Sunday, July 28, 2013

Grindhouse Girls: Cinema’s Hardest Working Women

All right, friends, thanks to some more intrepid sleuthing, the introduction to Lianne's book has been uncovered. There are a few surprising things here but it's not surprising to find that several sentences have lifted from other sources. Much of this intro is a memoir. Fortunately, that seems to be original. Yet, there seems to be some question of the legitimacy of Lianne's memories. She talks about a dungeon-like rental shop "full of VHS and BETAs" though the Beta format would have been phased out well before Lianne's youth. There are a few specialty shops that dealt in Beta long after the heyday of the format (I'm thinking of Thomas Video in Clawson) so it is possible, albeit not probable. There are also a few odd phrasings and malapropisms that seem to be her own.

Sources are listed below.

As a writer, I’m very attached to Grindhouse Girls. It’s my first book, and it showcases an era in cinematic history that I’ve been dedicated to, and passionate about for several years now: the 1970s, and early 1980s. Growing up, I was the only sister to three brothers; horror films were a regular weekend routine – required and vital. My father would take us to the suburban rental store to visit the creepiest in-shop horror house any of us could ever imagine. It looked like a dungeon, a terrifying little room in the middle of the rental shop, full of VHS and BETAs like Chopping Mall and The Prowler ready and waiting for our living room television screen. To be honest with you, I can’t remember whether I really loved the films at first, or if I just watched them so that my older brothers would think I was cool. Reflecting back now as an adult, I know it’s the former.

As a student enrolled in the prestigious cinema studies program at the University of Toronto, most of my fellow students were writing essays about German expressionism, Italian neo-realism, and French new wave. Alternatively, I was writing about the break down of family values in Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Nixon’s Watergate scandal in relation to Damiano’s Deep Throat. I continued to write about exploitation cinema and more prominently, the theatres where these films were shown - the grindhouses, which were low grade movie houses named after the burlesque theaters located on 42nd street in New York City, where 'bump n' grind' dancing was the main attraction.

After starting my own website, and reviewing films for several horror websites, I started writing for Fangoria, FearNet, Famous Monsters of Filmland and Video Watchdog. My first feature in Fangoria (issue #299) was an interview with Sage Stallone of Grindhouse Releasing, the undisputed leader in exploitation distribution. I also interviewed one of my favorite exploitation actresses, Lynn Lowry, and that is how Grindhouse Girls started. Lowry is one of cinema’s hardest working leading ladies, and while there are several books on actresses like Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly, there are very few on exploitation actresses, who are the backbone of the films they starred in. Without these women, exploitation and horror cinema would not be the same. Grindhouse Girls profiles, celebrates, and tells the story of these actresses; women that took great risks to get ahead in their career, who stripped naked, or had their hair matted with stage blood, who took chances on directors that didn’t have much money or means to create their visions. These women are outstanding, beautiful, and outrageously bold.

Extreme images of blood, sex, and violence (coined as “torture porn”) were extremely popular within horror films in the 2000s – movies that depicted nudity, torture, mutilation, and sadism. For example, Eli Roth’s Hostel, James Wan’s Saw, Greg McLean’s Wolf Creek, etc. However, torture porn was not exactly a new idea. The exploitation actresses featured in this book have seen it all before, they were the catalysts of the original torture porn movement, which is essentially a subgenre of exploitation cinema. Quentin Tarantino (Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction, Inglorious Basterds) and Robert Rodriguez (From Dusk Till Dawn, Sin City) helped to make exploitation popular again by releasing a double feature that included nostalgic movie trailers entitled Grindhouse. Additionally, grindhouse regulars I Spit On Your Grave (1978), and The Last House On The Left (1972) have seen relatively successful remakes in the last few years. If low art is becoming high art in today’s society and in our movie theatres, then there is no better time to acknowledge the actresses that gave us everything that most Hollywood actresses could not: sex, drugs, violence, shock, rock, and rebellion. This book aims to celebrate the work of seventeen different exploitation actresses as well as the films they starred in. I believe that these actresses and their work can be viewed as feminist or have empowering feminist qualities. That being said, I am not necessarily arguing that the films they starred in are feminist as well. An empowering character or actress in a film is a much different than an entire film being rendered as feminist. In exploitation filmmaking one cannot forget that these films are deemed exploitation for a reason. However, for contemporary female (and male) spectators, our understanding of exploitation actresses and the characters they played in 1970s-80s exploitation cinema can be read as positive and progressive, thus rendering them as feminist both symbols and icons. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, I give you – the Grindhouse Girls: Cinema’s Hardest Working Women.

