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The Halloweenapalooza Event
Halloween Horror Picture Show 2007 Film Festival

October 19-20, 2007
Tampa Bay, Florida

This review, originally published in October 2007, was amended and enhanced on November 1, 2008, with a scheduled move from the Frontier Society web site to Tampa Bay Film and an alignment with the review of the Halloween Horror Picture Show 2008- both reviews are now connected. Special notes have been added, and the score system has been upgraded. Enjoy!

Updated on 11/25/08 with film reviews from Tampa writer Jeff Strand. Thank you, Jeff!

Main Tampa film festival review by C. A. Passinault. Film reviews by Jeff Strand.

The drive to Channelside is, for me, filled with dread. It is a very, very busy place, and traffic there is usually hectic. Add pricey parking, and you now know why I rarely go there, and the reason why I have not done a shoot there since doing a modeling portfolio photography session with actress and model Jane Park in 2002.
Tonight, however, was a different story. I was looking forward to attending a film festival event called Hallaweenapalooza, which was the new shell around the ongoing annual film festival, the Halloween Horror Picture Show, series. Keep in mind that I missed last years Halloween Horror Picture Show held at the Cuban Club venue, and the last time that I attended Rick Danford's festival was at USF in 2005. I had fun then, and I wondered what the night would have in store.
Upon arriving at Channelside a few minutes after the 6PM start, admittedly because I had to spend time back at the studio calibrating my speed light on my trusty Canon 10D, I noticed what a nice evening that it was. The air was slightly warm, the sun was out, and there was a slight haze over the Tampa skyline. I gathered up my camera and my computer and bolted across the street from the parking garage, passing up three attractive 19 year old girls en route, but pausing just enough to notice that they were there. I made a mental note that I would have to resume shooting models in the Channelside and the downtown Tampa areas soon, and continued to walk, adjusting the sling of my computer case on my shoulder. God, it was heavy.
Channelside was not too crowded, however, and I made it up to the Channelside Cinemas 10 IMAX in short order. Before going into the theater, I looked around for signs, and noting that there weren't any, I asked a college guy if he knew anything about the festival. I had half-expected a crowd at the entrance and stages with bands, and it was a bit empty outside. The guy motioned toward the theater with a bony finger which was not unlike that of a skeleton's, acknowledging that the event was, in fact, there. I thanked him, took out my camera, and snapped off a few shots of the Tampa skyline before going in.
Walking in, I noticed two main tables set in the area to the left, and saw event organizer Rick Danford talking with some people. I approached Rick, talked to him for a few minutes, and then proceeded to break out my camera, quietly cursing myself because the film lineup was good and, well, I only had three hours to spend covering the event. This meant that I would have to loiter in the lobby area and talk to people, with next to no time to see any actual movies. If I did have time to attend both full-days, in fact, I might have had time to catch all of the films, take all of my pictures, and conclude my coverage. In this case, it was interview overdrive.
I wandered over to the tables. First, I was met by the pretty faces of Krista Grotte and Tiffany Shepis. Krista I already knew, first meeting her back in 2003 when she went to one of my auditions when I was a casting director for one of my film projects. I didn't catch up to her again until Andy Lalino's awesome Horror and Hotties film festival at USF back in March of this year. Speaking of Andy, I was pleasantly surprised to see him arrive, dressed Neo-like (The Matrix Reloaded), in black. What was next- Terence Nuzum showing up dressed as General Zod? Paul Guzzo dressed up as a bipedal, land-roving guppy- didn’t Rick plan a costume contest? All kidding aside, Andy looked much sharper than I did, as I had elected, at the last minute, to dress down for comfort, as I had to haul around a lot of gear. I was only in jeans and a blue shirt, and didn't look all-there, as it wasn't as comfortable as it was supposed to be. I took some picture of Andy, and he took a few of me (which reminds me to ask Andy for copies of those image files). They came out good.
I spent a bit of time taking pictures of Krista and Tiffany. As soon as I aimed a camera in her direction from across the room, Ms. Shepis immediately noticed, which in retrospect was a bit hard to not notice due to the size of the camera and the flash, and she played up to the camera. After taking pictures, I spent some time talking with her, and I immediately noticed that she had the brains and the personality to match those model-shattering good looks. This woman, my friends, is one of the coolest people who I have met in a good while, and Krista was equally as cool.
I'll admit it. I didn't know too much about Tiffany Shepis. I am not much of a horror fan, and have not spent a lot of time watching horror films. As a matter of fact, other than knowing that she was an actress and a model, the only fact that I knew about her was that she did a Conker's Bad Fur Day commercial for Nintendo back in the day, helping them to advertise the controversial video game made by Rare. At any rate, after conversing for a while, I would learn a lot more about her.
Tiffany was cool. Krista and I talked about modeling, photography, and photographers that we both knew. We also talked about doing a shoot together. Andy and I talked- well, actually, we were laughing about the controversy behind my latest TFR film reviews, killing pumpkins, and also discussed the planning of the next Horror and Hotties film festival. I told Andy that I could get him as many swimsuit models as he needed for his cool event, had some ideas, and we pondered about doing it around February or March of next year (NOTE 11/01/08 - Andy Lalino and Andrew Allen's long production of their Brain Jacked feature film knocked out any chance of a Horror and Hotties sequel in 2008. There IS something, which is not another Horror and Hotties, planned around Halloween 2009, and it will be something truly special).
