Report from Knoxville TN, June 15th.
For the summer of 2008, Charles Band of Full Moon Features fame (Puppetmaster, Subspecies, the budding Gingerdead Man series), took the third edition of his live stage show/promotional extravaganza on the road. Billed as “a horror-palooza of sorts”, the show promised “interactive audience participation, film trailers, surprise celebrity guest appearances, and live special effects demonstrations” among other things.
The show starts with a (LOUD) video montage of some of Full Moon’s greatest hits before Band himself hits the stage to address the crowd. He jumped right in to the recurring theme of the night, “hot chicks” giving us three stories of the difficulties he’s had rounding them up for his various projects before introducing a couple of local “Poontang Girls” in Cavewoman garb. OK then.
Next we move on to another set of clips. This one featuring people who have appeared in Band’s movies and have since gone on to mainstream movie fame (Demi Moore, Viggo Mortensen, etc), then more stories, this time mainly about working with Gary Busey, who came in and turned the set upside down when appearing as the voice of Gingerdead Man.
An auction for life size puppet replicas was fun, and it was tempting to break out the big bucks. But as our pal Chris who was with us at the show would say, we ARE in a recession ya know. Full Moon fans were able to snag some nice Puppetmaster and Gingerdead Man replicas for pretty reasonable prices. Often times, Charlie would throw in DVD box sets and if you spent more than $120 that night, you actually became an executive producer for Gingerdead Man 3: Roller Boogie Man. Nice.
The show ended with him pulling audience members up on stage to direct in a live zombie scene. Things began slipping into (even more) goofball territory at this point, but overall, while I was disappointed by the lack of any surprise celebrity guest appearances or live special effects demonstrations as advertised, it was still a good time surrounded by like-minded weirdos.
For more information on the Road Show and Full Moon pictures, visit their website www.fullmoondirect.com, and if you are wanting to order some of their flicks, keep an eye out for the coming 4th of July sale.
-Shrub