Chapter One: Women And Exploitation Cinema: The Goddesses Of The Grindhouse

Exploitation films are consistently one of the most popular and, at the same time, the most disreputable of Hollywood genres. For years, critics and film theorists branded exploitation as simple trash unworthy of critical appraise, and many were swept under the rug completely, without a second glance. Exploitation films are hard to define, but generally the films involve exploiting what is often considered lurid subject matter: violence, sex, drugs, nudity, gore, and anything out of the ordinary. The films are sensationalist, and they lurk amongst the boundaries of acceptability in terms of visual style, political and cultural opinions, and sophistication. Exploitation cinema also preys on our worst nightmares and gives our biggest fears a plot line: rape, violence, excessive bloodshed, Nazism, and cannibalism, to name a few. Most exploitation films are of low production quality, in every sense. The sound is often dubbed over, you occasionally catch an extra cameraman on-screen, and although the story leaves very little to the imagination, many exploitation films focus on shock-shots rather than cohesive narratives and continuity. Despite everything that is “wrong” with exploitation cinema, these films have always found audiences, and continue to have a large fan base. Exploitation cinema embraces and appeals to the darker side of our psyches; the films never hold back, and they never deny us any pleasure, no matter the form. …. Recent work in film scholarship has made exploitation and sleaze cinema worthy of academic investigation. Film fans and cinephiles often champion obscure and low budget filmmaking as being closer to the “true” cinema. Film theorist Pauline Kael (Trash, Art, and the Movies, 1968) states that “after all the years of stale, stupid, acted out stories, with less and less for me in them, I am desperate to know something, desperate for facts, for information, for faces of non-actors and for knowledge of how people live – for revelations, not for the little bits of show-business detail worked up for us by show-business minds who got them from the same movies we’re tired of… Trash has given us an appetite for art.”1 Exploitation cinema is now enjoying a resurrection, with a new, unique, youthful, and film-loving audience demographic. It is impossible to talk about the golden age of exploitation films, and the effect these films had on spectators without referencing the theatres the films were screened in: the grindhouses. Grindhouse is a term given to theatres in North America that screened mainly exploitation features. The theatres were named after the burlesque “bump-ngrind” shows that took place on 42nd street in New York City. When motion pictures became prominent and popular than the old vaudeville stage performances, many of these entertainment houses changed over to feature movie double bills, and trailers for future releases. Thus, in the late 1960s, the bump-n-grind houses became the exploitation movie theatres that were referred to as the grindhouses.

