June 4, 2005

Fangoria Weekend of Horrors, Burbank, California, June 4th, 2005 at the Burbank Marriot

Next panel was for the upcoming Return Of The Living Dead Sequels. That’s right, we can look forward to two Living Dead movies soon. We were treated to a five minute clip from each film, and zombie fans should be excited, because it looked like some really good gory action. One scene involved what I think was a jailhouse with hundreds of zombie’s confined to the cells, only to be released and attack a small group maneuvering themselves around this deserted building. The zombie effects looked pretty good and the clips we saw definitely did not shy away from some bloody on-screen violence. On board to answer questions and discuss the flicks were writers William Butler and Aaron Strongoni, FX creator John Vulich, producer Anatoly Fradis and actress Aimee-Lynn Chadwick. Most genre fans will recognize William Butler (center) from Friday The 13th Part VII: The New Blood, Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3 and Night Of The Living Dead 1990. He wrote these two films with the first Return Of The Living Dead in mind and it showed in the subtle black humor of the featured clips. “I don’t know. I know a lot of you out there like Return Of The Living Dead 3, but I hated that one. I wanted to get back to what the first one was like.”

Making one of her first Fango appearances, Kelly Stables, best known to genre fans as the actress behind Samara in The Ring, Rings and The Ring 2 spoke to the crowd about her experiences working on those films. The tiny actress explained how some of the special effects of both film’s were pulled off and she even sang ‘happy birthday’ to an audience member at a fan’s request.

One of my personal highlights for the whole weekend was getting to meet writer / director Lucky McKee. He stopped by to show a few trailers for his upcoming projects, one of which included his follow-up to May, The Woods featuring Bruce Campbell. We also saw a trailer for a film he produced called The Lost based on a Jack Ketchum novel. During his panel, he had mentioned how he’d love to tackle more of Ketchum’s stuff, in particular The Girl Next Door, which he cites as one of his favorites. The third film he previewed was Roman, directed by May’s Angela Bettis from a script he wrote. His co-star Nectar Rose joined him on stage. Roman features Lucky playing the title role and as he put it, it’s the “brother film to May.” It looks as though Roman and May could be long lost soul mates. He also talked about his influences on May, which ranged from his love of The Breeders (“I had a huge teenage crush on Kim Deal and I just love her music, and I’d use it in all my films if possible”), Dario Argento (“His films are just beautiful”) and the music of Nirvana. As an added bonus, he showed a trailer from one of his first high school films, All Cheerleaders Die which got a enthusiastic response from the crowd. This is a filmmaker to watch out for, folks!

*All photos by Robert V. Galluzzo and property of Icons Of Fright.com