making the rounds. Just as we walked by, a garbage man came around the truck and face to face with me. It was very dark and there I was, a kid with a pale, bloated, melting face. The man froze, his eyes bulged, his knees buckled, and he literally jumped back, swearing loudly. I just kept going and, as we walked away, we could hear the guy jabbering excitedly with his partner. “Did you see THAT?? Did you see HIS FACE? It’s a monster!” he said. “A MONSTER!!!”

We got home and before I pulled the stuff off and washed my face, I got a good look at myself in a mirror and, yeah, it was better than I had hoped for. My “face” was sickly and swollen, with droopy eyes, something like Leo G. Carroll in TARANTULA. Boy, it was really nasty looking.

And that was my career as a Monster Maker. Years later, some of what I had learned was useful when I fell for a season with a professional theatrical troupe, building props and helping with wigs. Eventually, I gave away my makeup books and I went into illustration and comics.

My career as a Monster Maker may have been a short one, but I like to think it was successful. I know it was. I had scared an adult!
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THE LANDLORD: Nice view, low rent!

I recently got a screener of an indie horror-comedy titled The Landlord from writer/director Emil Hyde, and the Voodoo Queen and I watched it and laughed. We liked it.

But it's "low rent" alright. As described at The Landlord website, it was shot for less than what Hollywood films "spend on catering." (They seem proud of this.) The low budget shows; before I get to the good stuff, gotta say what was disappointing to me.

The film has some very rough edges. The sound quality varies a lot. (Update, March 23 2010: Much of the sound has since been relooped or otherwise tweaked, and the editing tightened.) The makeup applications look amateurish; the special makeups seem to be costume shop Woochie pre-mades, and the pancake makeup is not evenly applied. And some of the actors are adequate at best, and amateurish at worst. Specifically, the nebbishy lead character of Tyler, as played by Derek Dziak, has no charm or charisma, IMHO. Under-played by Dziak, he's not interesting, pitiful, or even annoying enough to get you rooting for his destruction. You don't care at all what happens to him. Dziak is a talented musician and vocalist for the band Mystechs, but not yet a skilled actor. (He probably didn't have to audition. His bandmate Emil Hyde is The Landlord's writer and director.)

Okay, before I say what I valued in the movie, a time-out for a synopsis. Here's a spoiler-free one from the website:

"The Landlord is the story of Tyler, the unfortunate young owner of a demon-haunted apartment building. Finding tenants has never been a problem for Tyler, though he does have trouble keeping them alive to pay rent. No matter how nicely Tyler asks the demons not to eat the renters (or to at least wait a month or two), they never listen. And why should they? As far as the demons are concerned, humans are merely dumb, tasty animals - kinda like chickens - and Tyler is their pet monkey.

"But all that might change when Tyler takes a liking to the newest tenant, a desperate young woman running from demons of her own…"

I did like the film, though, and I do recommend it. You'll laugh! It has two really fine comedic performances-- one by Rom Barkhordar, as the flesh-eating demon Rabisu, and the other by Michelle Courvais, as Tyler's sister Amy, a corrupt cop with anger issues. These two are the heart of the film's charm. Barkhordar is an actor and voice artist with professional TV and videogame credits; Courvais is an actress in Chicago. Both belong in Hollywood. (Courvais is also a very sexy and attractive woman; she has one heavy make-out scene in a cop car that made me wish the movie was an interactive video game! GrrrOOwwrr!!)

The script is funny and inventive. The laughs, such as in a scene set in a pro-life counseling clinic, are even daring and edgy. Emil Hyde creates some memorable characters with Rabisu, Amy, and Donna, a woman running from an abusive relationship, who becomes Tyler's love interest. (The demons take an interest in her as a food source.) And not only are their demons in the film, but a new kind of monster that seems to be a cross between flesh-eating zombies and fanged, daylight-shunning vampires.*

The special visual effects are fine, and there's gore for the gorehounds.