Grindhouse exhibition allowed spectators to undergo in the theatre what they were subjected to on screen, creating an entirely different experience from that at major theatre and multiplexes today. Located within the esteemed Broadway theatre area in Times Square was America’s most notorious red-light district. Its main section was known as “The Deuce”, a tiny strip of grimy lights and theatres that spanned 42nd street during exploitation’s golden age. The Deuce had wall-to-wall grindhouses with large auditoriums, balconies, big screens, velvet curtains, and old opera style seating2. The Deuce grindhouses were showcases for the wildest and most extreme films in cinematic history, many of which will be further discussed in this book. There were several reasons to venture out to the grindhouses - to score drugs, engage in foolish one night sexual behavior, to be a part of a diverse crowd, or to view a double bill of the wildest films imaginable. However, the grindhouses had an attraction even more powerful and mesmerizing that could not been seen anywhere else: onscreen actresses who kicked ass, stripped naked, were often covered in stage blood, and weren’t afraid to get down and dirty for the sake of their acting careers - without these ladies, the films would not exist. … But what is it that makes these exploitation films so appealing to modern audiences? And what is it about exploitation films that are extraordinarily appealing to females? In the 1970s, both men and women were lined up around the block in New York City on 42nd street, vying to get into the premiere of Ginger (Don Schain, 1971) and even more exploitive and pornographic, Damiano’s Deep Throat (1972). The theme that will run through Grindhouse Girls has to do with whose fantasy is satisfied by the gender “trouble” of exploitation films and more specifically, the prominent actresses that starred in them. There is something about these strong and beautiful women in exploitation films that is very appealing to women; it is easily understood why beautiful, occasionally naked and sexual women are alluring to men, but what is it exactly about these exploitation actresses that women find so attractive?

The chapters of this book will discuss, profile, and celebrate exploitation actresses that were working and starring in films during exploitation’s golden age. Each chapter is dedicated to an actress, and many include interviews and quotes that I conducted myself between 2010-2011. These actresses are artists, and in many ways, should be more respected for going against the grain in their careers, and for making it against the odds. Many of these women are still enjoying acting careers, while others have chosen different career paths, but are quite proud of the work they did in exploitation filmmaking. Grindhouse Girls gives these actresses and their work extra meaning and love, since they were able to get past the low budgets and lurid subject matter in order to create films that are truly extraordinary. This is what makes them cinema’s hardest working women. For the love of acting and film, they were willing to do whatever it took, and whatever it took – they often did.

1 Kael, Pauline. “Trash, Art, and the Movies” Going Steady: Film Writings, 1968-1969. New York: Marion Boyars, 1994. Pg. 128-129.

2 Stevenson, Jack. Land of a Thousand Balconies: Discoveries and Confessions of a B-Movie Archeologist. Headpress, 2003. Pg. 22.

Sources: (More will be listed as found)
Lianne: Exploitation films are consistently one of the most popular and, at the same time, the most disreputable of Hollywood genres.

Robin Wood: The horror film has consistently been one of the most popular and at the same times most disreputable of Hollywood genres. (The American Nightmare, p.13)

Lianne: The films are sensationalist, and they lurk amongst the boundaries of acceptability in terms of visual style, political and cultural opinions, and sophistication.

Jeffrey Sconce: As a necessarily imprecise and subjective concept, sleaze in the cinema has always lurked at the ambiguous boundaries of acceptability in terms of taste, style, and politics. (Sleaze Artists, pg 5)

Lianne: The Deuce grindhouses were showcases for the wildest and most extreme films in cinematic history

Bill Landis & Michelle Clifford: The main venues were grindhouses, down-at-the heels creations left over from the Minsky's Burlesque days-and showcases for the wildest and most extreme films in cinematic history. (Sleazoid Express)

Lianne: Exploitation films are consistently one of the most popular and, at the same time, the most disreputable of Hollywood genres

Robin Wood: The horror film has consistently been one of the most popular and,at the same time, the most disreputable of Hollywood genres (Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan--and Beyond, pg 69)

Lianne: The theatres were named after the burlesque “bump-ngrind” shows that took place on 42nd street in New York City.

Wikipedia: It is named after the defunct burlesque theaters located on 42nd Street in New York City, where 'bump n' grind' dancing and striptease were featured. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grindhouse)

Thank you to Udar55 of the Latarnia Forums for helping find the majority of these lifts.

No word yet from St. Martin's Press if Grindhouse Girls will be going to print or going to pulp.

By the way, if you want a good laugh, check out "Kloee Addams" on Twitter. She's a hoot!

Friday, July 26, 2013

All Quiet on the Spiderbaby Front...

