Wow! Tres freaky! I was going through some of my older stuff and found this one. Eerily enough, it was written exactly ten days before September 11, 2001. My buddy J.R. and I were making nuisances of ourselves at DragonCon 2001 (nothing worse -- or more obnoxious -- than two "good ol' boys" with cameras and beer), and I sent a very brief rundown of day one to some friends of mine. Since I really don't "do" conventions anymore, and I'm rapidly losing my taste for fantasy, horror and sci-fi, taking a look at this piece and seeing "where my head was at" back then is rather an interesting experience for me, if not for the gentle reader. Oh well, what can I say? My blog, my prerogative...
Just got finished with DragonCon, day one. With this being a holiday weekend and the convention in town (along with two games in the same evening) the trains were jam-packed. Still, looking down onto I-85 from the elevated track, it seemed as though we had made the right decision in staying off the road.
The usual array of Klingons and kleevage was on display (see Dave burn through four rolls of film real fast), along with something I hadn't seen before: a guy in a nearly perfect Battlestar Galactica Cylon suit. Lousy show, cool costume.
The "Lara Croft" look seems to be among the favored ones this year. Ouch! And thank Gawd I brought an extra shoe.
"Hey, 'Tripod'! Neat prosthetic limb! What'd ya make it out of?"
"Uh, well, it's a secret, self-inflating compound... "
Got to see Elvira hosting a preview screening of her new movie. Elvira is still built like a masonry lavatory after all these years, BTW. The movie itself was silly, campy and loaded with sight gags and verbal "groaners". At one point after a particularly bad one, her sidekick actually provides a rimshot on a suit of armor... In short, exactly what you'd expect. The title itself is the epitome of lowbrow double entendre: Elvira's Haunted Hills. Need I say more?
It's just-plain MM-style fun. In addition to running every Poe-inspired 50's B-movie into the ground (I spotted The Cask of Amontillado, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Premature Burial, Fall of the House of Usher, and The Black Cat, before I gave up and concentrated on the - uh - "scenery"),
the movie also features Richard O'Brien, who wrote The Rocky Horror Picture Show and played the part of "Riff Raff" in the film.
Campy as it is, the outdoor shots are particularly atmospheric, as the picture was actually filmed in Northern Romania, not far from the Hungarian border. Yes, Transylvania. Neat touch.
Tomorrow, it'll be Alice Cooper discussing his new movie. I guess if the crossover thing was good enough for Joe Christ and Dee Snider, it's good enough for the Coop, right?
©2001, 2006, David Jefferson Bean
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