Neil Autry and his Amazing Shirts

Neil Autry, Proprietor

Y Spy: Who are you and why are you here?

Neil Autry: My name is Neil Autry, and I own Western Evil, and we are currently running a booth at HorrorHound Weekend.

Y Spy: Did you make these cross-stitches yourself?

Autry: Yes. My girlfriend sews these professionally, and she’s going to be opening a website for them soon. She’s done them all by hand, and all original designs, each unique in their own way.

Y Spy: Did you make the shirts yourselves as well?

Autry: Yeah. I do all my own designing. I don’t silk screen them; I send them out, and they’re sent back to me. We have such great designs as the “C.H.U.D. Nelson” and “Your mom swallows period blood.”

[At this point, I noticed the C.H.U.D. Nelson t-shirt, which features the head of a cannibalistic underdweller on the body of the bad boy from “The Breakfast Club.” For a few seconds, I’m stunned by its magnificence.]

Y Spy: So how did you get Elvira’s tits in a box?

Autry: She actually posted a thing on her website connecting to her eBay store. She was having an estate sale; she sold a lot of rare items and autographs. Among the things that caught my eye was the fact that she was selling a life-cast bust of her tits. I paid $198 for Elvira’s tits, and really only had to outbid one person. It’s completely bizarre; you’d think something as historical as Elvira’s tits would bring more than $198.

When I purchased them on eBay they were said to be from the “Haunted Hills” Elvira, but I recently had them signed and she informed me that they were from “Allan Quartermain and the Lost City of Gold.”

Y Spy: How awesome of a marketing technique has charging to see Elvira’s tits worked out?

Autry: I have had a lot of people buying $2 stickers and $1.25 pins just to take a look at Elvira’s tits. It’s working out, slowly but surely. I definitely made my money back.

Y Spy: What scares you?

Autry: Death! Actually dying.

Best for Job Interviews, Bar Mitzvahs, and Funerals.

C.H.U.D. Nelson and his friends can be found at www.westernevil.com.

August 9, 2010
Categories: Q&A, Y Spy . Tags: HorrorHound Weekend 2010 . Author: Y . Comments: Leave a comment

Mister Hamilton

Mr. Hamilton, Artisan, Sideshow Performer, and Owner of a Sweet Mustache

Y Spy: Who are you and why are you here?

Mr. Hamilton: My name is Mr. Hamilton, and I am a sideshow performer. I’m here to perform tonight and sell my artwork.

Y Spy: What do you do in your performances?

Hamilton: I do hula-hoop tricks; I put hands and other body parts into mousetraps and rattraps, have shit smashed on my body with sledgehammers. But mainly I talk.

Y Spy: What do you talk about?

Hamilton: Whatever comes to my mind at the moment. I’m called a talker; it’s kind of an emcee, but goofier.

Y Spy: Like a carnival barker?

Hamilton: No, a barker is a hack. We look down on the barkers. With sideshow talkers, there’s an outside talker and an inside talker. The inside talker is more of an intimate emcee and explains what’s happening with the show as you’re watching it. They do a lot of improvisation, cause they’ve gotta work with live audiences, drunks, and morons – and also some really educated, fun people. So you gotta play off of them.

Y Spy: When did you begin pursuing your interests?

Hamilton: I’ve always been a talker. I’ve done a lot of improvisational theater, a lot of street performing. I’ve always been a bit of a ham. The artwork I’ve always done as well, and I realized that I can do these shows and be creative and combine it all.

The first time I put my dick in a mousetrap was last year. We had this ongoing thing where for a hundred dollars I would do it. We played a fetish night at a gay bar in Champagne-Urbana. We performed at this thing, my old troupe and myself. We did the usual offer, and no one’s taking us up on it, when a little voice in the back goes: “Hold on, I’m going to the cash machine!” At that point I realized that I have to do this! I thought about the logistics and physics of it, and thankfully it went off without a hitch.

Y Spy: You didn’t take any practice runs before?

