Cinema Wasteland fall 2014

Wasteland is the convention I wait for every six months.

We started off the weekend with a bit of sad news, a cancellation, but Graydon Clark (Director of Dracula vs. Frakenstien) was being replaced by Dean Gates who had done makeup on films like Phantasm 3 and Day of the Dead, not to mention my favorite Star Trek sequal, DS9. He was a great pleasure to talk to, hearing about his time working on Star Trek in particular. It was also nice to find someone else who shared my opinion that Ds9 was largely ignored by the networks and really, what a shame.

In the hallway was one of the bigges surprises of the weekend. Annabelle was there. The studio brought one of the screen used dolls to Wasteland and it was incredible to just look at it. It’s a hard plastic, not a ceramic, but incredibly creepy. Those overhead lights don’t really add to the spook factor, but she was great looking just the same.

I saw Pink Flamingos this time around, and really I will say, it was better with a group. Hanging with Angelique and Shrew, Sally and Brandy, you get a group of people who appreciate this kind of transcgressive cinema. There were still parts I just couldn’t watch, but it did get better wit hthe group, and the talk with Mink Stoles afterwards was just fascinating.

One of the things Wasteland  does that other cons just don’t seem to do is bring in forign guests. This time around it was the ladies of hammer films,Caroline Munro , Veronica Carlson, and Martine Beswick. A long talk about the golden age of hammer, working with Cushing and Lee and just a wonderful chance to hear stories from these ladies about a time and films we all grew up loving.

Also a really pleasant surprise was Geretta Geretta ‘s talk. I hadn’t realized how much she’s done over the years and how much sci-fi in particular. She talked about how in the 80’s EVERYONE in sci fi had to wear headbands….I came away with a list of films to look up.

Of course the big event of the weekend was Brandy and Mark’s wedding. It was a humorous ceremony, very much in Wasteland tradition – I say tradition because it’s at least the third wedding that’s taken place there. But it makes sense, with some many familiar people around, this is where they wanted to be. Brandy was beautiful in her crimson dress, and the wedding was complete with first dance, boquet throwing, garter throwing and father daughter dance…which devolved into the Batutsi, I kid you not.

Did I mention that later on in the evening A. Ghastlee Ghoul auctioned his pants off during the Miss Wasteland ? Yeah. That happened.

 

I can’t even start on the dozen films I watched over the weekend. I think I’ll save some of those for future columns. Another great weekend at my favorite convention. But wait, convention stories aren’t over yet – tune in tomorrow. (in  the meantime, there’s new Violent Blue up today!)