The Little Old Horror Convention from Pasadena: Monsterpalooza 2026

Okay, so Monsterpalooza is not little (it features hundreds of vendors and exhibits and scores of celebrity guests and panels), nor is it old (unless you think 10 years is getting up there; it's been doing its thing in Pasadena since 2016). What it definitely is for me is accessible, being just a few hours drive from where I live. (For more background on the convention see my post from 2023.)

 

I'm not an inveterate convention goer like some people I know, but neither am I abstemious, having been to 4 horror and fantasy conventions since 2019.

Monsterpalooza skews to a relatively younger audience of 30 and 40 somethings, and it specializes in showcasing practical special effects and makeup, attracting a lot of artists and shops from the greater Los Angeles area.

This year's convention, held at the Pasadena convention Center on May 29-31, also catered to moldy old Monster Kids like myself, with a panel celebrating the 95th anniversary of Universal's Frankenstein and Dracula, a tribute to suit actor, superfan and original Monster Kid Bob Burns, and a talk on the career of Peter Lorre, among others.

Here are highlights from the panels and talks I managed to attend over the three day run (in chronological order):

Paul Williams

At the venerable age of 85, Oscar and Grammy winning composer, songwriter and actor Paul Williams looks like a spry, benevolent leprechaun who has just discovered a pot of gold and wouldn't mind sharing some of it. Williams did share some gold with the audience, in the form of stories from nearly six decades of involvement with the music and entertainment industries.

Williams touched on some very personal career highlights in the hour long interview and audience QandA. He quipped that working with Jim Henson and the Muppets on The Muppet Show and The Muppet Movie (1979) was like "being with a bunch of buddies in a tree house." He also poignantly described being inspired by the desert of the American Southwest, and the aspirations of a "land-locked" bird, in writing Gonzo's song, "I'm Going to go Back There Someday" for The Muppet Movie (at first Henson passed on the song, but then changed his mind and told Williams that he would create a scene for it).

Of course, this being Monsterpalooza, a couple of audience members were dressed up as the Phantom of the Paradise (1974), and questions about that production inevitably came up (Williams wrote the music for the film and co-starred as the villain). When asked what it was like working with the Phantom William Finley, Williams complimented his co-star on the pathos that Finley could express with just his one eye visible behind the mask he wore.

Williams also fondly recalled the time he went from the set of Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973) to appear on the Tonight Show and engage with Johnny Carson in full Orangutan makeup and costume.

Sybil Danning

Austrian born Sybil Danning was the definitive B movie action heroine of the '80s. In that decade, the statuesque blonde star intimidated and fought opponents in outer space (Battle Beyond the Stars), ancient Rome (The Seven Magnificent Gladiators), the jungle (Jungle Warriors), and gritty urban streets (L.A. Bounty), among other things.

Danning talked about starting out as a model in the late '60s, which resulted in her screen debut as the folklore character Lorelei in a cheap German exploitation film. Just a few years later, she secured a role in the Richard Burton horror-thriller oddity Bluebeard (1972), as well as in Richard Donner's epic hits The Three Musketeers (1973) and The Four Musketeers (1974), where she became good friends with Geraldine Chaplin.

Although not realizing it at the time, Danning's role as the "Valkyrie" warrior Saint Exmin in Roger Corman's Battle Beyond the Stars would establish her credentials as an action heroine and typecast her for the next decade. She said Corman was great to work for, but he could be tough, especially when money was at stake -- he fired an actor who kept muffing his lines and causing retake after retake. She is also proud that her iconic performance inspired a Saint Exmin action figure (although to date, it's the only action figure based on one of her characters).

Danning also spoke of the great respect she had for Christopher Lee by the time they made Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf (they had made four films together prior to that, including the Donner Musketeer movies). The production was located in the former Czechoslavkia; when the director received his "werewolf" costumes from the producers in the U.S., he was dismayed to find recycled ape costumes from a Planet of the Apes movie. To transform the characters into werewolves, they had to improvise and painstakingly apply small hair appliances over the face and body to achieve the effect, which took hours. Danning reports Lee as being impressed by her stamina and professionalism in submitting to long hours in the makeup chair.

Sybil Danning talks about her co-star Christopher Lee.

Bob Burns Tribute

Bob Burns, who passed away at the age of 90 last December, was a TV and film editor, a special effects designer and gorilla suit actor par excellence (one of his claims to fame was portraying Tracy the gorilla, the sidekick to Forrest Tucker and Larry Storch in the mid-70s TV show Ghostbusters). Bob and his wife Kathy were huge monster and sci-fi movie fans who used their industry connections to rescue props, set pieces and other paraphernalia that had been used in many productions over the years.

