I admit that conventions are not part of my world. And a horror convention seems even more out there but I like being a wild card and having someone share their special interests with me which is how I ended up here. And as an added bonus I LOVE weird people and this seemed like it might have a whole den of them.
Really my usual companion wanted to see the live radio show. He’s super into them. So on Saturday after he got off work we drove directly the convention. It would leave us plenty of time to catch the radio show. I was excited to see it too but I had to take a few days to prepare for it as I am not one for crowds. Or city life. Or people really. Got off to a bit of a bad start when we spent a TON of time in traffic which was acting insane. Usually, I can deal with this just fine but on that particular evening it put me on edge.
We parked at the mall as it was cheaper but that did mean we’d have to walk through the mall on a weekend evening and holy crap was it swarmed. I’d have trouble with this even before Covid. I carried on and did the best I could but then I had to ride an elevator, walk through one of those weird human hamster tunnels over the street, and ride several escalators – the last of which was ungodly narrow, steep, and claustrophobic. Escalators had been my nemesis since childhood and everything was setting off my sensory overload tonight.
Eventually we found a big room full of vendors with a $5 per person admittance fee. We forked it over and looked around. There was all kinds of weird betenticled art everywhere. Paintings, prints, giant plushies. It was an odd rabbit hole to fall down but a fun one. Still, this was not what we were looking for. We asked where the general admittance was and was told we’d have to walk over the Biltmore down the street which we did.
The Biltmore itself is supposed to be haunted. In fact it has such a reputation it was on my list of places to poke at even before this convention but tonight wasn’t the best night to be doing so. I walked in and there’s all sorts of absolutely garish 1920’s art nouveau architecture and design which when done well can be stunning but this place? I dunno, it just seemed so tacky to me. And disorienting. I can’t even describe how I was feeling at that point but it was almost like I was wearing those shitty drunk goggles they give children to make them not want to drink. Just everything seemed somehow off. It was a weird energy for sure – whether I can blame this on the place being haunted or just my own sensory overload I don’t know but that’s where I was at that moment.
We found the people at the take in register for the convention but they said they’d already packed up hours earlier and were no longer selling tickets or making allowances to see the radio theater. My companion was deflated. I was too. I had struggled mightily for this one and now it was a no-go. I asked if the radio theater would be there tomorrow and yes, it was a different show, but they would be there performing something. We decided to come back the next day. Let me tell you I was happy to be home after that.
Sunday came around and we headed out fairly early so we could see at least some of the short film festival at the library before the radio show. We got out on time and were able to buy tickets and even better I was feeling much less over stimulated!
We walked to the library but we were a bit early. There was a sign on the door saying it was closed on Sundays except for the convention and then in small letters that it’d be open at 12:05. it wasn’t 12:05 yet so we stood politely at the door with another man who claimed to have “just rolled down the hill” to get there. A librarian popped out and happily burbled, “Thank you for reading the sign! Everyone else has just tried to come right in!” She then highlighted the part about opening up at 12:05 before replacing it on the door. By now several more people had gathered and were now chatting about how far they travelled and then all about cats. This would be an ongoing theme on just about everyone I eavesdropped on. Who attends horror conventions you might wonder… Cat people. That’s who. I mean yeah there are those decked to the hilt in Goth gear, the heavily tattooed, those who look like they’re suffering existential dread, the odd rat enthusiast, some queer rebels, a large swath of neurodivergent peoples annnnnd amateur mycologists otherwise known as mushroom lovers. That last one caught me a bit off guard.
Finally we were allowed in and made our way to the theater – an actual tiny theater, in a library. This was new for me. And it was cute! And cozy! And Old Timey looking. And to their credit the first film they showed was suitably distressing. It was about keeping a living consciousness in a computer which is always a little unnerving but they seemed to make it over the top uncomfortable. Maybe that’s a good thing, I don’t know.
From there the films ranged from familiar old tropes, to psychological horror, to comedy horror. I was having a good time with it. And it was interesting to see just what people were doing to make these little films which had to be a shoe string budget but most you couldn’t tell. Afterwards one of the film’s creators came up to do a Q & A and my companion got into it by asking a question. I was happy to see him involved even if I myself would rather die than ask a question in a public forum. That’s just me and that’s OK.
We stuck around for block two which started with a claymation short which obviously tickled my own special interests. And there was one some time afterwards that was really low budget – just one dude sitting in front of a green screen playing with a plush bat, that actually was still amazing somehow?? And hilarious! I don’t know, I was impressed. Actually most, if not all, of the shorts kept my interest for the most part. There was a couple I was hazy on but I guess that’s just part of the experience. It was hard picking a favorite.
We decided to skip the last block of short films and instead go to grab a bite to eat before listening to a dramatic story reading before attending the radio show. So off we went. I’d read over the program schedule for fun and I was amused with a lot of the offerings. Cthulhu prayer breakfast, a lecture on missing persons, and weirdly enough a group therapy session. I guess in acknowledgment of the fact if you were here you might be the sort to benefit from a little group therapy sesh. Actually, a lot of the lectures looked super intriguing, but they were from the previous few days. They were the sort of things I could plunk myself on a seat and just spend a day listening to random lectures. Yeah, OK, maybe the crazy ticket price was worth it. There was a lot going on.
Making our way out of there I met a woman on the street who had the same cutesy baby Cthulhu T-shirt and we laughed. She asked if I’d seen the Craft-thulu T-shirt and I said I had it. It was just a weird, sweet moment – two oddballs recognizing each other’s oddness.
