The Monster Bash is an annual monster movie convention, for all of you who haven't been paying attention, held in the greater Pittsburgh area (the extra "h" is for..  hell if I know?).  Being the intrepid explorers that we are, we decided to leave the safety of Alan's Washington, DC suburb environs on a road trip to the city of steel and, well, steel.  We got there, with visions of B-Fest in our minds, the glorious bad movie festival we had attended in January.  See, the Monster Bash not only promised tons of guests of honor, dealers, and women dressed in medieval bodices (that wasn't so much a promise as an inevitability), but also was to have a room which promised to show vintage monster movies throughout the night.  We were pumped.  We were stoked.  We were.  well, something modern and "extreme" sounding.

We arrived on Saturday, and the Bash was in full freaky-ass swing (it had started Friday night).  The first thing we did was go to the Guests of Honor room (or, as they're called in the program, the "Ghasts of Horror" -- was "Ghosts of Horror" too corny?).  This was mainly because it was right there next to the entrance in this tiny little room that was too crowded if more than 3 people were in it.  And that's our first major complaint against the Bash.  The hotel was an absolutely rotten place for something like this, the whole convention was spread over 3 floors, with all the dealers crammed into a bunch of tiny conference rooms.  It was always impossible to move around and far too easy to miss things we may have wanted to see.  They should definitely reconsider if they plan on having the Bash at that hotel next year.

Anyway, where were we?  Oh, yeah, the "Ghasts" (sounds dirty to us).  First we saw Tom Savini, the guy who played Sex Machine in From Dusk `Til Dawn.  He also did the make-up for Dawn of the Dead and Halloween and stuff and seemed like a really nice guy.  Then, we saw a bunch of people we didn't care a whit (not one single whit!) about.  This is not to malign them in any way, we're just saying we didn't really care about what they had done.  A lot of other people liked their presence, though, so I guess that means something.  There was Lon Chaney, Jr.'s grandson (woo-hoo) and the Gypsy woman from House of Frankenstein (who was also on Marcus Welby, M.D.!  Wow!).  Gary Don Rhodes, who wrote a book on Lugosi was there.  We didn't stop at his table.  An artist was there, too.  We didn't really care for her work.  All in all, we didn't care too much about the guest.  Again, not because we think they suck, but just because we are personally not too into their stuff.

Finally, we reached the table of tables, the table where sat Forrest J. Ackerman.  It's not that we're Ackerman fans.  In fact, we don't really understand why people even know who he is.  We're not sure that being a fan of movies should really qualify the incredible amount of attention that movie geeks give him (movie geeks being a descriptor, not a put-down, we think).  He's just some guy with a lot of film memorabilia to us, not "Uncle Forry" who lives in some magical mansion in Hollywood that we would care to visit.  It's not to say that he wasn't a nice guy, which he kind of was, it's just that he wasn't very interesting.  We sat there and listened a little while he talked to some fans.  He had trouble following what they were talking about (he was quite deaf) and wasn't the happy, smiley type we thought he might be.  We hate to say anything negative about a guy so old and revered by many, but he just wasn't all that and a bag of anything.  

Ray Harryhausen was supposed to be there, too, but he wasn't in the "Ghasts" room that day for some reason.  We figured we would see him later.  We didn't (jump to bottom).  Anyway, this was a disappointment  for Alan who has a strong personal grudge against Harryhausen (to be explained at a later date).

We headed to the dealers rooms.  While wandering around, we ran into a bunch of horror hosts (you know, guys who host Chiller Theater type shows) we had never heard of and who seemed a little off their collective rockers.  Normally, we like people a little beyond the bend, but these guys were running with it a little further than we were willing to go, like Switzerland or something.  Then we ran into Conrad Brooks.  Now, for those of you who don't know Conrad, he was in a few Ed Wood movies and the Beast of Yucca Flats.  He's basically a bad movie Old Master.  Oh, and he's crazy.