Bob and Kathy's famous basement collection included the armature used to animate the first King Kong, the time machine from the George Pal film, and the original wolf's head cane from The Wolf Man (1941), among other amazing finds.

A large panel of movie industry professionals, including makeup maestro and 7 time Oscar winner Rick Baker, paid affectionate tribute to Bob and Kathy as photo after photo of their joyful life, surrounded by human and monster friends, were projected on the backdrop screen. Baker related how he met the Burnses when he was just 13, and hung around with them so much that he considered them his second parents. Bob gave Rick encouragement even as others were saying how impossible it was going to be for him to get into the movie business.

Various panel members related how modest and generous Bob was, contributing a large amount of his time to helping out friends such as special effects and suit designer Paul Blaisdell on his creations, while taking no credit. They also related a story about Bob asking 20th Century Fox for some memorabilia from the Alien movies, and the studio responding by delivering a semi-truck full of props and sets to his door.

The panel also reminisced about how for many years Bob and Kathy would stage elaborate Halloween shows at their house, enlisting technicians, effects people and actors to help them recreate scenes from such films as The Exorcist, War of the Worlds, and Alien. Besides the basement museum, it was another fun, imaginative way for the Burnses to give back to their community.

Dracula and Frankenstein Turn 95

While much of Monsterpalooza is dedicated to later horror fare of the 90s and beyond, this year the organizers enlisted a panel to celebrate the 95th birthday of the Universal monsters that started it all. Julian David Stone, author of It's Alive (2022), a fictionalization of the making of Universal's Frankenstein, led the discussion with co-panelists Antonia Carlotta, host of the YouTube vodcast Universally Me and a descendant of Carla Laemmle, niece of Universal Head Carl Laemmle, and Scott Essman, director, producer, writer and film historian.

The wide-ranging discussion touched on a number of topics and intriguing facts surrounding the production of the the two films and the huge impact they had on the industry:

• Carl Laemmle Sr. made Carl Junior head of Universal's film production at the tender age of 21.
• The father was not a big fan of what came to be known as horror, but gave his son latitude to make his impact.
• Lon Chaney Sr., who was a huge star of the silent era, was slated to appear as Dracula, but died before production could start. Lugosi, who had played Dracula on Broadway and added exotic sexual chemistry to the role, got the nod over more familiar and popular actors. 
• Makeup artist Jack Pierce was disappointed when he found out that Lugosi would be doing his own makeup on the film, but he would soon have his chance to pull out all the stops in creating the look for the Frankenstein monster. 
• Dracula was ground-breaking in that the title character was truly supernatural in origin; prior fright films and villains had been thoroughly grounded in the "real" world, with prosaic explanations for seeming supernatural events.
• Frankenstein was originally slated to be directed by French expatriate Robert Florey with the new hit star Bela Lugosi as the monster. Stories circulated that Florey's test footage with Lugosi did not go well (none of the footage has survived). Meanwhile, Laemmle Sr. was so impressed by James Whale's success with Waterloo Bridge (1931) that he promised him any project of his choosing, and Whale took on Frankenstein.
• The story goes that Whale spotted Boris Karloff in the Universal commissary, on break from a small role in another movie, and quickly realized he had his monster.
• When Jack Pierce and Boris Karloff were at an impasse as to how to make the monster appear more frightening, Karloff suggested making his eyelids droop more severely, and Pierce used mortician's wax to achieve the effect.
• Frankenstein, which had its world premier in Santa Barbara toward the end of 1931, was an even greater hit than Dracula. Other studios realized they needed to jump on the bandwagon. Paramount, which had passed on Dracula, started production of Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde with Frederic March (who would win the Oscar for best actor for that role). 
• MGM's Irving Thalberg reportedly demanded his writers come up with something more disturbing than Dracula. The result, Todd Browning's Freaks (1932), was too disturbing for 1930s audiences and ended up being a huge money loser for MGM (which promptly suppressed it for decades after).

Panelists discuss Universal's one-two punch of Dracula and Frankenstein in 1931.

