Sometimes even monsters just want to be understood and appreciated.
Though they often get a rap, this annual Southern California horror convention puts the spotlight on these frightful creatures and focuses on what it takes to create the scariest monsters on film and television.
“Monsterpalooza is really a celebration of the art of monster-making and the movie magic behind the scenes of creating creatures and characters and the stuff people see on screen,” said Eliot Brodsky, creator and director of Monsterpalooza, which returns on June 2-4 to the Pasadena Convention Center.
The weekend will include panel discussions, celebrity guests, more than 400 vendors selling horror related goods and a museum showcasing movie props and monsters.
But for those who really want an education on where the monsters come from, the highlight of the weekend will be watching the various live demonstrations taking place throughout the convention center that will include makeup artists and special effects experts creating all sorts of creatures on-site.
“At the show there’s a lot of makeup artists, concept artists, sculptors, painters, a lot of film work that maybe you won’t see at other events,” Brodsky said.
“We got the best makeup artists that come to the show and you can see from start to finish. At the beginning of the day, they’ll start on their models to create a character and when you’re at the show you can spend the whole day there and see them in progress and the transformation happening in real time,” he added.
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People will also be able to meet celebrated makeup artists like Oscar Award winner Justin Raleigh, who has worked on shows like “Salem’s Lot” and “Swamp Thing,” and Mike Elizalde, whose company Spectral Motion has worked on films like “Hellboy,” “Scary Stories to Tell in Dark” and the hit series “Stranger Things.”
Like other horror conventions, Monsterpalooza is also packed with celebrities who have appeared in these memorable or cult classic films and television shows.
Expect to see the man behind one of the most recognizable disfigured faces of all time, Robert Englund, who portrayed Freddy Krueger in most of the “A Nightmare of Elm Street” films. The actor will appear for photo ops as well as on a panel with Freddy’s old nemesis Jason Voorhees of the “Friday the 13th” films.
Englund and fellow actor Ken Kirzinger, who portrayed Jason in 2003’s “Freddy vs. Jason,” will appear in the panel Friday night to mark the 20-year anniversary of the film.
Other celebrities on hand include Skeet Ulrich from “Scream,” Harvey Guillen of the television series “What we do in the Shadows,” renowned SFX makeup artist Tom Savini and actor Danny Lloyd who played Danny Torrance in the 1980 Stanley Kubrick-directed horror masterpiece, “The Shining.”
Lloyd will also appear in a Friday night panel discussing the film.
For Brodsky, the weekend will be all about reminding people that while a lot of films these days rely on computer generated imagery, there are still a plethora of talented folks using very practical skills and effects in creating some of the scariest modern day monsters on film.
“There are many people who are actually creating this stuff with their hands and applying it to people and there is a physical creature, the characters that you love are actually real and you’ll see that at the show,” he said.
Monsterpalooza
When: 6-11 p.m. Friday June 2, , 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday Sunday June 3-4.
Where: Pasadena Convention Center, 300 E. Green Street, Pasadena
Tickets: $35 June 2; $50 June 3; $40 June 4 at monsterpalooza.com.