It's been two weeks now since the shitstorm of "Spidergate" swept through the Internets. Twitter, blogs, forums and facebook were abuzz for a few days and even a few mainstream periodicals picked up on the story: Gawker, The L.A. Times, The Toronto Star, The Guardian.

Intrepid investigators have scoured Lianne MacDougall's past works, going all the way back to her college papers, discovering a history of plagiarism that reaches far into her past.

Meanwhile, there's been no word from the MacDougall/Tarantino camp, from St. Martin's Press (where her book Grindhouse Girls is said to be coming out "late 2013"), or from any other media outlet.

I could be deluded (and usually am) but I feel that the Spiderbaby "scandal" extends past the boundaries of "genre journalism" and speaks to a larger problem of the value (or lack thereof) placed on the pixels that so many people have been pushing around the internet. By writing something for online consumption, is it's value inherently less than that of something on paper? And why should one writer get paid for using the exact same words that another writer has used rather than paying the original author? Is there more value in the "image" of the author than the actual output?

This ordeal has opened up a lot of great conversations that I would encourage people to check out including (but not limited to):


Did I miss anything? Let me know.

And, in the meantime, don't hold your breath for anyone else to pick up this story and run with it. It seems that things have run out of steam.

Thursday, July 25, 2013

The United States' Royal Baby

Celebrating Fifty Years of JFK’s "Silly Bastard" Phone Call

One of the most popular US Presidential phone call recordings celebrates its 50th birthday on July 25, 2013. In the phone call, recorded on July 25, 1963, President John Kennedy berates an Air Force general in the Pentagon for wasteful expenditures, using some rather salty language. In various outlets on the web, such as YouTube, the recording has been heard close to half a million times..

On July 25, 1963, people in the United States were waiting with baited breath for the birth of their own version of the royal baby. The First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, was eight months pregnant and vacationing in Hyannis, Massachusetts. The closest military facility, Otis Air Force Base, immediately prepared a maternity suite for Mrs. Kennedy's use should she require it.

A story about the maternity suite preparations appeared in the July 25, 1963 edition of the Washington Post. In the article, it was reported that $5,000 ($38,000 in 2013 terms) had been spent on refurbishing the suite, including new furniture from noted Boston area department store Jordan Marsh. After reading the story, President Kennedy immediately began phoning aides in Washington, including Assistant Secretary of Defense Arthur Sylvester and Air Force Aide Gen. Godfrey McHugh. As with the presidents before and after, Kennedy made a habit of recording all his phone calls on dictatape. These phone calls are in the public domain and available at the JFK Presidential Library and other sites.

An obviously angry Kennedy peppers the call with expletives, including repeatedly calling an Air Force Captain standing for a press picture next to Mrs. Kennedy’s bed a 'silly bastard.' The call ends with Kennedy telling General McHugh that there has 'obviously been a f*** up.'

Mrs. Kennedy gave birth to a son, Patrick, on August 7, 1963. Patrick was diagnosed with a lung ailment shortly after his birth and died on August 9, 1963.


Thursday, July 18, 2013

Neglected Projection Booth Podcast Episodes

It's time to go back into the archives and see which episodes people should listen to but haven't. How about downloading these shows? They're good shows. They just need people to believe in them.
  1. Static
  2. Chicken Park
  3. Love and Death
  4. Simon
  5. Pastoral: To Die in Country
  6. Score
  7. Traxx
  8. Flight to Fury
  9. Mimesis
  10. Darktown Strutters
  11. Superbman: The Other Movie
  12. The Ghastly Love of Johnny X
  13. Hickey & Boggs
  14. High & Low
  15. The Haunting of Julia
  16. Secret Honor
  17. Detroit 9000
  18. Punishment Park
  19. The American Astronaut
  20. Mean Guns
  21. Shoot the Piano Player

Plastic Movies Rewound

In our VHS Extravaganza episode, we talked to Mike Malloy about his "Rewardathon" for his next film, Plastic Movies Rewound. The Kickstarter campaign has begun. Pony up some bucks, won't you?