Hamilton: Nope! I’d been putting them on my tongue. The rat traps are very dangerous, though; I would not put my dick in a rat trap. With a rat trap, if you do it right, it’ll hurt like hell. If you do it wrong, you’ll fuck yourself up.

Y Spy: How do you go about making your art?

Hamilton: These are original paintings, and then I took my paintings and made a laser print. These are called bas-reliefs, which are images that pop from a background pieces. The backgrounds are just pieces of wood with fur and bits of fabric on them. With the front, I color copy the painting and use a template to cut everything out, and then I hit it with glitter glue, because everything looks better when it looks like a transvestite took a shit on it.

Y Spy: I’m in full agreement.

Hamilton: You should have seen my prom date! I looked great afterwards! Couldn’t walk right for a week, but I was shiny, like a vampire in the sun!

Y Spy: What do you do when you’re not working conventions?

Hamilton: I’m from Austin, Texas. I emcee once a month at a thing called “Sessions,” which is like an Austin City Limits showcase. I also work at a place called the Museum of the Weird. In future shows I’m going to be traveling with the Oddity Museum. I tour quite a bit with my sideshow, which varies from member to member. I’ve yet to tour with the same person twice.

Y Spy: Is there a reason behind that?

Hamilton: I am a fucking taskmaster! Nah. Circus performers do things called spots. You do a spot somewhere. They are more transient, and they’ll get offers, because there’s not many of us. A lot of people do it, but sideshow performing is a lot like burlesque or poetry. It’s often really horrible, or else it’s all right, or else it’s fucking amazing. There’s a giant gap between all right and amazing, so a good performer is often in high demand. I work with people from Coney Island, and for my next tour I’m probably going to be performing with one or two ex-Jim Rose Circus people.

Y Spy: So you just don’t want to be stuck in one place.

Hamilton: Yes, and it’s also about coordinating. If you’ve ever had a band, doing shows with four consistent people is difficult. One guy has a job and a house, one guy’s a big asshole and no fun to travel with, and another guy’s on drugs. It’s the same thing for sideshow performers, but we have more places to go.

For this particular performance, I’m working with a gentleman who does contact juggling, and I took him up from Texas with me. I’m going to be collaborating with one of the Horror Hosts; he’s gonna be eating razor blades. Another Horror Host from Dark Carnival will be doing a blockhead routine; we’ll be hammering nails into his head. The band Shriek is going to be doing some incidental music behind us. It’s nice to be able to collaborate.

Y Spy: How easy is it to keep your life running?

Hamilton: You have to have the right attitude. Is it easy? Probably not, but it’s all I do. If you love doing something, whatever it is, you’ll have a better chance of success at that thing than anything else. If you hate something, even if you’re successful, you’ll be resentful.

Do I make a lot of money? Sometimes. Most times, not. It’s a feast or famine situation, but I’m always doing what I love doing, so I don’t notice the time going by. We were on the train coming up, and it was a 23 hour train ride from Texas to St. Louis, where we caught a ride with a friend to here. And the gentleman I’m with, he’s bored shitless, while I’m like, that was the shortest train ride ever! But the whole time, I was painting and finishing up my artwork. I didn’t even notice.

Y Spy: What can I expect tonight?

Hamilton: I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised, hopefully shocked, possibly amazed.

Mr. Hamilton can be found at www.museumoftheweird.com, and on Facebook under the fan page “Mister Hamilton.”

August 9, 2010
Categories: Q&A, Y Spy . Tags: HorrorHound Weekend 2010 . Author: Y . Comments: Leave a comment

The Zombie Rights Campaign

The Zombie Rights Campaign

Y Spy: Who are you and why are you here?

Zombie Rights Guy: We are the Zombie Rights Campaign. We are here to promote the cause of zombie rights and try to reduce the anti-zombie hostility in the horror community.

Y Spy: What is the history of zombie oppression?