Trailers for the film can be seen here.

* Update: Emil Hyde writes to say about the monsters, "They're actually vampires as they were originally portrayed in Romanian folk tales, before Bram Stoker reinvented them as a dapper, upper-class gigolos. In the old stories, they weren't afraid of sunlight (though they were nocturnal and would be all sleepy and sluggish during the day), had a mouth full of rotten teeth (not just two little fangs), and would get all red and bloated when they were full of blood, like a tick. Basically, they were more symbolic of gluttony, while modern vampires are symbolic of lust."

Expired clowns, Verne Langdon, and Me: Part Two

Below is the "expired clown"* who was most on my mind when recently I contemplated how much the image of clowns has changed since I was a kid. I blame news and photos of John Wayne Gacy with having the most negative impact on how we think of clowns.



This face, with its angular makeup design (you could describe it as sharp-edged), and bald head with no visible ears, was seen by millions of TV news viewers in 1978-- the year of his arrest-- and again in 1994, the year of his execution. No wonder today people see clowns as creepy with this murderous buffoon becoming so widely infamous.

In a phone conversation with Verne Langdon (a Hollywood makeup artist for many years, distantly related to silent film "clown" Harry Langdon), I asked him if he felt the same way. He didn't agree entirely, but felt Gacy "did have an impact." He also identified "lipstick clowns" as part of the problem. The term, he said, was one used by professional clowns to refer to the amateur who wears a banal (or worse) makeup design and performs at children's birthday parties, parades, charity events, mall openings, etc. (The kind that typically wear cheap "rainbow 'fro" wigs.) "Typically, they're dentists, attorneys, businessmen, with little understanding of the true Clowning Art - including makeup. They won't shave their mustache or and beard, but try instead to work it into their character's makeup" said Langdon, and generally look disappointing, as compared to "the professional career clowns of yesteryear who worked for circuses." The lack of performing talent is a problem for some of these clown wannabes, who rely too much on looking like what they think a clown should look like and acting silly. "Generally speaking, the makeup isn't funny, it's the face underneath making expressions that make clown makeups work," he said. "Too many real clowns are gone. It's a hand-me-down profession that just dried up and blew away."

He pointed out that the lipstick or party clowns are seen close-up, and that can be frightening to a small child. Professional circus clowns don't pick up kids or get right in their face; "kids judged those clowns from a distance as they performed, usually," he said. He recalled a photo-op picture of Liza Minneli as a small child looking "apprehensive and terribly concerned" while being held by Pinto Colvig in his original Bozo the Capitol Clown makeup. And Minnelli would have been used to seeing adults wearing makeup and costumes. A clown's appearance is so out-of-the-ordinary it can be frighteningly weird to a child, much like Santa can be.

Of course, it probably didn't help the clowning profession that the world's most famous clown for the last 40 years is this guy, a shill for junk food:


Of course, I refer to the clown on the right. (From the look on their faces, I'd say both of them were getting super-sized.)

Some photos of truly bad lipstick clowns can be seen here, here, and here.

Langdon said he was less concerned in the way clowns are perceived than in the way circuses are perceived. He longs to see them under canvases again, and with elephants, whom he adamantly insists are not mistreated as PETA, primarily, claims.

But such grand entertainment like an old-fashioned circus is fading, because, Langdon says, "we're a fast-food society, in a hurry. We demand things right now and again in an hour."

I asked about how he got interested in clowns and clowning. He said he was fascinated with clowns from seeing his first circus when he was five. So it was only natural that as a boy of eleven he'd be pulled out of school one day by his father and mother and taken to the Ringling Bros./Barnum and Bailey circus, to watch them unload and see the Big Top go up, and meet the clowns before the matinee. That day he met famed Ringling veteran clowns Felix Adler and Emmett Kelly, who invited him to watch them make up for the show.

