Monsterpalooza Details; Show-Runner Eliot Brodsky Speaks
Sean Decker
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With 
the second annual and highly anticipated horror convention Monsterpalooza – The Art of Monsters returning Friday, April 9–11, 2010, to The Marriott Burbank Airport Hotel in Burbank, CA (get your tickets here now, and how could you not, when they’re only $20 a day?), Dread caught up with the con’s creator, Eliot Brodsky, to talk about the F/X and monster-heavy event.
“Monsterpalooza was a glimmer of an idea back in 2007,” Brodsky told us of the show’s conception. “I actually did a very sized-down version of the show on the East Coast in 2008. It was in conjunction with Monster-Mania as a display museum.”
While other horror conventions seem to primarily focus on the stars of the genre (and this year’s Monsterpalooza isn’t slacking in that department by any means, as Brodsky’s organized a Return of the Living Dead reunion panel with the principals from that classic), the horror buff’s main interest lies in those who create the FX for such films.
“I’m a very visual person, the kind of guy who sits through the end credits of a film to see specifically who designed the film and which shop did the makeup,” said Brodsky, who, while having no professional background in horror, did educate himself as a boy by reading Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine as well as through repeated viewings of The Bride of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, and every other horror flick legendary makeup artist Jack Piece was involved in.
“Monsterpalooza is basically what I thought a monster show was like in the 1970’s,” continued the show’s creator, who apparently thought that horror cons of that era featured special effects seminars, over two hundred vendors, and dozens of F/X artists ranging from Verne Langdon and KNB EFX to Dan Crawley and Tony Gardner as well as classic horror film stars (The Creature from the Black Lagoon’s Julie Adams, among others), as this year’s Monsterpalooza features all of the above.
“I actually had never been to a horror convention before the year 2000,” said Brodsky. “I have been to a few since, and some are done quite well with wonderful guests, but I wanted to see a different kind of show. I wanted to see more art and especially special F/X art: camera-ready freaky stuff. I believe the people who attend Monsterpalooza have the same interests – what goes on in getting that stuff up on the screen is just as important as who is on it.”
For full Monsterpalooza – The Art of Monsters convention info see below. Monsterpalooza can also be visited on Facebook and MySpace.
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