Guy: Zombies were long used as manual labor by voodoo witch doctors, and then the U.S. government created a lot of them with secret programs and chemicals, usually for cannon fodder. Recently, they’re something you take out your aggression on. If there’s an apocalypse, you blame the zombies. You occupy a mall and start shooting everyone around who doesn’t have a heartbeat. It’s really unfair.

Zombie Rights Girl: You make a game out of discovering how many you can kill, in how many different ways. These are people. This is not how you treat people.

Y Spy: Will mankind always be looking for a scapegoat? Did the Civil Rights campaigns of the 60’s force our society to find another target?

Guy: Zombies are a convenient target. If you can’t oppress the living, people are generally willing to oppress the dead.

Y Spy: Like Jesus!

Guy: He did come back from the dead after three days. We would let him into the Zombie Rights Campaign!

Girl: That is an explanation, but it’s not an excuse. This is another stage in the process of trying to make it so that we give everyone an equal shake, an equal share of respect.

Y Spy: Are zombie rights similar to animal rights?

Girl: That is a harmful stereotype. We have this idea that’s perpetrated by the media, by movies, by George Romero especially, that zombies are mindless automatons; all they want is to eat our flesh. People don’t realize that zombies are more than the desire for brains. They have higher desires, like anyone. They enjoy art, they enjoy culture, they want to live, and they want to have families. They want to have all the things that we do, but they’re not allowed.

Y Spy: Is George Romero the Glenn Beck of zombies?

Girl: I think that’s giving Glenn Beck too much credit.

Guy: George Romero’s been around a lot longer, to be fair.

Y Spy: But in “Day of the Dead” he did make an intelligent zombie. He did seem to open himself up to the idea that they were more than just rabid animals.

Girl: It’s a step in the right direction, but we haven’t seen anything more, from him or media in general.

Guy: It’s a small step forward, to go from zombies that you just kill to zombies that you lock in a room and teach repetitive antics.

Y Spy: How did you feel about the ending to “Shaun of the Dead,” when zombies became megamart employees?

Girl: That’s sort of admitting the possibility that they can be useful, but they’re being used. They’re not being treated as people who went out and got a job. And there are the other depictions of them being used for reality shows. We wouldn’t do that to living people, but it’s alright to do it to the undead.

Guy: It’s clear that Shaun knows better, because he protects his zombie friend and they play games together. They share a living environment; they share video games and fun.

Girl: This is another bright spot, but those bright spots are few.

Y Spy: Why do zombies never eat dogs in movies?

Guy: Maybe dogs aren’t tasty. Some people eat dogs, so I don’t know why zombies would be averse to it.

Girl: Maybe there haven’t been movies with Korean zombies.

Y Spy: That brings up another idea: that zombies only eat humans because that’s all there is to eat in an urban setting. There aren’t any cows in the middle of a city street. You go for what’s available, like what people do when they go to McDonald’s.

Girl: But why can’t zombies just go to McDonald’s?

Guy: They wouldn’t be allowed in McDonald’s. It would be a violation of the health code.

Y Spy: But a smelly guy can go to McDonald’s. There are some pretty rotten people who can get in while still alive.

Guy: But then we’re getting into the issue of passing for a living person, and a zombie shouldn’t have to pass for a living person to order a Big Mac.

Y Spy: How can people help your campaign?

Girl: We’d just like to get the word out so people start thinking about how they feel about and act toward zombies, and whether those attitudes are at all justified.

Y Spy: Is there any danger that acceptance will turn into patronization? Will there be people who befriend zombies not because of who they are, but because they’re zombies?

Girl: That’s a possibility, and another thing we have to worry about. But we’re not even to that point yet, which is perhaps worse.

Guy: Maybe someday Stephen Colbert will have his one zombie friend along with his one black friend. Even that would be a step forward.

Y Spy: Would zombies have a place in a Gene Roddenberry Star Trek utopia?

Guy: Well, Spock came back from the dead!

The Zombie Rights Campaign can be found at www.zombierightscampaign.org.