I browsed over to the far table, where actress Debbie D and her companion were seated with their wares. After hearing about the array of characters which she portrayed, I paused on Destiny-Vampire Mermaid. Thinking the combination a bit of an incompatible mix, I asked how that worked. Did her character act as a Siren to lure sailors in so she could feed on them? How could a Vampire be around water, anyway? I suppose that I had been playing too many games of “Blood Omen: Legacy Of Kain” on the Playstation, where rain smoked with impact on the character and you lost health as long as you were exposed to water. Going back to the scene, however, I did ask Debbie D about Vampires and water, trying not to sound like a detail-egghead and trying not to be annoying. A question to Rick came with my answer: It was holy water which hurt Vampires. Um, ok. I guess the rules varied with the interpretation. Debbie D and I did get into a good conversation about the horror and science fiction genres being closely related, parallel, and sometimes intertwined. Hey, I get Sci Fi, as I write it, but I’m still a newbie with the horror genre and horror movies in general. This is why you ask questions, too, as there is no such thing as a stupid question. I may even hook up one of my Playstations in the studio and play through Kain again. The world of Nosgoth beckons me. Vay Victus! Oh, and for the record, my favorite Vampire movies would have to be the Underworld series, which really are not horror films- They are more action and sci fi.
I talked to Danford some more, discussing some of the movie lineup, indie film downloads as a business model, past projects such as the film Web Of Darkness and my ill-fated Reverence feature film, and two actresses/ models which we mutually knew by the names of Lowie and Roxy. Lowie... does a good job acting like Lowie, and was a far better model than an actress. Roxanne Kowalska..... one of the best models whom I have ever worked with and a brilliant actress. Since moving to Los Angeles, Roxy has been missed here in the Tampa Bay indie film community. Ah, those two were so long ago. It seems like an entire life has passed.
Catching up and taking pictures passed the time well, since I didn’t have the time to watch anything. At one point, I even took a breather and played a quick game of Frogger on my Gameboy Micro, keeping the idle Tekken 5 arcade coin-op in the lobby in mind, but never getting around to putting a few quarters in it. That done, Krista told me that her movie was about to start, so I followed her and Rick into the Cinema.
The location that Rick chose for this film festival is one of the best that I have seen for any Tampa film festival. How could you get any better than a new movie theater; one of the nicest cinemas in the Tampa Bay area? The venue was perfect, and I obtained some really good pictures of the screen and the seating. Krista and Danford introduced Death On Demand to the audience, I took some pictures, then I looked up into the rows. There were only two people there. Slow start or not, this festival certainly deserved much more attention than it was getting.
After the introduction, I decided to take a break and watch a little of the film. Death On Demand was a little pixelated blown-up to the big screen, with jaggy edges apparent, but was well-shot and proved to be very watchable. Actually, this was a very good movie, and it didn’t take long for me to settle in and lose my sense of time to it. I noticed that Andy Lalino had wandered into the theater, clutching a huge bag of buttered pop corn and a massive soda, and I called him over to my row. He sat down by me, and we continued to watch. I also noticed that more people had filtered in and had taken up seats. Among them were Krista Grotte and her husband, who seated themselves toward the front of the theater.
At this point, I became very unhappy. The reason for the turn in mood was that my time was running out, and I had to get ready to go. Death On Demand was very good, and I wanted to watch the rest of it. I told both Andy and Krista goodnight, and began to make my way out of the film festival. I took out my camera and resolved to leave the venue shooting.
Steven Shea, who had been seated at a table with his people from Abyssmal Entertainment just outside the theater, was no longer there. I suppose that they were there for their earlier feature, Hoodoo For Voodoo (what a catchy, and odd, title).
I returned to the lobby, and asked Danford where Tiffany Shepis was so I could say goodbye. She had gone to dinner. I noticed Steven Shea and his group had returned, this time with guitars and musical instruments. The music part was about to start, I surmised, but unfortunately, I would not be around to hear it. I talked to the group, which was assembling in the central lobby area, and took pictures of them setting up and tuning their instruments. At this time, it was time to leave. I told everyone goodbye and exited the building.
Well, I tried to leave. As soon as I exited the building, Tiffany Shepis and her friend, Trent Haaga, came up to me. We talked for a few minutes, and I snapped some of the best pictures of them that I had taken the entire night. We walked inside, I said goodbye to everyone again, and then I finally left for the night.
Here’s the lowdown on the Halloweenapalooza event and its Halloween Horror Picture Show 2007 film festival. Did I have fun? Yes, yes, yes. It was well worth my time to attend. Also, the film lineup, which is covered in detail below from a blog post by Jeff Strand, is the best of any horror film festival ever in the Tampa Bay area.
Although the event has been criticized by the vocal minority for its low attendance, I found out later that the second day had a decent turnout. Those who dismissed the event and missed it ultimately lost out, however, because this was an event which was well worth attending. In my opinion, the Screamfest horror convention in Orlando hurt this event a lot as far as attendance goes, and I do not believe that the majority attended the best event. The best event was here.

