Another Weekend, Another Horror Convention

A couple weeks ago I went to the Sixth Annual Fright Night Film Fest in Louisville, and I met some more horror movie icons.

It was a pretty good show, except for the part where the hotel's air conditioning system went on the blink and the temperature in the convention hall shot up to 95 degrees or so. Geeks + heat + enclosed space = bad news for everyone.

One of the celebs I met was Tom Atkins. His name might not be a household word, but if you've seen any movies in the last 20 years you'll definitely recognize his face.

He was in Night Of The Creeps, one of my favorite movies. If you've not seen it, it's worth checking out. It's got aliens, ax murderers, zombies... you name it, it's in there. Tom Atkins plays a washed up, burned out detective who always answers his phone with his sarcastic catch phrase, "Thrill me."

In addition to Creeps, Mr. Atkins has been in a ton of other things, including Lethal Weapon, Halloween III, Creepshow, The Fog (the original), and a couple hundred TV shows.

He was pretty nice, and seemed genuinely interested in talking with us. Some actors get the whole "meeting the fans" thing, and some don't. Tom Atkins is one who definitely gets it.

Now that I think of it, I've met a lot of celebrities at conventions over the years, and the horror stars are consistently the nicest of the lot. It seems like the worse their onscreen personas, the nicer they are in real life.

I also met David Emge. Again, you may not recognize the name, but if you call yourself a fan of zombie movies, you'll definitely recognize him-- he was Flyboy in the original Dawn Of The Dead. His portrayal of a zombie at the end of the film set the bar for cinematic zombies for decades.

Mr. Emge is originally from my city of Evansville, so we had that in common. He was also very nice and spoke with us for quite a while, asking how things were back home. Oddly enough, two of his Dawn of the Dead co-stars, Ken Foree and Gaylen Ross, are from Indianapolis, making it the Hoosierist zombie movie I know of.

Here he is in a pensive moment from Dawn Of The Dead.

And here he is as possibly the most famous movie zombie ever!