Not long after, when visiting Polack Bros. Circus with his mother, young Verne met the famed "picture clown" Harry Dann. Fascinated by Dann's meticulously-detailed, classic makeup, Verne asked the performer if he could touch it. Dann gave permission, and when the young Verne felt the clown's powdered face, he was amazed that the makeup felt dry and didn't smear. Like it was real. And there was green eyeshadow in the clown's makeup design, something never seen then, because most formulations for green greasepaint were toxic.

Verne was so fascinated with clown makeup and clowning that Dann invited him to hang around backstage in "clown alley" and observe the clowns applying their makeup and working in the show. Verne was encouraged to return as often as he liked; he was welcomed because of his interest and the fact he was quiet and stayed out of everyone's way. The clowns liked and therefore befriended him. As an adult in the 1970s, Verne dabbled in circus clowning himself, performing with the Dewayne Bros. Circus and the famous Ringling Bros./Barnum and Bailey Circus.

Eventually, things came full circle while he worked as a clown. A kid who was fascinated by Verne's makeup approached Verne and asked if he could touch it. "The youngster was amazed my makeup was dry and didn't smear! That gave me goose bumps as I recalled my first meeting so many years before with my circus pal Harry Dann."

Speaking of things that cause goose bumps, the fear of clowns is a real disorder, known as coulrophobia. From a National Geographic documentary comes this clip profiling a woman suffering from severe coulrophobia.

Below are two pictures of Verne Langdon from his days as a professional circus clown. The first is a publicity photo for the Dewayne Bros. Circus, the bottom one is from his time at Ringling Bros. & Barnum and Bailey. Standing next to him is Mark Anthony.


Personally, I love clowns. Used to watch Bob Keeshan, Marcel Marceau, and Red Skeleton clowning on TV when I was a kid-- also dressed and made myself up as a hobo clown back then to entertain my baby sister. But if you're a clown bigot (the last acceptable prejudice ;^P ), you'll want to read this funny essay by a clown-hating young woman .

I'll close with a clown joke:

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One asks the other why it took so long to fix supper. The other cannibal replies, "Have you ever tried to clean a clown?"

Recommended website: PAT CASHIN'S CLOWN ALLEY.NET

* I like the term-- it sounds like a clown that is past its freshness point and is turning sour.

Expired clowns, Verne Langdon, and Me: Part One

These faces are the images people associate with clowns today. But it wasn't always so.

Clowns and the macabre have been on my mind for quite some time this year -- and not just because there are political campaigns going on right now! Obituaries of some famous clowns have appeared this year, the most famous of which was Larry Harmon, the man who popularized the character "Bozo." (A clown I watched a lot as a kid.) Harmon had gained notoriety in 2004 when the International Clown Hall of Fame in Milwaukee took down a plaque honoring him as Bozo. He had never credited the creators of the character, writer Alan W. Livingston and clown/actor Pinto Colvig, the first Bozo.

Harmon died on July 3.

In March, the world's oldest professional circus clown, Joe Vani, (a/k/a "Joe Sherman") passed away; he was loved and respected by other circus clowns. (Just typing that sentence made me think of the words "clown love", a phrase that has me laughing.) His obit (written by Verne Langdon) can be read here. In part, it reads, "Joe liked to recall one of their most popular acts, 'the hot doggie' - a clown steals hot dogs from a clown vendor and gobbles them down, then gets sick and has his stomach pumped by clown doctors and out comes a little dog! The audience cheers, the clowns take their bow and exit, followed by the dog walking on its hind legs."

A funny, though somewhat macabre (or at least weird) bit, but a classic!

If you'd like to buy a Vani t-shirt (one kind seen here, another here) -- send a total of $24.97 to Art Bausman, 2713 California Ave, Kettering OH 45419. All funds will go to the Shrine Hospital for Crippled Children in Tampa, FL. (That was Joe's Vani's wish.) There are only a few left and they are strictly while supplies last, so hurry. (In stock: B&W-- 2 L, 5 XL , 2XXL. Color: 10 XL.)