Now, we're not trying to commit libel or anything, we're just saying that he seemed a little..  off to us.  He kept talking to us about his movies and then repeating what he had just told us as if he didn't recognize us from his sentence of, oh, about 3 seconds ago.  And he kept trying to sell us copies of his movies despite the fact that we continually kept telling him we already owned them.  I'm not sure, maybe he just hadn't of had his coffee (or anything else) that morning.  Still, he was in Bikini Drive-In, so he gets mondo coolness points.

There were some former zombies there, the Coopers from Night of the Living Dead and their daughter (all grown up and not eating anyone), along with the "shocking Cemetery Zombie" [sic, from the Bash program] from that movie.  And trowels! There was also a Kong specialist.  Oh, yeah, a former Vampirella model was there, too, looking a bit tired of the ogling.  Well, that's what you get for the Elvira dress.

Among these various peoples were lots of vendors with interesting stuff to sell.  A monster lover's paradise for sure.  If you want odd Italian zombie movies, than this was the place for you.  If you're looking for other movies, than this was the place too, and all day they were showing movies in the "theater," a rather small conference room which was far too crowded.

So, with all of these peoples and things to do, why were we so disappointed?

Yep, you heard us right, we were disappointed by the Monster Bash, and not just because the guy who was in the Reptilicus suit wasn't there.  It was just an overall feeling of disappointment.  It wasn't the fans who were there, after all, we were there too, and we're not any better than anyone else (well, we're both really good at Air Hockey, but other than that, we're just like everyone else).  It wasn't the guest's fault, they were there for their fans.  The problem was, we just weren't them.  We guess we're just not huge horror fanboys whose legs quiver when we hear the name "Karloff".  We just don't think that White Zombie is a good movie.  We wouldn't wait in line 3 hours to see the model dinosaur from King Kong (we saw it, but didn't have to wait in line or anything and we sure as hell won't tell our grandparents about it).  We're just not the right audience for this kind of show.  I guess we should have seen it coming, but one thing kept us going on the long drive there:  The movie room.  They were going to show a lot of movies that we thought looked pretty bad, and we were bound and determined to see some crap in from of a live audience,to hopefully recreate some of the fun of watching and making fun of movies that had happened at B-Fest.  This is where we made our biggest mistake.  When we reached the room, the original Godzilla was on, you know, the American version with Raymond Burr.  And when we walked into the room, we walked into a room of silence.  A room with a reverential level of audience quiet normally reserved for the oldest cathedrals of France.  The audience was so quiet and rapt that we couldn't scratch our knees without dozens of shhhhhhhh's!   At the end of the movie, Alan swears he saw a few people wipe tears from their eyes.  Rob was too busy snoring.  People treated the movie like a meeting with the queen instead of the fun time it should have been.  Now, we didn't expect it to be Rocky Horror with people screaming at the screen, but we expected people to laugh at the jokes.  We tried to watch Tarantula, but people were so quiet, it was uncomfortable.  They wouldn't even laugh at the goofy things in the movie!  This wasn't our type of crowd.

On the whole, the convention just wasn't our bag, baby.  We left without even seeing Harryhausen.  We went to the Monroeville Mall instead, the place that the zombies ripped apart in Dawn of the Dead.  And as we ate our cheesesteaks, we sat, thinking of how cool the zombies had looked when we were little and how less than cool the whole place appears to us now.  We guess that was the message for the weekend.  Sometimes things that a lot of people love are just not your own personal cup of tea.  So if you enjoyed the Monster Bash, good for you.  If you don't know who the hell "Ghoulardi" is and could think that Son of Kong is the piece of crap it is, then join us at next year's B-Fest.  You'll be glad you did.

P.S.  We met David "The Rock" Nelson at Monster Bash.  He makes videotape "movies" and was a runner-up for the "Strangest Person in the Universe" contest on the Strange Universe show.  We bought a video of his work, which we didn't want to have to do, but how else can we find a copy?  We'll be reviewing it soon.  He calls himself "the Ed Wood of the 90's."  If I were Ed, I'd rise from the grave and move somewhere far just to avoid being linked in any way to this guy.