Other Panels

• Peter Lorre: Master of Menace. Karie Bible, tour guide at the Hollywood Forever cemetery (where Mr. Lorre is interred) and Dawn Fratini, film historian, gave a lively talk about the life and film career of one of the great character actors of the 20th century. They showed clips from some of his more notable films, including Fritz Lang's M (1931; featuring Lorre in a breakout role as a child murderer), The Beast with Five Fingers (1946), The Raven (1963), and an assortment of cartoons in which Lorre voiced characters based on his iconic looks. 
• Planet Terror. Actor Freddy Rodriguez and FX master and actor Tom Savini reunited to reminisce about the making of the apocalyptic zombie movie. The 2007 film was produced by Quentin Tarantino and released on a double feature with Death Proof (starring Kurt Russell) to recreate the 1970s grindhouse theater experience. They played multiple clips from the movie, including one where Rodriguez whips a gun around at lightning speed, sharpshooter style (which Rodriguez said took months of practice to perfect). 
     Savini paid his co-star a great compliment, saying he was sure at the time that Rodriguez would become the next popular action hero, but the films flopped, much to the consternation of everyone involved. Savini speculated that the order in which the films were screened as a double feature, with frenetically-paced Planet Terror coming first, followed by Death Proof, a thriller that takes some time to ramp up the action, contributed to audiences rejecting both films.

The teeming crowds and enthusiastic panel audiences at the Pasadena Convention Center proved that the classic monsters could cohabitate with the likes of Michael Myers and Art the Clown, if only for a weekend.

Gallery of Monsterpalooza Photos

Ray Harryhausen's creations live again at the Monsterpalooza museum.

This creature needs no introduction.

A waxwork Bob Burns in his Tracy the Gorilla suit.

A Comedy of Terrors.

Even monsters need to keep up with their social media accounts.

Dead Guys & Dolls: The Dead Don't Die

Now Playing: The Dead Don't Die (TV Movie; 1975)

Pros: Creates an atmosphere of darkness and dread in various spots; Some well-executed, spooky sequences.
Cons: The film's protagonist is miscast, and some veteran actors are wasted in small roles; awkward use of clunky expository dialog.

Okay, so I'm a sucker for the made-for-TV horror and sci-fi movies of the 70s. Life was good back then -- my parents broke down and got a color TV, so I could enjoy my favorite late night horror hosts, The Ghoul and Hoolihan and Big Chuck, in living color as they broadcast from the great metropolis of Cleveland.

When I wasn't looking forward to the hosted horror shows, the networks were tantalizing me with their movie of the week offerings that so often included horror, mystery-thrillers and sci-fi. The network execs had finally figured out that broadcasting movies in prime time could be lucrative, and by the early '70s, their own made-for-TV features were capturing eyeballs and in some cases generating eye-popping ratings. For example, as the vampire Janos Skorzeny was draining the blood of Las Vegans in the original airing of The Night Stalker in 1972, he was also racking up a 33.2 rating and 54 share -- monstrously large ratings almost unheard of for scripted TV at the time. Fortunately, the Night Stalker's success guaranteed that there would be many more TV fright features to come.

When I started this blog with the mission to revisit the nearly forgotten B horror and sci-fi flicks of my misspent youth, made-for-TV fright fare was in the mix, but my go-to titles were the generally low hanging fruit of things already in my DVD collection or readily available in cheap public domain collections. Over the years, the list of TV movies available on demand has grown exponentially, especially on YouTube (and with an honorable mention nod to Tubi). It's almost to the point that if you can remember it, you can watch it -- just don't expect a pristine copy in all cases. As a result, I've been wandering the made-for-TV corridors more and more: sample some of the posts here.

FYI, the subject of today's post is not one of those movies I recall fondly from my days in front of the Magnavox console TV. Somehow, The Dead Don't Die flew over my head, under my radar, and around whatever TV guide I was using, because I was completely unaware of the existence of this movie until recently. To further obscure matters, it shares a title with with the very peculiar Jim Jarmusch zombie film starring Bill Murray and Adam Driver (itself rapidly receding from collective memory, as it did not connect with audiences).

I think I was looking up the Jarmusch film when I stumbled, zombie-like, across a reference to the 1975 film and became intrigued. The cast was certainly interesting, with veterans Ray Milland, Ralph Meeker and Joan Blondell, eye candy in the persons of Linda Cristal and George Hamilton, and the always creepy character actor Reggie Nalder mixing things up in a horror tale set in 1930s Chicago.

"What's not to like?" I thought to myself (readers of this blog will probably understand, if not necessarily members of the population at large). Well, to trot out a time-worn cliche, the result is somewhat less than the sum of its parts. Some of the parts are reasonably effective and atmospheric, but we'll get to that in short order.

George "Crispy Colonel" Hamilton plays Don Drake, a sailor who has taken leave to visit his brother, who unfortunately is on death row for the murder of his wife. Before being executed in Old Sparky, the brother (Jerry Douglas) swears his innocence and gets Don to promise that he will find the real murderer and clear his name.

