Saturday, March 29, 2014

GREETINGS FROM MONSTERPALOOZA!


Well, I'm taking a few minutes for a breather here at the 2014 MONSTERPALOOZA in beautiful downtown Burbank, CA. Still looking for that fabled land of milk and honey I keep hearing about, I came in to Bob Hope Airport yesterday from SeaTac and went from the land of rain (it was raining like proverbial cats and dogs when I left) to the land of earthquakes (there was a 5.2 temblor that centered around the town of La Habra at about 8:00 PM).

Just came back from a 90 minute presentation by Bob and Kathy Burns and the wonderful crew who worked on his legendary Halloween yard shows back in the 60s and 70s. Many of these were filmed and Bob says so much so that a lot of footage was edited out for sheer length.

The highlight of the weekend so far (outside of chatting with Bob, Scott Essman, Anne Serling, Carla Laemmle, Bill Stout -- well, you get the idea) was the special 60th Anniversary CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON tribute panel presented by Essman featuring very special guests, Ricou Browning, Julie Adams, and Bob Burns. The presentation included a number of slide shows that showed many rare shots from the productions, including a never-before-seen 8mm "home movie" that was taken during the filming of REVENGE OF THE CREATURE. My pointy hat's off to Scott Essman (who had moderated a panel on stop-motion animation the night before) for this assemblage of what he called "deities" of the monster motion picture business. I couldn't agree with him more.

Here are a few scenes from "The Museum" exhibit:

Reproduced painting from "Rod Serling's Night Gallery".

Homage to Ray Harryhausen.

Beautiful repro of Ray's imaginative work.

Everybody's favorite pin head
Ricou Browning's in the house! Getting set for his panel discussion.

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