August 9, 2010
Categories: Q&A, Y Spy . Tags: HorrorHound Weekend 2010 . Author: Y . Comments: Leave a comment

Emil Hyde

Emil Hyde, Filmmaker

Y Spy: Who are you and why are you here?

Emil Hyde: My name is Emil Hyde, and I’m here at HorrorHound Weekend promoting our film, “The Landlord!”

Y Spy: What is “The Landlord” about?

Hyde: “The Landlord” is a heartwarming tale of a young man who inherits a demon-infested apartment building from his devil-worshipping parents, and with it the responsibility for finding new tenants for the demons to devour, and cleaning up the mess when they’re done!

Y Spy: Is this your first time as a director?

Hyde: Yes. This is my first time directing a real movie. We had a few cases where it was just us running around a backyard with camcorders. Those don’t count.

Y Spy: What is the difference between then and now?

Hyde: Money. And people.

Y Spy: How much did it cost to make this movie?

Hyde: This movie cost an affordable $20,000 to produce, paid largely on credit cards. The other ones cost about $175.

Y Spy: What is your take on horror?

Hyde: You can’t watch a “horror” movie; you’re always watching an individual movie. You might be watching our film, which some might call a horror-comedy. I don’t know how one can say: “I don’t like horror-comedies,” when there’s probably one out there that’s good. I generally don’t like remakes, but occasionally you’ll get something like the remake of “The Hills have Eyes” that kind of kick ass. There’s an audience for the genre, and as for the art itself, there’s good films and bad films.

Y Spy: What has the reaction been thus far to “The Landlord?”

Hyde: We started showing it at film festivals in August, and as with any little film that doesn’t have the Hollywood bullhorn people were looking at us as if we were trying to sell them a vial of the Ebola virus. But as word got out that it was a really funny film – almost a sitcom version of “Hellraiser” – and not just another backyard zombie film, it’s been getting easier and easier to sell.

Y Spy: Would you be okay with making a Hollywood film, considering all its restrictions?

Hyde: You’re dealing with some major restrictions when you’re working on the independent level. Yes. I’d absolutely take a job doing a Hollywood movie. I’d figure out how to fuck with the system later.

Y Spy: Is there anything coming down the pipe?

Hyde: Yeah, we’re working on a couple of projects. One that you’ll probably be hearing about soon is called “The Dog Cage.” We’ll be producing a graphic novel first and a movie later. You should be hearing about that this fall.

The Landlord

“The Landlord” is available now. More information can be found at www.thelandlordmovie.com.

August 9, 2010
Categories: Q&A, Y Spy . Tags: HorrorHound Weekend 2010 . Author: Y . Comments: Leave a comment

Sean Clark, with Hare Krishna Zombie

Sean Clark, Filmmaker, Writer

Y Spy: Who are you and why are you here?

Sean Clark: My name is Sean Clark, and I’m here because my parents had sex.

Y Spy: Why are you in this room? Same reason?

Clark: No, they had nothing to do with that part. I’m here promoting my movie, “The Black Waters of Echo’s Pond,” which I wrote and produced. It’s coming out on about 350 screens. I also write for HorrorHound Magazine, who is putting on this show. So I’m here pulling double duty.

Y Spy: What is the movie about?

Clark: About 90 minutes. [Punny laughter] That never gets old. It’s about nine friends who every year get together and take a trip. This year they rent a Victorian house on a private island. Through a series of circumstances they uncover a hidden room in the basement of the house that has all these artifacts from an excavation in the early 1900s in Turkey. One of the things they find appears to be a game, so they take it upstairs and start playing it. As they play the game it turns them against each other. It’s kind of a possession thing, but it affects everyone differently. What it ends up being are nine friends on an island, stalking each other.

Y Spy: Is it more of a psychological thriller or a straight horror film?

Clark: It’s got a lot of elements of everything. There’s a lot of psychological horror, there’s a thriller aspect, there’s a slasher aspect, and a supernatural aspect. It’s different. That’s what I think fans will appreciate. It isn’t the same bullshit that they’re used to being spoonfed. I’ve had real positive feedback. One of the best compliments [I’ve received] is that it’s original. It’s not a remake; it’s something new.