Don is no private investigator, but reasonably, he starts his quest at the scene of the crime -- the Loveland Ballroom, where brother Ralph and his wife had been participating in a dance marathon, and where he had been found passed out in a back room next to his wife's body.

The ballroom owner Jim Moss (Ray Milland) is cooperative and sympathetic, even giving Don the money that his brother had earned in the competition. Something seems off however, when one of the near walking dead marathon contestants drops in a heap on the floor, and Moss roughly tells his attendants to get her out of there before genially resuming his conversation with Don. (For the uninitiated, dance marathons that lasted for days on end were an exploitative fad in the grim days of the the Great Depression, with desperate contestants willing to literally run themselves into the ground for the slim hope of winning prize money. They figure prominently in the celebrated novel and film adaptation of They Shoot Horses, Don't They?. The backdrop of the marathon in The Dead Don't Die helps set up its dark atmosphere and prefigures later developments.)

Don Drake (George Hamilton) has a conversation with ballroom owner Jim Moss (Ray Milland) as dance marathon contestants shuffle around like zombies in the background.

Moss sends Don on his way by suggesting he track down Frankie, the trainer who found Ralph with his wife's body -- although Frankie has mysteriously disappeared. At Ralph's gravesite, Don is shadowed by a mysterious and beautiful woman dressed in black. As Don is dining at his hotel, the mystery woman, Vera LaVelle (Linda Cristal), approaches Don and begs him to leave Chicago immediately for his own good. As they're conversing, Don glances out the window and sees what he thinks is his brother Ralph standing in the street.

Linda Cristal as Vera LaVelle looks absolutely funereal. 

Don rushes outside, following Ralph to a shop door, where he disappears. Don barges into the place, an antiques shop, where he is confronted by an old woman, Levenia (Joan Blondell) and the creepy-looking shop owner Perdido (Reggie Nalder). They insist no one came into the shop. Convinced they're hiding something, Don struggles with Perdido, who hits his head hard as the pair fall to the floor. Levenia insists Don has killed Perdido, and while he's looking for signs of life, the woman brains him with a lamp.

Don regains consciousness at Vera's place. The next morning, Don discovers Vera hurriedly packing to leave. She pulls a gun on him, which he grabs. Vera tells the disbelieving sailor that he is in grave danger from Varek, a voodoo zombie master who is enslaving the dead for his own evil purposes.

When Don insists upon meeting Varek, the pair take a cab to a funeral home (an appropriate enough place for a zombie-maker to hang out). The attending undertaker has never heard the name Varek, but directs Don to a room where Perdido's body is on display. As Don approaches the body in the casket, a hideous, rasping voice that seems to be coming from the body identifies itself as Varek, whereupon  the corpse reaches out and grabs Don by the throat.

Tearing himself away, Don is aghast as the dead (?) Perdido climbs out of the coffin and shambles toward him. The panicked man fires several shots into Perdido, to no avail, and then flees the room. 

Perdido (Reggie Nalder) decides to get up and greet the mourners at his own funeral.

Don breathlessly reports the strange events to Lt. Reardon (Ralph Meeker) at the local police station, who wearily decides he has to check it out. At the antiques shop Don is shocked to see that Perdido is very much alive and kicking. Reardon figures he's got a nutcase on his hands.

WARNING: Before you scroll zombie-like to the next paragraph be aware that there are spoilers ahead.

Before all is said and done and the last zombie has stopped shambling, our intrepid protagonist

• has another encounter with Vera, who tells him that she is one of Varek's zombies sent to kill him, but she has broken the Master's spell by falling in love;
• travels with Moss to the cemetery where Ralph is buried to dig up his body;
• is saved from another zombie attack by Frankie the trainer, who reveals that it is he who actually killed Ralph's wife while under Varek's spell;
• finally confronts the Zombie Master in an abandoned warehouse (that also doubles as a zombie cold storage unit), and learns of his plan to use a zombie army to take control of the city and eventually the world.

Ray Milland makes a wardrobe and attitude adjustment for the final act of the film.

If this sounds to you like an overheated Poverty Row B programmer on the order of something like King of the Zombies (1941), with a mad zombie-maker hell bent on world domination, you're not far off. The Dead Don't Die also indulges in a few film noir cliches, including a protagonist on a mission to clear a loved one's name, and a femme fatale who can't decide whether to kill him or kiss him. The plethora of scenes that take place in the dead of night further enhances the noirish atmosphere. 