Finally I've been thinking of the Ringling Bros./Barnum & Bailey clown Harry Deems Dann. I remember seeing, as a kid, books, magazines, and circus posters with his picture on them. And I saw him at a circus performance as a child growing up in the hinterlands of Arkansas. But the celebrity memorial website Find-A-Grave will not allow a bio for Dann to be listed among bios of "famous" people, even though they do for such, uh, household names as clowns Felix B. Adler and Chester Sherman. (Dann is on the right on the book cover seen here.)

This is arbitrary, and sillier than any clown antics under a big top. One of Find-a-Grave's administrators dismissed Dann as worthy of inclusion as "famous", though Dann is mentioned at Wikipedia in three places, and at one entry, is described being among the most "august of the augustes." Also, this dissing dismissal comes in in spite of the fact that Dann is an inductee of the International Clown Hall of Fame, influenced other circus clowns, and when he was alive, was referred to by the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus as "America's Picture Clown," as his circus character had appeared so often in the press.

Guess the Find-A-Grave administrator is a clown, too! He is certainly behaving like a bozo.

You can read Dann's "non-famous person" obit at Find-A-Grave here. Leave a sentiment of respect, or put up a link to the entry at your own website or blog, and maybe Find-A-Grave will reconsider.

I was never afraid of clowns as a kid. I liked 'em for much the same reasons I liked monsters: they were out of the ordinary and odd looking, which of course delighted me.

I talked with former professional clown Verne Langdon about all this not long ago. Coming in Part Two.

Happy Birthday, Jack Pierce!

"Happy Birthday!" to one of the finest makeup men in the history of cinema. He was born on this day in 1899.

Sign an internet petition to get a long-overdue star for Jack Pierce on Hollywood's Walk of Fame at this link:

A Star for Mr. Pierce

R.I.P. makeup artist Monty Westmore

Monty Westmore, 84; member of the legendary family of Hollywood makeup artists

By Dennis McLellan, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 15, 2007

Monty Westmore, a third-generation member of the legendary family of Hollywood makeup artists whose long career included "The Towering Inferno," "Jurassic Park" and "Hook," has died. He was 84.

He amassed more than 100 film credits during his nearly six-decade career and worked closely with Joan Crawford and Paul Newman.

Westmore died Tuesday, Nov. 13, of prostate cancer at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, said Christiana Benson, Westmore's cousin.

In a nearly six-decade career that began at Warner Bros. in the 1940s, Westmore amassed more than 100 film credits, including "3 Women," "Stand By Me," "The Shawshank Redemption," "Se7en," "Star Trek: Insurrection" and "Chaplin" -- as well as doing uncredited work on films such as "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" and "Touch of Evil."

Westmore was Joan Crawford's personal makeup artist during the later part of her career, which included the 1962 film "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?," which also starred Bette Davis.

He also was Paul Newman's favored makeup artist and worked on more than a dozen of the actor's films over three decades, including "The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean," "The Verdict," "Fort Apache, the Bronx," "The Color of Money" and "Message in a Bottle."

"I think once it was announced I was doing a film, it was just automatic that Monty would be doing the makeup," Newman told The Times on Wednesday.

"When working on a film, there is a lot of pressure, and he was so low-key and kind of slipped underneath all that aggravation and everything," Newman said. "It was very comforting to have him around. He will be sorely missed."

Westmore's long career also included serving as the makeup artist for the last seven years of "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet," the classic TV sitcom that ran from 1952 to 1966.

In 1992, Westmore shared an Academy Award nomination for best makeup for his work on the Steven Spielberg-directed film "Hook."

He also shared Emmy Award nominations for outstanding achievement in makeup for the 1983 TV movie "Who Will Love My Children?" and for the 1996 TV movie "The Late Shift."

His last screen credit was as one of the makeup artists on the 2000 film "How the Grinch Stole Christmas."

