Monster-Mania August 2019

On Saturday, August 17, 2019, we headed over to Cherry Hill, New Jersey for another edition of Monster-Mania. And, as always my friends and I had a fucking blast!

The first guest I went up to was the beautiful and extremely talented Kate Siegel. Siegel is an amazing actress, with some great roles in horror content, many in her husband, Mike Flanagan's own movies and TV shows like Hush and The Haunting of Hill House.  I told her just how much I loved her acting in her work, as well as the super cool The Texas Chain Saw Massacre tee that she had on. Kate was very sweet and a joy to meet and talk to.

The three of us, Freddie, Pat, and myself, got a pic with the legendary Beverly D'Angelo. She is best known for her work in the National Lampoon's Vacation films, but my personal favorite thing that she did was the awesome late 70's horror film The Sentinel.

Alex Essoe was a added late that week, so I didn't know that she would be there. Otherwise, I would have bought my Blu-ray of the superlative Starry Eyes, with me to get signed by her. I told her, how I had spread the word on the film, telling friends to see and reviewing it, very positively for this, my own site. In fact, my friend and Master's Minion, Pat, admitted to her to seeing the film, cause of my review. She talked to us for a good fifteen minutes and was so fun, sweet, and plain fucking awesome. I hope that her role in the hotly anticipated Doctor Sleep (from the aforementioned Mike Flanagan, based on Stephen King's novel of the same name, a sequel to The Shining) leads to some great roles for her. She is an incredible actress and most definitely deserves it.

As a huge and loyal The X-Files fan, I was super excited to meet the lovely Annabeth Gish. When we went to her table, she was talking to Siegel (whom she worked with on The Haunting of Hill House). She told her that we were cool, so she came over to us with a smile. She was really sweet and was flattered, as I told her how much I loved her as Agent Monica Reyes on The X-Files.

It turned out that author and horror mag contributor and editor Michael Gingold has a new book out called Ad Astra. As loyal readers may remember, I bought his phenomenal book Ad Nausem last year at New York Comic Con. Part two (which will center on horror movie ads from the 80s-2000s) to that book will be out in time for this year's NYCC. So, you can count on me getting that! Getting back to his current new book, Ad Astra, it is like Ad Nausem, except, that instead of horror newspaper ads, this time it is all science fiction and fantasy movie ads. And, it is not just the 80s, but actually 1980-1999. I am currently reading and loving the fucking hell out of it!

There was a lot of cosplay on display on this day. Here are some of my favorites, that I saw:

As far as swag, that I got, it goes like this:
A Starry Eyes pic signed by Alex Essoe
Ad Astra signed on the inside by Michael Gingold
An incredible Return of the Living Dead tee by Fright-Rags
Vice Squad from Scream Factory, which I got at DiabolikDVD's table
And, from Vinegar Syndrome and their table: Hell Comes to Frogtown and Cutting Class:

By the time, it was all over we were dead tired but so happy. It was another kick ass time, and we are already for the next Cherry Hill one in March 2020!