My father has always said that if he had his life to live over again, he would have pursued a career in special effects make up. He’s a truly gifted artist who loves to sculpt and I think the idea of spending his life creating fantastic creatures would have been a dream come true. The jobs my dad did have during his life included working at a meat packing plant, owning a restaurant, and for the most part, catering. But he did manage to feed his muse over the years with his own amateur art projects. My dad is now in his late eighties and has recently neglected his art stuff, so I was trying to think of a way to get him motivated again. Then, I remembered Monsterpalooza.
My father has always said that if he had his life to live over again, he would have pursued a career in special effects make up. He’s a truly gifted artist who loves to sculpt and I think the idea of spending his life creating fantastic creatures would have been a dream come true. The jobs my dad did have during his life included working at a meat packing plant, owning a restaurant, and for the most part, catering. But he did manage to feed his muse over the years with his own amateur art projects. My dad is now in his late eighties and has recently neglected his art stuff, so I was trying to think of a way to get him motivated again. Then, I remembered Monsterpalooza.
Monsterpalooza is a semi annual convention held at the Marriot Hotel near the Burbank Airport that celebrates the art of monsters and special effects make up in films. The last one I went to featured the cast and crew of one of my all time favorite films, Return of the Living Dead (minus the director, the late great Dan O’ Bannon). It was so much fun, I think I had a nerdgasm. Aside from the stellar cast of guests, Monsterpalooza is a literal museum of various masks, wax statues, custom model kits, artwork, and other dazzling representations of your favorite characters of monsterdom. So, I thought, what a great place to get my Dad inspired about creating again. Not to mention, eventually being on the receiving end to get some cool monster art in the bargain.
So cut to Saturday, April 9th 2011.
My parents had flown down from their home in Santa Rosa, and after a hearty meal at Jerry’s Deli (my parents favorite L.A. restaurant. Dad: “Jesus, look at the size of these portions!), we all headed on out to Monsterpalooza. Upon arriving, my Dad seemed in good spirits and even made a little flirty chitchat with a sexy girl in skeleton make up while waiting in the line to get in. Once inside, we took a tour of the main monster museum that displayed life size statues of everything from a talking animatronic figure of Griffin Dunne as the decomposing ghost from An American Werewolf in London, to a full-scale diorama from Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein, and for no apparent reason, a bust of Johnny Carson. I have to admit, the sheer incongruity of it did scare the hell out of me. My God, if it had been a bust of Arsenio Hall, I probably would have shit my pants.
After we exited the monster museum, I noticed what appeared to be a short line to get an autograph of Haruo Nakajima, the actor who played Godzilla between 1954 (yes, in the very first Godzilla film) through 1972, as well as a host of other famous Toho monsters including my personal favorite, the Green Gargantua from the film, War of the Gangantuas. I checked in with the parents to make sure it was okay if I got in line, and they said they were fine with it. Unfortunately, the line moved very slowly due to the necessity of a few rabid fans wanting to get the very old Mr. Nakajima to sign everything they owned. I eventually get to the front of the line and Mr. Nakajima is signing a photo for me when I hear my mom call out that my father is sick. I look over and to my true horror, my father’s face has gone pale and he looks like he’s about to fall over. Thankfully, my good friends, John Matta, Ken Daly and Shawn Sheridan were there and helped me get my Dad outside to a chair.
As someone ran to get him water, I try to get my Dad to describe his condition. He’s breathing heavily and I ask if he has numbness, chest pains or any other pains for that matter. He says, “no” and explains that he thinks the packed convention hall activated his claustrophobia, causing him to experience a panic attack. I offered to take him to the hospital but he flatly refused to go. My dad says he’s had attacks like this in the past and I was getting the feeling that the idea of going to the hospital would only make him feel worse. My mom and I finally settled on taking him back home and if his condition looked even a little bit worse, despite his protests, we’d take him to the emergency room.
On getting home, my Dad asked for a cocktail and by the time we got halfway through watching John Carpenter’s, The Thing, he said he was feeling much better and told me I was a good son. We then went out for Japanese noodles, which my father ate voraciously. My parents flew home the next morning and when I called to check up on Dad, he was like his old self. Whew!
Now that my sick father situation was taken care of, for the time being, I went back to Monsterpalooza on Sunday and met up with Ken, excellent friend and comedian Dana Gould, and hilarious old chum G. Charles Wright. As we walked around the convention, I handed out tiny plastic Cthulhu statutes (the dark god from the works of H.P. Lovecraft) to anyone I knew and we all made each other laugh by trying to out-nerd each other. Years ago, G Charles and I once bought identical life size glow in the dark Frankenstein heads together and now we kidded each other about finding even bigger ones. Then we ran into this:
Alas, I had to pass on Gigantostein but I did get my usual crop of autographed photos from celebrities that only true horror geeks would appreciate including, Lynn Lowry: star of David Croneberg’s, They Came From Within and the grindhouse classic, I Drink Your Blood, and Jack Hill: legendary director of Spider Baby, Coffy, and Switchblade Sisters. Also in attendance was the original, Creature From the Black Lagoon himself, Ricou Browning and his lovely screen victim Julie Adams. My good friend and Guillermo Del Toro staple, Doug Jones was there, and even James Hong, who actually signed autographs dressed in his costume from Big Trouble In Little China. Pure heaven!
But, what would a Monsterpalooza be without some totally bitchin’ celebrity panels? Malcolm McDowell had to cancel at the last minute but the still gorgeous Natasha Kinski did make it to the “Cat People” retrospective. Later, Joe Dante took the stage to remind us that before Twilight made werewolves super dreamy, there was a little film called, “The Howling“. Of course, Harou Nakajima was also on-call to give the audience a crash course in monster suit acting, and I have to say, if my pilot seasons doesn’t get any better, I’m definitely considering that as an option.
Although Monsterpalooza didn’t turn out to be too relaxing for seniors, it does happen to be kid friendly. Every child in attendance was given a snap together, Creature From The Black Lagoon model kit and I have to say, I was a little jealous. I mean let’s be honest, about 90% of all kid model kits die by firecracker.
I did happen to get a free Monsterpalooza book bag, which I promptly filled with a Phantom of the Paradise “Death Records” T shirt; a shit load of Japanese UFO toys; and a resin model kit of “El Baron”, the brain sucker from the infamous Mexican horror film, The Braniac. I really hate to say this, but if you are a monster fan in your forties and you haven’t seen, The Braniac, you are dead to me…and not in the cool undead way.
Even though I did manage to get some enjoyment out of day two at Monsterpalooza, I have to say the drama with my father did give me a low-grade panic attack of my own. I tried to inspire my father’s creative side with a monster convention and it almost killed him. I now have this image of my Dad’s pale blank face and thoughts of his mortality stuck permanently in my head. It’s funny because you can show me a movie like, The Human Centipede, where three live people are sewed together ass-to-mouth and I almost find it comforting. But show me my father in pain and…well, that’s real horror.
–Matt Weinhold