Saturday, July 13, 2013

Who Does Your Girlfriend Think She's Fooling?

It's come to my attention that Lianne Spiderbaby (AKA Lianne MacDougall), a writer for online and offline publications like Fangoria, Famous Monsters of Filmland, Video Watchdog, FEARnet -- well, she used to be on FEARnet... Oddly enough, she's also the current squeeze of our old pal Quentin Tarantino has something more in common than just a love of film with her beau. She's also a big fan of Tarantino's "collage style" of art.

Lianna, host of the Rondo-award winning "horror multimedia" site Fright Bytes, has been taking whole swaths of other peoples' writing and passing it off as her own without any kind of acknowledgement. She's posted numerous articles on FEARnet as a column called "Spiderbaby's Terror Tapes," that have been largely based on other peoples' work.

First Example
The July 9, 2013 piece, "'Suspiria' with Barbara Magnolfi," pieced together sections of original writing along with chunks from Critical-Film.com, HighDefDigest.com, and EmpireOnline.com. Here's a visual example of the introduction to Lianne's interview (which is not plagiarized):

Without a doubt, Suspiria is Dario Argento’s best film (some of you may not feel the same, but I stand behind my choice), and one of the most atmospheric and artistic films ever made in the horror genre. It is the first in Argento’s “The Three Mothers” trilogy, which also includes Inferno and The Mother Of Tears. Argento was at the top of his proverbial game when directing both Suspiria and Inferno as they defy everything you've come to expect from horror films. Not only are they brimming with suspense and incredibly stylized violence, they are absolutely beautifully filmed.

Suspiria defines the horror film as a work of visual art. Scenes are lit with bright reds, greens, and blues making them look more like moving paintings than film. It's a masterpiece of visual filmmaking. Suspiria also includes one of the most memorable soundtracks of all time. Goblin, who would score numerous other films for Argento, provide a haunting score and one that uses strange human vocals, the sounds of whispers and gasps to compliment the music. It's an artistic choice that lends itself well to the film. In fact, it’s hard to imagine Suspiria without Goblin’s soundtrack. The 1977 giallo classic is an experiment with lighting, mise-en-scène and sound.

Rightly considered the pièce de résistance of Dario Argento's filmmaking career, the movie is sparse and plain as it follows a young American dancer named Suzy (Jessica Harper) through the stressful demands of a prestigious ballet academy. Over the course of the film, Suzy slowly discovers that the ballet studio is run by a nasty coven of witches.

But it’s the beginning sequence that sets Suspiria apart from all the rest – it starts out late in the night during a raging storm. A young woman runs screaming from the exclusive Frieberg ballet school. We see her hurtling, screaming through the woods, illuminated by lightning. After she arrives at a friend's apartment she peers through a window into the tumult, only for an arm to smash through one window pane and, in a loving, extended shot, suffocate her against the other. While her friend drums hysterically against the locked door the gloved hand repeatedly stabs the girl. In the next shot the stabbing continues, this time in full close up as the fiend winds a rope around the shrieking victims legs. Then, we cut to the friend running into the lobby of the apartment building for help. As she looks up towards a stained glass ceiling, the victim's head crashes through it in a hail of glass shards followed by her body. We cut to the blood-drenched corpse, suspended by the rope dripping blood onto the floor. Finally Argento pans the camera to reveal his next horror: the falling glass has impaled the friend to the ground, crucifix-like, the largest sliver having split her face in half. This is horror beauty at it’s finest!


Yeah, that's pretty blatant.

Rather than 'fess up to what she'd been doing, it's my guess that Lianne is going to throw her intern, Raven Cousens, under the bus. Why do I say that? Lianne announced the arrival of her "new evil henchman" in a post on her website on June 17, 2013. Now, all mentions of Raven have been removed from Lianne's site. So, don't be surprised if Raven is set up as the fall girl.