Halloweenapalooza 2007 Film Reviews

Halloween Horror Picture Show 2007 Film Reviews by Tampa writer Jeff Strand.

(Used by permission from Jeff Strand. © 2007 Jeff Strand. Opinions and review of the event depicted elsewhere in this review may not be necessarily those of contributing writer Jeff Strand. Thank you, Jeff!)

Halloweenapalooza (formerly The Halloween Horror Picture Show) featured the most extreme content of all five years of the festival . Almost all of the features would have to be released unrated, and I don't mean "PG-13 movie that added the F-word to the DVD release so they could plaster 'Unrated' on the box." Sadly, it was another year of "Where the hell are all the people???" but still, as always, the event was gobs-o-fun.

The features...

HOODOO FOR VOODOO - A very entertaining horror/comedy with a great soundtrack. Though it's not quite as funny as it needs to be to justify the silly tone (there are some good sight gags and one-liners, but the movie needs more of 'em), there are some definite "Whoa!!!" gore gags and the whole movie is a lot of fun. A nice way to start the festival.

DEATH ON DEMAND - Six people go on a reality internet show where they must survive the night in a house where horrible, horrible events took place. This supernatural slasher flick is filled with unlikable-but-entertaining characters, lots of laughs, and sex-and-gore-a-plenty. A real crowd pleaser of a movie...even if it was a teeny tiny crowd.

THE BUNKER - Directed by Joseph Monks, who is totally blind. Ironically, the visual elements of the film are pretty darn good, but the story is padded to the point where it actually becomes laughable. It's got slooooooow opening and closing credits, an unrelated bookend story (which itself is padded out with an unrelated sex scene), several scenes that could be snipped with zero impact to the final product, and a late scene where a character explains What's Really Going On in a phone call, followed immediately by flashbacks that show us exactly what we just learned. THE BUNKER is well-acted and definitely has some effective moments, but it should've been a half-hour short.

100 TEARS - My wife and I didn't stick around for this one because we'd already seen it. But I'll cover it anyway. After the first 15 minutes, I thought that I might be witnessing the greatest slasher film ever. Unfortunately, it becomes repetitious very quickly (one shot of intestines spewing onto the floor is gasp-inducing; three or four of them...not so much) and though the acting is good, the writing is weak. Still worth seeing--it IS a psycho killer clown movie, after all.

GIMME SKELTER - A whack-job who believes that he's the son of Charles Manson and his followers embark on a killing spree in a small town. Though not officially a horror-comedy, the movie has some huge laughs (most notably the payoff to some "Missing Girl" posters seen throughout), more attention to character than you might expect, smart dialogue, and lots-o-gore. I loved it.

GHOST MONTH - The only "classy" film of the event, and also the only one shot on film instead of digital video. An effective little ghost story, but nothing we haven't seen before. Loses points because after one revelation, our heroine doesn't scream "And you're just NOW telling me this?!?" She really should have. But earns points because the ghosts are done with makeup and masks instead of being all CGI.

BLOOD CAR - Halloweenapalooza got this one on my recommendation. One of my favorite micro-budget horror efforts. Hilariously tasteless throughout, but the last few minutes in particular are an absolute masterpiece of dark comedy.

After BLOOD CAR, there was a block of nine short films. "Gruesome" is, of course, the music video based on Greg Lamberson's novel JOHNNY GRUESOME, which I'd already seen a few times but never on the big screen, so that was pretty darn cool. I won't discuss the others individually, but aside from W.O.R.M., I wasn't enthralled with any of 'em. Too many of them ended with no real answer to the question of "Why did people feel this idea was worth the time and energy?" Moving back to features...

