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.