Camera-shy: A HorrorFind postmortem

So I've returned from HorrorFind weekend, both the coolest and quietest of the five I've attended.

It was a good weekend, and I spent plenty of time manning the Timewarp table. (Timewarp parter/producer/DP/all-around-great-guy Don Dohler is ill and couldn't attend, so they were shorthanded.)

It didn't seem like a great show for attendance, and it wasn't a great show for buying things.

I wound up getting just a couple of books, a handful of DVDs, a couple of screeners for HorrorTalk and one other thing I'll mention later, because it's a story.

I did get to wear my cool Timewarp shirt every day, though. Yay!

Once, I wandered through the celebrity room. A few celebrities had to cancel, for reasons ranging from illness to an inability to leave Europe after last week's terror scare. Anyway, there wasn't really anybody there who I wanted to get a signature from. I'm not much of an autograph collector, anyway.

But the highlight of the show was undoubtedly the "Dead Hunt" public premiere. Three words for you:

S.

R.

O.

And it got a great reception, to boot. I still love it. And I jumped at the exact same scare I jumped at when I went to the cast and crew premiere.

(I wrote the movie, remember? I knew it was coming, too. And I still jumped. Sheesh.)

Got some nice compliments, including one from Aric, who knows a thing or two about filmmaking.

Anyway, it was really fun to see with a real, non-biased audience. And they seemed to have a good time. And that's what counts. That, and finding a distribution deal. But this is out of my hands, eh?

Plus, "Peter West," my boss from HorrorTalk was there, along with my bestest online pal Stewie. I brought Mookie along for any group shots (he's a member of the forum), but you know what? I took absolutely ZERO pictures. First time I've ever done that at HF. I saw Joe Ripple from Timewarp, of course, and his wife, Michelle, and my main man JP and his gal-pal Heather, plus the Video Kitchen crew and a bunch of people from DH, and plenty more. I met Frank Lama from some of Aric's movies, and other film-type people, too.

Still, the camera never came out of the bag. Like I said, a strangely sedate HF weekend. But it's like I told Stewie, I went to HF for two basic reasons: To hang with him, and to see the "DH" premiere. So it was a very cool weekend, too. Maybe next year I'll have some DVDs to autograph...

And now that you've gotten this far, your reward is the best story of the weekend. Of course, Stewie'll put it on his blog, and he probably tells it better. But here's my version.

Like I said before, there wasn't much that caught my eye, in terms of shopping.

Something caught Stewie's eye, though: a Zuni fetish doll from the movie "Trilogy of Terror." And to think, I just edited one of his upcoming reviews in which he's lamenting how the thing still scares the crap out of him... as a 30-something adult!

So he's pondering whether to buy it to add to his horror-figure collection... after all, it's not cheap, and it's life-size and therefore scary, at least to him.

(To set the stage: We roomed together, as has been our tradition. I know, we're cheapskates... I prefer to think of it as being frugal. Less money for hotel, more money to spend on stuff.)

Anyway, I did what any good friend would do under the circumstances.

When he wasn't looking, I bought the doll. Hey, I wanted to look at it, they said it was the last one, and inspiration struck. A gift! And some fun!

I had it under the table, with a toy I bought for myself (action figures! the women of "Sin City"!), hidden under some free posters I got from Lion's Gate, and when Stewie finally came back just a few minutes before the show closed for the night, I asked him if he could close the table so I could run my toys back to the room.

(Aside, hey, Lion's Gate, or Lionsgate, whichever you prefer... please please please pick up "Dead Hunt" for distribution!)

He even told me later he wondered what all I'd bought, since I had this huge bag and he hadn't seen me pick up anything but my toys, which came in a long, skinny box.

Anyway, like I said, I did what any good friend would do under the cirucmstances.

I hid the doll in his bed, behind those big, decorative pillows you get on a hotel bed. Piece of cake, I figure. He'll walk through the door, toss the decorative pillows on the floor, and there will stand Mr. Zuni, startling the hell out of him and giving me a good laugh for my money.

But no.

Turns out, as Stewie put it, he likes having lots of pillows. Four hours of gabbing, drinking, playing on our laptops, he NEVER EVER moves those pillows.

Finally, it's time for bed. Lights out.

Now, I'm having visions of disaster: 3 in the morning, I'm awakened by a blood-curdling scream, and my pal drops dead of a heart attack, having found the little bugger in the dark throes of some dream about red-headed Asian women.

So I've got to get him to find the thing.

I mention the pillows. He thinks nothing of it.

I tell him they're decorative. He insists he likes having lots of pillows.

I tell him he should move them around. He complies.

And tells me, "See, they're decorative, there's a plastic thing back here holding them up."

Apparently, in the dark, he put the "plastic thing" on the floor.

And I say, "I don't have one."

So, he turns on the light and looks over the edge of the bed to see just what he put on the floor.

You've never seen a guy that big move that fast.

He was across the double bed, back to the wall, covers gathered around him, shaking.

Apparently, he saw nothing but the teeth that have scared him since 1970-something.

I was shaking, too. From laughter.

He thanked me for the gift, put the doll in the box, and put the box in the closet. Facing away from the closet door. And there it stayed for the remainder of the weekend.