Horror Day

Congratulations to Claudia Funk, who won first place as selected by the Pretty-Scary.net crew. Second place goes to Jamie Schumacher and third place to Joshua Waldrop. Individual prizewinners will be contacted soon to receive books and DVDs. Thanks to all the wonderful people who made this event an incredible success worldwide! --------------------------------------- Here's what Claudia did: I'm an art historian and lecture at a few colleges and museums, and I'm on temporary appointment at Nassau Community College in Garden City on Long Island. As a fan and unpublished writer of horror, I'm also a member of the HWA, and I've promoted horror.org as well as many writers and works of art and entertainment in our beloved genre (once in a while, I teach courses on writing and once in a while a special seminar in Gothic lit), so I've found a natural fit between the academic world and the horror world in more ways than one over the years. Anyway, with the great idea of the Horror Day of Action that HWA was promoting, I put together a vampire double feature for the campus. In the art department, we have a lecture series called Art Forum, and we require all students taking an art course to attend at least one (of dozens) forum lectures a semester. I got support to combine an Art Forum lecture w/a Horror Day of Action, and the turn-out was extraordinary - especially on a Friday afternoon on a commuter college campus. After an introduction and a brief lecture on German expressionist film and art, we showed Shadow of the Vampire to be followed by the orginal Nosferatu after a short intermission. However, b/c the turn out was both huge and enthusiastic (one of my colleagues called it Goths Anonymous), I decided to include a rare short Dada film called Le Vampire during intermission. It's a bizarre 8-minute piece that includes footage of a vampire bat feeding on a Guinea pig. Nosferatu followed that short after a little more history on Murnau and some Nosferatu trivia (w/a heads-up about Nosferatu's reflection in the mirror toward the end of the film and where Murnau took his name from...), and refreshments, which included fruit-sweetened gummy body parts, were served. The response was so strong that we've decided to do this at least once a month on Fridays and will be showing the original Night of the Living Dead next month, since November is the month of the dead. As if that's not enough, some of the students approached me to ask about my being their faculty sponsor for a new horror group forming on campus - I think I'm more excited about this than they are. I gave horror.org a nice plug too and was glad to see the students scribbling down the url right next to a list of recommended German silent films. We advertised the event on the campus' giant digital event sign and in the student paper. It's nice to know they read it. I did try to get some snaps, but my digicam decided to give up the ghost at the worst possible moment. One of the students blamed Friday the 13th for it. The best part was that they applauded enthusiastically for Max Schreck - what more could a horror fan ask for? That and seeing some of the kids hanging out and talking w/each other about the movie afterwards just blew me away. I had no clue what to expect for this event and am really stoked to see how into it the students were. The more we can engage them - especially on a commuter campus - the better and stronger they'll all be (and us too) for it. It was also great to turn some of my colleagues on to the idea and receive their support in this too. Thank you so much for this terrific idea of promoting our beloved genre. And Happy Horror-Days!!