As I near my 6th decade on this planet, most of that being an obsessive horror fan, it’s really easy to slip into the grumpy old man mode these days, telling younger horror fans to get off my lawn. Even conventions are nowhere near what they used to be, with more about paying for overpriced autographs and collecting toys than caring about the actual movies themselves.
See how easy that was?
But the other night, I witnessed something that made this grinch of a horror fan’s withered heart grow 3 times in size.
The Music Box Theatre in Chicago is a place I’ve been going to for over 30 years, mainly for midnight screenings but also to some of their film series they’ve done over the years. Back in the ‘90s when I would go to something like a midnight screening of Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond (1981) or Toshiharu Ikeda’s Evil Dead Trap (1988), there’d be maybe 10 people there, and most of them snickering during the screening.
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As many conventions and movie events that I’d go to every year, it was pretty rare when I would see someone wearing a Paul Naschy T-Shirt. For two reasons really. While he had a strong following, it wasn’t as strong as it should be. Plus, even more important, there just hardly any Naschy shirts available. So I decided to try and change that and had my friend and uber talented artist Putrid (aka Matt Carr) do an original Naschy piece for me that I could put on some T-shifts, which is the artwork on the right.