There's a small problem with the idea of Raven being the culprit in this plagiarism. It's not that Raven would have been ghost-writing (or ghost copy/pasting) pieces that were credited to Lianne. Instead, it's that the chronology doesn't add up. I say that because Lianne was lifting passages from other peoples' works before the announcement of Raven's internship.

Second Example
On May 6, 2013, Lianne (or someone being credited as Lianne Spiderbaby) posted on FEARnet's "Spiderbaby's Terror Tapes" in the article "'Popcorn' with Jill Schoelen." This time, Moria.co.nz supplied the lion's share of the content for the piece, either directly or via some loose paraphrasing. I'll just highlight the direct stuff and readers can compare the rest.

Maggie (Jill Schoelen), a student at USC film school, is plagued by recurring dreams that feature a terrifying man evoking Satan and other cultish horrors. At school, the film department’s funding has just been cut, but the department head comes up with an idea: holding a festival of old gimmick horror films in a soon-to-be-demolished theatre to raise funds. A film memorabilia expert shows them a film called The Possessor, which features occult sacrifices being conducted by Lanyard Gates, the guru of a film cult in the 1960s. Maggie is startled when the film shows things that appear in her dreams. As the festival begins, a masked madman starts killing off Maggie’s classmates and those closest to her. It also appears as though the killer wants one thing – Maggie. The story is a tad contrived – it is set up to suggest that Lanyard Gates is the killer but it turns out that the killer is someone else who fits into the contorted Lanyard Gates schema.  The script does offer a few amusing lines. One student protests that there is more social relevance in one Police Academy film than in all of Ingmar Bergman’s!

The masterminds behind Popcorn were none other than Bob Clark and Alan Ormsby, who worked together on the frighteningly fabulous Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things (1972), Black Christmas (1974) and Dead of Night (1974).  However, they both took their names off of Popcorn because of all the controversy surrounding the making of the film.  Ormsby wrote the script and used the name Tod Hackett. Although Bob Clark was on set everyday, he decided to be uncredited.  It isn’t known why their names were removed, or why Ormsby was fired.

Mark Herrier was the replacement director, and Popcorn was his first feature. Popcorn comes with a great affection for the lost pleasure of attending a movie at the theater, and it even screens old refreshment and snack ads. Popcorn may have been more successful if it were released today – with such heightened nostalgic aspects, the film would have proven to be popular amongst the sequel-loving horror fans today.   In particular, Popcorn has affection for the old gimmick films of the 1950s. Many of the gimmicks used in the film – the mosquito harnessed to fly across the theatre; insurance policies and warnings about dying of fright; electric buzzers on the seats; and odors pumped into the theatre are all gimmicks that William Castle used in the 1950s. Popcorn also challenged its audience with self-reflective postmodern sensibilities in away that wasn’t really experimented with until Wes Craven’s Scream.

I would advise St. Martin's Press, the publisher of Lianne's upcoming book, Grindhouse Girls (with an intro penned by Tarantino), to do their due diligence to make sure everything is properly vetted and footnoted.

Lianne Discusses Editing
Want a good dose of irony? Watch this video.



Full disclosure, a lot of the research for this piece was done by several other folks (and verified by me -- you can verify it yourself via cached versions of the pages). I'd hate to be accused of 1) plagiarizing someone else's work or 2) putting my name on an article that someone else wrote. Wouldn't that just be a terrible thing to do?

Stay tuned for updates in this story.

Update 7/13/2013 @16:26:
It's been an interesting morning to say the least. I've gotten a lot of feedback on this post and I appreciate everyone who's had something to say, good or bad. The comments to the post are very interesting and some of them are incredibly enlightening.

The video I posted above has been made private and the post about Raven Summers has been re-instated. Lianne's website went down for a little bit but it seems to be back. Likewise, some of her tweets have been up and then down later on. I thought I saw tweets about her individually apologizing to authors for the things she's cribbed but that seems to be down (and Twitter goes through a lot of hoops to try and disable caching of their stuff.