The 1930s setting is somewhat curious -- the plot could just have easily fit into a contemporary setting. One wonders if the producers had ready access to period sets and costumes and chose the time period to set it off from the other TV movies that were being churned out. On the other hand, the Depression-era dance marathon, with its weary, desperate contestants shuffling like zombies around the dance floor, nicely foreshadows events to come.

Don's unjustly executed brother Ralph (Jerry Douglas) is somewhat miffed at being used as an unwitting pawn.

Unfortunately, fighting against the film's dark atmosphere is the casting of George Hamilton, whose fabulous California tan sticks out like a bronzed sore thumb in a night world populated with pallid zombies. Hamilton could be effective with the right material -- see my post on The Power (1967 -- but in this he wears a constant pained expression as he stumbles around, dazed and confused (at least his pencil mustache fits with the time period).

Playing coy with the villain role is veteran Ray Milland, who won an Oscar for his portrayal of an alcoholic in The Lost Weekend (1945), and in The Dead Don't Die portrays a madman drunk on power. Milland was one of those actors who didn't know how to quit working, and consequently over the years appeared in many beloved B horror and sci-fi movies, including X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963; see my post here) and The Thing with Two Heads (1972), among many others. 

The director, Curtis Harrington, recalled how he offered on the set to burnish Milland's image, but the old pro would have none of it:

"Ray Milland was well past his Academy Award-winning days, but I felt very privileged to work with such a distinguished actor. He was still very handsome and would have looked even more so if he had allowed us to put a toupee on him. But his attitude was the he should be accepted as he was, so he played the part entirely bald. He was open to accepting whatever parts came his way at this point in his career. He told me that he had been talking to his friend James Stewart, who expressed envy at the fact that Ray was working and he was not. James Stewart was still the bigger star, and I doubt anyone would have had the temerity to offer him a part in an ordinary television show." [Curtis Harrington, Nice Guys Don't Work in Hollywood: The Adventures of an Aesthete in the Movie Business, Drag City Incorporated, 2013, p. 172.]

Don Drake finally gets it: the dead really don't die.

Harrington also employed two other veterans, Joan Blondell and Ralph Meeker, presumably for their name value, but both are wasted in bit parts. Joan is just an appendage to Reggie Nalder's character Perdido, but at least as an actress whose heyday was in the '30s, she fits into the period ambience.

Meeker, who was so intense as PI Mike Hammer in Kiss Me Deadly (1955), is reduced 20 years later to playing a stereotypical Irish cop whose function is to give the protagonist the stinkeye when he insists that there are dead guys walking around. 

Whatever chills The Dead Don't Die manages to conjure up is entirely due to boogeyman Reggie Nalder's presence. The Austrian-born actor suffered facial burns as a young man, which contributed to a distinctive, gaunt look that made him a natural for certain parts, especially menacing ones. Nalder appeared in a small but key role in Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), and is perhaps best known for his work in the infamous exploitation film Mark of the Devil (1970), as well as for the Nosferatu-like vampire in the mini-series Salem's Lot (1979).

My heart would leap for joy when I saw ads like this.

For better or worse, Nalder didn't need much makeup to look like a walking corpse. The scene in which Varek's rasping voice seems to be coming from Perdido's dead body lying in the coffin, its mouth stretched back in a deathly rictus, induces real goosebumps. Knowing a good thing when they saw it, the producers recycled Perdido footage in a later nightmare sequence, which ends with a hackneyed shot of a hand breaking through the cemetery dirt to clutch Don's ankle.

Less effective in her part is leading zombie lady Linda Cristal. She starts out mysterious and enigmatic, but the Argentinian actress struggles with her thick accent in relating her incredible and complicated backstory to the disbelieving protagonist. Her character's final exit should have been one of the film's highlights, but crude practical effects and editing veer it into unintentional comedy. Let's just say that the scene brings new meaning to the phrase, "smoldering looks."

Suspense and horror master Robert "Psycho" Bloch wrote the teleplay from his short story. With its clueless, meandering protagonist and clunky expository dialog that slows down the proceedings, the film is not a highlight in the esteemed author's resume. Bloch would go on to contribute better material to such classic TV anthology shows as Boris Karloff's Thriller, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Hammer's Journey to the Unknown, Night Gallery, and Tales from the Darkside, among others. Bloch himself quipped, "Two years later we [Curtis Harrington] teamed up again for another TV movie, The Dead Don't Die. Maybe they don't but the show did." [RobertBloch.net]

The film may not have been a hit at the time, but over the years it has refused to die, clawing itself out of the grave of forgotten TV movies and into places like YouTube with the help of appreciative fans. If only for corpse-like Reggie Nalder menacing some familiar veteran actors, you should check it out.