Corey Taylor in a fedora and no mask on Halloween. Irony! (Photos by Hew Burney)

Slipknot’s Corey Taylor bounces from booth to booth at Fangoria’s Trinity of Terrors weekend horror movie convention and Saturday night concert at the Palms like a kid in a candy shop. Dee Wallace here, Bill Moseley there, crucifix dildos the other place.

Well, no one said it wasn’t going to have any overlap with AVN.

“This is like our Christmas,” Taylor said on Halloween day.

Whether the costume was full-on Zombie Elvis and Marilyn or just about the 900th guy in an Evil Dead T-shirt, the mood was as festive as any gang of elves on Dec. 24th. Organized in just about five weeks, Fangoria’s Scott Licinia and Taylor came together to make the event a reality.

“Fangoria is the Cirque du Soliel of Horror,” Licinia said. Fitting, then, that the festival has already signed a multi-year deal with the Palms so horror fans can start making next year’s plans early. It’s already Nov. 1, after all. Time to get cracking.

Downstairs in the Brenden Theaters, a roster of A-list talent including George Romero, Bruce Campbell, Malcolm McDowell and John Waters gave talks between screenings of films. Upstairs, exhibitors from T-shirts to movie posters to pasties to leather couches made out of old coffins were elbow to elbow with genre stars looking to scrape a few bucks for an autograph and glossy — or in scream queen Wallace’s case, for her online acting school.

Inside the talks, fans tried to balance their bat-wings with the realities of movie stadium seating to hear special effects wizards Greg Cannom, Robert Kurtzman and Tom Savini dish on everything from the way CGI has changed the business to tips on everything from how to get realistic blood effects to making low-budget squibs.

Savini, who also directed the 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead, gave the most practical advice of the weekend.

“Do not,” he said. “Use firecrackers on your friends.”

Man. Everyone wants to take the fun out of everything.

By Jason Scavone

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