The same year, a teary Westmore received a standing ovation when he accepted the George Westmore Lifetime Achievement Award at the inaugural Hollywood Makeup Artist and Hair Stylist Guild Awards.

The award is named after Westmore's grandfather, who opened the first small makeup department at a motion picture studio -- Selig Studios in Los Angeles -- in 1917. He later became head of the makeup department at MGM.

In an interview with Daily Variety a week before receiving the award, Monty Westmore shared a few memories of his nearly 10 years working with Crawford.

Because the legendary actress preferred to do her own makeup, it was Westmore's job to lay out her makeup supplies and curl six pairs of her false eyelashes each morning before filming began.

"She was wonderful at gluing them on herself, and when you watch her pictures, you see how expressive her eyes looked," he said.

In addition to carrying Crawford's makeup to the set, Westmore also carried another of her essentials: a cooler containing vodka and ice.

"She would always ask for a 'drink of water,' but I never once saw her out of control," he recalled. In fact, "she always tried to get a director tipsy when she wanted the script changed."

Zombie Fest 2007

Because our camera was stolen at the event, the planned post on the Zombie Fest weekend Jane and I attended was postponed. But a few pics were taken on a cheaper camera, and some people since then have been kind enough to forward some photos to me, so...

Here's the cover of the program for the event:

Many vendors were at the event, including the folks behind Monster Mini-Golf, (which I reported on on August 1), people selling comics, CDs, DVDs, games, art, and clothing, and more. Authors on zombie films, actors from the Living Dead movies and others, and other odd folk (I mean that in a nice way) were on hand to be seen and to talk to fans, and a makeup demo was held as well.

The weekend included a Saturday night ball where four bands played. Opening the sets were one of my favorite groups, The Ubangis, fronted by Brian Horrorwitz, owner of Trash Palace. (See TP in my links.) They were followed by Forbidden 5, the (nearly) all grrl band, Motorpsychos, and the headliners, Deathmobile. All put on a good show.

Here's Jane and I as we appeared at the Ball (I was wearing my life-like prosthetic robot body for the occasion):

Here are pics of The Ubangis performing at the Ball (shared with me by Brian H., but taken from a Flickr set by Ubangi's fan "j.buck".) They were introduced by Bill Hinsman, the cemetery ghoul from the original NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.


More pics from the weekend, including the Zombie Walk, a shuffling trek across the Monroeville Mall, where George Romero filmed the first "Dawn of the Dead" in 1977. The walk (which raised canned good donations for the local food bank) had a record-setting 1124 zombies!

(Looking around on the Net I find on the home page for the Zombie Walk I now find out that the organizers didn't want pictures taken. They didn't mention or post that rule at the event! Oh well... my bad. Lots of folks took pics, and am I glad!)

At the Zombie Ball, one zombie man got onstage and proposed to his zombie gal. We chatted with them-- Glenn and Michele-- and they sent this picture:

[Photo removed Sept. 2008 on request.]

Here was one of the witnesses (he traveled the furthest to be there, I think.)

The event had a setup at the Ball where you get your photo taken in a coffin. The Voodoo Queen and I couldn't pass up the opportunity! Sadly, the guy working with the digital image before printing it decided to crop it very closely, so you can't see the whole casket. Still, what a marvelous souvenir:

I covered up my exposed brain for the official photo, of course. I do have some propriety.

Some folks at the Ball were friendlier than I expected. Sometimes it was just because the free Straub's beer flowed easy, but there was another reason as well. It turned out that a stranger overheard someone who knew me say "That's Max". Word spread that I was Max Brooks, the author of books on zombies, including The Zombie Survival Guide, who was scheduled to appear the next day. I was unaware of the mistaken identification until someone-- a zombie 1950s soda jerk and his bride, a zombie diner waitress-- finally mentioned the book. They had been very friendly. When I said that was not that Max, boy, did the friendliness disappear. (And they had two of the best costumes, too. Sigh.) Instead, I was looked at with what seemed to me to be major disappointment! (On the plus side, it brought back memories of my honeymoon.)