Y Spy: So what’s your take on the current state of horror?

Clark: Fear is an adrenaline rush. That’s why we love to be scared. We love to be able to go to a movie and get the shit scared out of us, but be safe. Nowadays it is fucking hard to be scared in a movie. I am so disconnected, or perhaps inundated with horror that it’s very hard to get scared. The last movie I saw that genuinely freaked me out was when I went to a screening of “Session 9” in a big empty theater. It’s one of my favorite movies. It’s really hard to scare people nowadays, and I hope I can achieve that in my career.

There’s a lot of good stuff coming out, more independent. All the big studios are interested in now is capitalizing on a title and remaking it. They’re not even remaking the movies so much as just taking the name. Some of them are nothing like the original. They’re pointless. And it’s paying off! At the end of the day, all they care about is money. The filmmaker has integrity, but he’s at the mercy of the people who are financing it.

Y Spy: Is it harder to scare audiences because modern horror films are putting less emphasis on characterization?

Clark: I agree with that. One thing you will notice about “Black Waters,” something that I am very strict about: I am big, big, big on character development. The first 45 minutes of this movie almost plays out like “The Breakfast Club.” It’s people sitting around, and you’re getting to know them and their relationships. You genuinely care about these characters when the shit starts to hit the fan. That’s important to me.

Let’s take the last “Friday the 13^th” remake. You didn’t give a shit about any of those people. When they start getting offed, it means nothing to you. When I’m in a slasher film, I wanna know that I want the bitch to get killed, I wanna know that I want the cool guy to live. It frustrates me when I see movies that are just gratuitous. I want people to care.

Y Spy: How was writing and producing this movie?

Clark: It was completely independent. We had investors, and for the most part they left us alone. There was nobody breathing down our neck. We did have a schedule, and it did get tight at times. There were a couple things we had to comply to, put a couple of people in the movie who they wanted. Beyond that they let us do what we wanted to do. It was a lot of freedom. As a writer, I was completely spoiled. I’ll probably never have an experience as good as this again.

Y Spy: What is your writing experience, and how did you end up writing this film?

Clark: I’ve been trying to get my original scripts off the ground since about 1999. This is my first theatrical. I’ve written stuff that’s been optioned, almost was made. This is the first thing that’s actually been made. It’s finally happening. The experience of writing it was great. The constant rewrites were challenging, especially rewrites during filming, which happened a lot. There was a major location that we lost at the 11^th hour that really changed things. I had to come up with something new. Beyond that it was great.

As far as writing for HorrorHound, it’s a completely different thing. I’m not so much a journalist for HorrorHound; I write a specific feature article called “Horror’s Hallowed Grounds,” which is a retrospective on the filming locations of a classic film. I pick one per issue and do that. I’m not having to interview people and go to press junkets and screenings. I did that before; I used to write for Dread Central and bloodydisgusting.com. I did that for years and am trying to get away from that, doing more of my own creative thing.

Y Spy: What are you planning next?

Clark: I’m writing a script called “Sugar,” which is a horror film. I want that to be my directorial debut. I’ve been finishing the “Nightmare on Elm Street” episode of “Horror’s Hallowed Grounds,” the TV version of it. That’s gonna be on the new “Nightmare on Elm Street” documentary, “Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy.” That’s coming out at the end of April. It’s all filmed; we’re just editing right now.

Y Spy: What frightens you?

Clark: Not a whole lot, to be honest. I guess I have a fear of heights. I mean super high. You’ll never catch me sky-diving.

The Black Waters of Echo's Pond

“The Black Waters of Echo’s Pond” is out now. Visit www.theblackwaters.com for more details.

August 9, 2010
Categories: Q&A, Y Spy . Tags: HorrorHound Weekend 2010 . Author: Y . Comments: Leave a comment