A Collection of Writings
The Horror!
ChillerCon has been and gone. So has Summer, Christmas is rearing up on a collision course with our checking account and before we know it, planes will be falling from the sky, microwaves exploding and we will be standing, slightly bemused, at the gateway to a new millennium.
But don't let's get ahead of ourselves. ChillerCon this year moved to a new location. Just up the road it is true, but a Sheraton as opposed to a Hilton for a start. Basically the difference was that the Sheraton had four lifts and the Hilton could only muster two. It meant less time jabbing futilely at the ‘up’ button and complaining to anyone who would listen the urgency of your visit to your room.
The Convention is run by Kevin Clement and his energetic band of slaves. It's probably the biggest dealers market for horror and assorted memorabilia in the world. And I love it. I think I've made the trip six times now and it just gets better. Kevin has got to be the coolest cat on any one's back garden wall.
With an estimated 28,000 paying customers queuing to get in, he sits placidly behind the registration table, a satisfied grin on his face, and never seems to stir a muscle. Until Saturday night that is, then he lets it all hang out. (That is one of the most revolting expressions I know but I'm also trying to be cool).
This year the Saturday night fancy dress bonanza was held in a marquee erected on the lawn out back of the hotel. On stage Kevin was giving his guitar plenty of wellie, while in the audience strange and exotic creatures roamed. I tried to recapture my youth by hanging out near the band and getting an overload of high calorie decibels, but youth is a slippery commodity and all I got was dislocated eardrums.
One of the main reasons for this visit to the USA was the launch of my new book, The Bedside Companion for Ghosthunters. This follows the Bedside Companion for Vampire Lovers and precedes the Bedside Companion for Ghastly Ghouls due out on Walpurgis Night 2000. I also took along a trunk full of the old autobiography, Life's a Scream. It was amazing. I was out of books by Saturday afternoon and had to resort to taking orders on scraps of paper.
Among the other guests were Karl Malden of the Streets of San Francisco and a marvellous outré proboscis, svelte Karen Black who has mesmerised audiences with her smouldering, off-beam stare for decades, bouncy Baby Doll Carol Baker, the gang from Dark Shadows, a G-string of very sexy Scream Queens, Russ (I'm coming to get you, Barbara) Steiner, who not only acted in The Night of the Living Dead but also produced it, and Bill Hinzman from the same film. On Monday I met up with some old friends and went to one of my favourite eateries, The Tavern on the Green in Central Park. It was all over much to soon and I'll just have to wait and see if I get asked back again.
Back in England I was told I was short-listed for a Talkies Award for the audio cassette version of my autobiography, LIFE'S A SCREAM. It sounded good so I went to the awards lunch full of expectations. Then I found I was third. Me! Third! And that came right on top of hearing that I had been voted in Femme Fatales magazine the THIRD sexiest Hammer actress. I feel a failure! And I don't care if there were a thousand other books up for the awards.
Chris Moon
It must be November - awards are in the air. I was asked by the Celebrity Guild of Great Britain to name an UNSUNG HERO for an award. As it happened I had just met Chris Moon at dinner in a friends house. Horror writer Jimmy Herbert's in fact. Chris is, without doubt, a real, dyed in the saga, Boy's Own hero. He was commissioned at Sandhurst and finished up leading a bomb disposal team. Which in this era means anti -personnel mines.
In Cambodia, he was mistaken for an American ‘military advisor’ and sentenced to death by the Khmer Rouge. While he was waiting for the death sentence to be carried out, he learned Cambodian and talked his persecutors out of it. Then he goes off to Mozambique to teach the locals how to defuse the mines. Coming home one evening across a patch of ground that was supposed to be mine-free, he steps on a mine. When he regains consciousness he is bemused to see his arm and a leg lying on the ground some distance away.
In spite of his terrible injuries, he now runs marathons through Death Valley and triathlons in the Sahara. He spends his less active moments collecting money to buy prosthetic limbs to send to amputees in areas where daily, men, women and children are victims of the detritus of war. And if that ain't the address of a hero nothing is. It was one of the proudest moment of my life to be able to present Chris with the award at a dinner held at the Four Seasons Hotel in Park Lane, London.
Look after yourself and drop in at the webstore. It's been revamped and has all sorts of weird and wonderful embellishments.
Love,
Ingrid Pitt