We ate at the mall and I picked up one of my books from the car which I’d leave on a bench in the park to be found. Part of my book bombing/book crossing campaign. The dramatic story telling was actually The Willows by Algernon Blackwood read by Robert Lloyd Perry and let me tell you – it was indeed dramatic! I was expecting a nice little relaxing story time, just sit in quiet and listen to someone read to me like I’m a child. No, not quite. It did start off nice and soft but the deeper into the story we got the more impassioned and loud our narrator and the music behind him became. This in combination with the fact they dimmed the lights set my brain off. I basically forgot where I was, immersed completely in the story, seeing it in vivid detail in place of the very real surroundings around me. I started to fidget and scratch at my skin just to keep myself grounded in reality. My companion too really enjoyed this piece. Curiously so too did a young woman wearing noise reducing headphones. She hadn’t been the only one wearing some sort of deadening device. Even I was tempted to put in ear plugs as a lot of these events were getting a bit loud for me. I wondered if these people were also somewhere on the spectrum enjoying a day out the best they could. So far the diversity of each crowd was keeping me quite happy.
And when it was all over we were in the right place to just stay for what we came for – a performance of Curse of the Yig performed by the Dark Adventure Radio Theater. I should probably note that going into this I have not been a huge fan of any kind of radio. Yes, I listened to War of the Worlds and got a good giggle in my youth but that is where my interest in this activity ended until I met my companion who has on numerous occasions shared his love of these performances by playing them in the car on our many trips. And it’s been pleasant but I still didn’t fully comprehend why seeing it live would be any better. It’s radio after all.
It started with a lot of fussing over the projector and an apology to the audience that the cast they had painfully ensured was diverse for this adaption of an H P Lovecraft story was down to a skeleton crew and just looked like a buncha white people again. It might seem like a strange thing to say but H P Lovecraft unfortunately was even a hardcore racist for his day and although there are lots of people who love his wild and whimsical style of writing there’s a lot less of us who agree with his politics. But white supremacists being who they are probably would find a good ‘hero’ in Lovecraft which is why the rest of us decent folk have to try so very hard to take the good and leave all the bad. It’s a noble effort.
Anyway, the radio drama started with just four people voicing all the parts (including the dog who barked intermittently at various scenes.) Every once in a while the projector would show something to the audience asking them to make a noise for the background. Oh, so it’s audience participation that’s different, I see. Granted all the noises were the same…. wind, the rattle of a rattlesnake, hissing… these are all the same noise. None the matter I found it adorable and quite fun. By the end I got it. It was worth coming to see live. Even better they gave the hardcore fans a ‘clue’ with which to decipher a code. My companion of course got up and asked for a code card at the end and brought it home to happily solve it. Again, it was nice to see this sort of involvement.
It was getting late when we left and my companion was concerned I’d had enough activity for one day but he did mention there was one last film showing 4 miles away at a theater. I said it’s OK, we can go check it out, and so we did. And the parking gods must have been smiling on me because there was a parking spot right near the theater that was next to an intersecting street meaning all I had to do was drive into it without properly parallel parking which I STILL have not learned how to do. No matter!
That’s how we ended up at the Dunwich Horror Picture Show. We knew this was a screening of the 1970 movie The Dunwich Horror, which is a terrible movie, but we didn’t really understand the Picture Show part of that. Rocky Horror mashup? Hard to say.
I did what I always do… looked around the audience. And that’s where I found them – a group that had been remarkably absent most of the day despite my theories they should have been everywhere – the gay men. Oh sure, I’d seen a couple adorable lesbian couples here and there but this seemed to be the hub where all the men were. Scores of them. Which made little sense to me as the Dunwich Horror is CLEARLY a film about one straight white dude’s rape fantasies (which is very in step with horror from the 70’s.) If you’re wondering why I thought such a large portion of the queer community would be at this convention it’s because I grew up in the 80’s and 90;s when every villain was still queer coded and although that was supposed to be a bad thing I also knew this backfired and many still LOVE queer coded villains. Honestly, how can you not? They’re fucking hilarious. Also so much of the crowd today seemed neurodivergent and again there’s a disproportionally large cross section of people who are both queer and neurodivergent. I was just happy my amateur psychology worked. I was comfortable here now the world made sense again. Also the theater was dark so it was kinda perfect for my nerves.
So, what was it about the Dunwich Horror that was so great? Well, it had a live band playing the soundtrack and an announcement at the beginning saying, “We know this film is terrible. Feel free to heckle it. Just make your comments funny.” And the audience complied! But that wasn’t even the best part. The best part was the wildly gesticulating people in Cthulhu costumes who’d come from the sides of the theater to do a crazed interpretive dance to distract you whenever the dream sequences got too rapey. How cool would that be just to have that on standby whenever something triggering comes up? Like no, you don’t want to look over at something potentially distressing, look over here AT THE DANCING TENTICLE MONSTER! WOOOOO!
It was all a very happy and positive experience. My companion even got to take a break to enjoy remembering some other happy memories at this theater. While doing so he tried to thank me for coming with him today to enjoy the weird things in life and I…. would have replied it was no problem if I wasn’t distracted by the John Waters Christmas poster. Now that’s a whole other brand of weird (and I’m all for it!)
All and all I am super happy we did the Dunwich Horror as it was the perfect way to end the evening and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Maybe a little too much if I’m honest. So, was it worth going into the city, a place I normally avoid? Oh yes, absolutely. And it looks like someone picked up my book that I left sooo… there’s always that.