THE BLOOD SHED - There is an audience out there that will find this to be the most hilarious, demented, messed-up horror/comedy of all time. I hope they discover it and treasure it always. But personally, I frickin' HATED this movie. It grated on me. It made me want to cry. When you don't care about or like any of the characters, it simply becomes weirdness for weirdness sake, and this has some of the most annoying, cringe-inducing weirdness I've ever seen in a movie. The only good thing about it is that it just sort of ends without much warning, when I was expecting the torture to go on for another fifteen or twenty minutes. Ranks up there with EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES and THE PIANO TEACHER as my all-time most unpleasant cinematic experiences.

ZOMBIES! ZOMBIES! ZOMBIES! - Zombies vs. Strippers. That's pretty much all you need to know to make a qualified decision on whether this movie is for you. Obviously, this is not a motion picture that takes itself seriously, but it offers up plenty of zombies and plenty of strippers. The first few minutes were in 3-D, although the 3-D really didn't work very well (unless my eyes were just screwed up after a day and a half of movies). One of the most entertaining films of the festival.

The next film was 99 PIECES, which sounded good, but quite honestly after that many movies we were brain-fried and not up for what sounded like an interesting but probably slow-moving and quiet film. (I have no idea if that description is accurate, but the movie certainly wasn't zombies vs. strippers.) So we left. Hopefully I'll be able to track this one down and report back.

Will next year be the year the Halloween Horror Picture Show / Halloweenapalooza finally attracts the audience it deserves? I'll certainly be reminding you about it on this blog, so keep reading for the next year.

The Halloween Horror Picture Show 2007 Film Festival Event Scorecard

Please note that a score of 5 is average.

Concept (1-10): 8
Great concept and excellent venue, the 2007 Halloween Horror Picture Show, produced under the umbrella of the larger Halloweenapalooza event in Channelside, was a cool horror film festival with a great film lineup. One thing that I did not like was that the Halloween Horror Picture Show had extended for more than one day. Spreading out like that causes the film festival to lose focus and fewer guests are in the position to experience the full film festival (NOTE 11/01/08 - This became worse in 2008). One day, please. Long day? I don't care- many will spend over 12 hours at a good film festival. You lose them, however, when they have to go there, leave, and come back the next day. Even worse is when they have more than one venue AND more than one day, such as the Gasparilla Film Festival.

Venue (1-10): 10
Channelside Cinemas 10 IMAX is the perfect venue for a Tampa film festival. It has state-of-the-art Theatres, a large concession area, and plenty of room for vendors and support projects. Hungry? Excellent restaurants are just outside the door!

Vendors (1-10): 7
The Halloween Horror Picture Show 2007 had some good vendors and a generous supply of indie film DVD's for sale. I know, because I obtained quite a few and watched them later that night.

Organization (1-10): 8
This was one of the better organized Tampa film festivals in recent memory. Danford had me on a list, and people couldn't just wander into the Theatre without paying. The indie film program was nice, too. It's just too bad that I didn't have time to catch the movies there, but I obtained DVD's of some of those movies, and was able to watch them later.

Entertainment (1-10): 8
The 2007 Halloween Horror Picture Show film festival was a blast. It's too bad that competing film festivals and horror conventions, which were playing at the same time, had to take away most of the audience.

Attendance (1-10): 4
The attendance was low this year, due to competing events, but the audience who were present got their money's worth.

Features (1-10): 7
A great line up of indie films and good vendors. There was live music, contests, prizes, and more. Good fun.

Admission Value (1-10): 7
A decent line up of entertaining indie films saved this in admission value. We just wish that there were more indie films- and vendors!

Overall Event Score (1-10): 8
Excellent time spent, and very highly recommended. This event deserves a much higher attendance, and should get it in Halloween Horror Picture Show 2008. (NOTE 11/01/08 - This did not happen. The 2008 Halloween Horror Picture Show felt like it was either on its last legs, or an afterthought).

“Blood Omen: Legacy Of Kain” is an adventure game about a Vampire on the original Sony Playstation. It can be played on a Playstation 2 with a Playstation one memory card. Any fan of the genre needs to obtain and play this game, even if you don’t play games. A Playstation, controller, and memory card can be had for $20.00, and the game CD itself less than $10.00 (A total of $30.00!). The game is worth it just for the story and the voice acting alone, and if you can’t play it well, just go out and get a Gameshark, which should have codes for the game preloaded.

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