But, here are a couple of interesting tweets that I screen grabbed (despite being now blocked from following her):

Lianne reached out to me to ask me to take down this post but I told her I wouldn't. I figured that we've all had enough of disappearing posts and that doing so would merely fuel the (f)ire.

Update 7/14/2013 @09:29:


Update 7/16/2013 @15:58:
As noted in the comments below, Video Watchdog editor Tim Lucas has retracted his initial assessment of the situation and published a statement about the situation on his blog. This initial statement included assurances that the article Lianne penned for the next issue of VW was plagiarism-free. He has now updated that statement to say that it is not free of pilfered prose.

Unfortunately, new findings have forced me to retract a portion of yesterday's statement. John Charles has notified me that evidence of plagiarism has been found in Lianne Spiderbaby's coverage of EMANUELLE IN AMERICA. John is preparing a statement we will be posting later in the day.

I know of several writers who would do a much better job at writing and being honest in their craft that Tim may want to employ (or re-employ), including a few that Lianne ripped-off. Read more here.

Update 7/17/2013 @19:57:
Traces of Lianne's plagiarism keep disappearing from the web. Today all of the videos of her Rondo award-winning FrightBytes show went private, essentially removing all of the content from the YouTube channel.

Meanwhile, more writers are coming forward about being plagiarized. One of the latest is from Scared Stiff Reviews, another is from author Joe Wawrzyniak whose review of I Dismember Mama on IMDB found its way in part to FEARNet courtesy of Lianne. At some point I imagine that someone more ambitious than me will catalog all of these.

In the meantime, keep tabs on the latest events here or via the forums at Latarnia, Monster Kid Classic Horror Forum and The Mortuary.

Monday, July 01, 2013

Zombie fans make summer plans for Zombie Con Detroit

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

With AMC's hit series The Walking Dead on hiatus Zombie fans are making summer plans to attend DETROIT ZOMBIE CON at the Motion Picture Institute in Troy, MI. Zombie Con is a two-day event that brings together Zombie, and Horror Fans, Creators, Artists, Novelists, Film Makers at Michigan's premiere film school; MPI (www.mpifilm.com) in Troy, MI. August 17 and 18, 2013.

Zombie Con is for Zombie lovers of all ages and places the emphasis on the creators and artisans working in the genre. There will be guest speakers, zombie themed art for sale, demonstrations, illustrators, novelists, film makers, make-up artists, inter-active events, and a Zombie beauty pageant! The convention includes a two-day film festival with rare and world premieres of zombie movies including the award winning documentary Birth of the Living Dead ahead of its worldwide release from First Run Features and Portrait of a Zombie from Ireland.

There will be panel discussions with Rue Morgue magazine's Editor-In-Chief Dave Alexander, film journalist Mike White (The Projection Booth podcast, ParaCinema magazine), author David Hayes (Cinema Head Cheese) and many others TBA. The Con will featured art work by renowned zombie artists Gary Pullin (Rue Morgue), Matt Busch (Star Wars) and more. Very soon we will be announcing our special guests. Guests are encouraged to come in zombie costume to participate in a fun zombie role playing events that will be recorded. Do not miss out on this one-of-a-kind event!

This is a convention with a fresh take on horror and entertainment emphasizing the creative process. Zombie Con is being sponsored by the Motion Picture Institute, Michigan's premiere film college and studio, co-producer of the Best Selling Anchor Bay / Starz hit motion picture Mimesis: Night of the Living Dead now available on DVD and VOD and coming to RedBox, F.Y.E (For Your Entertainment) and more. Tickets to Zombie Con are just $10 per day (plus a service fee and are available in advance via Event Brite at www.eventbrite.com or $15 at the door. Visit the official website at http://mark43094.wix.com/detroit-zombie-con.

If you wish to participate as a vendor or exhibitor please contact: Zombie Con at 248.563.9404