(Just kidding, Jane!)

We saw a zombie bride and groom, a zombie Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Kennedy, and even a zombie Mr. Rogers!

The next morning was the Zombie Walk.


Below is a picture of one of the makeup students from Tom Savini's film makeup school located here in Pittsburgh. She was one of several talented students on hand to do a free makeup for those not wearing any; she did my makeup.


Update, Dec. 2007: Cyle W. was kind enough to send this picture, showing this blog's namesake among several of the talented makeup students who helped make the event successful:

Pictures of the walk's putrifying participants...

Zombies need caffeine as well as brains!

Yes Virginia, Santa Claus is a zombie.

The family that eats brains together stays together...

Above: The most Continental zombie on the Walk. Or perhaps a zombie member of the Collins family?

Below: "Step right up folks and see the living dead!! It'll only cost you one measly cerebrum!"

Then the creepy crawl began...

And here we are...

The sticky makeup blood daubed on my face stained my skin, and for a couple of days at work I looked like I'd gotten a sunburn on parts of my puss.

However, my face was never redder than just before getting the makeup applied. I swallowed a big gulp of coffee-- it was early in the day, and I was jonesin'-- and it started done the wrong pipe. (Coulda short-circuited my robot body!) But instinct kicked in and I found myself spewing it, hitting the shoes of a young kid standing nearby. Is severe embarrassment fatal? I wonder-- I think I almost died from it!

After the Walk, we went back to the Fest proper and spent money like good consumer zombies!

Above is a business check from the George Romero movie MARTIN. Bought it from John Russo because it had a nice, clear signature of Romero and Richard Rubenstein. I had Mr. Russo sign it as well.

I chatted with Mr. Russo a bit, and he was an interesting guy. Direct, candid but polite, and unsentimental. He revealed that he couldn't talk too much because everyone connected with NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD had participated in a 40th anniversary documentary ("One For The Fire") about the classic film, and was under a contract not to give interviews until its release. He did say that some of the films that have most impressed him were THE GODFATHER and THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES. He did add, "But making a list of 'favorites' is a child's game."

I enjoyed him a lot. As I did chatting with Kyra Schon, Bill Hinsman, (NOTLD) and Jarlath Conroy (DAY OF THE DEAD). Mr. Conroy, who is still a working actor, was a funny, charming teller of anecdotes. I hope I see him a lot more in films and on TV.

I also got the autograph of Judith O'Dea on the same Romero business check. That didn't go as well. She was still beautiful nearly forty years after the making of NOTLD, and was polite and cheerful. She talked easily with fans. But apparently not if you asked too many questions! (I asked three or four, and no one else was at her table at the time.) She surprised me by speaking with a decided British accent, so I asked where she was born and raised. She said here in the United States. So I asked if she had spent some time in England. She replied something like "No. What you're hearing is the fact that I've done a lot of English plays. I've always lived and worked here [the U.S.]. " I thought, "Then it's a good thing you never toured in The Miracle Worker when you were a kid!" I asked her about horror movies, and she stated she wasn't a fan of them, but was enjoyably scared as a kid by THE WOLF MAN and CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON. Then she mentioned the contractual obligation not to give interviews and said "I think I've talked to you quite enough." I slunk away, embarrassed. (You oughtta see a drunken severed head slink sometime. Jane tells me it's quite a sight.)

Back to the Zombie Fest photos!

Below: "Saucy Randy" of The Ubangis tends to Brian Horrorwitz's zombie dog Bella.

Now here's a heartwarming photo-- an insane Ubangi with his hypnotized zombie pooch waiting to fed upon by zombie Bill Hinsman!

Another hallmark moment:

And here's two surprising celebrities on hand: zombie Supergirl and zombie Superman, killed by glowing kryptonite!