Photos courtesy of Volz Media
We've wrapped up Day Two of Telluride Horror Show (read the day one recap here), which means we only have one day left of the best weekend of the year. But there's still an enormous amount of fun and frights left in store, so leave your Sunday Scaries at the door. Only regular scaries are allowed here.
Day 2 was rainy, VERY rainy, but that didn't keep Horror Show fans at home or in their hotels. We braved rushing rivers and puddly sidewalks to stand in line for the day's features lineup: David Kittredge's Boorman and the Devil, Martín Mauregui's Crazy Old Lady, Alexander Ullom's It Ends, Jason Lei Howden's Deathgasm 2: Goremageddon, The Adams Family's Mother of Flies, plus repeat screenings of Man Finds Tape, Hellcat, Fuck My Son! and Flush were among the titles grabbing eyeballs and melting minds Saturday. There were also two more 16mm secret screenings from the Jon Davison archives, and a charity screening for fan-favorite Good Boy from Ben Leonberg, raising funds for Second Chance Humane Society and Telluride Humane Society.
As host, I was honored to invite onstage Emily Bennett and Justin Brooks for their sophomore feature playing THS, the graceful yet absolutely ruthless folk horror Blood Shine. Bennett and Brooks' first film, Alone With You, won the FANGORIA Chainsaw Editorial Eye on the Future award, and Blood Shine is even more sophisticated and haunting. I also hosted the filmmakers behind the fantastic Sinister Stories Shorts Block, seven short films handing out dread, malevolence and jaw-dropping creativity with every brief minute they had. (The other shorts block of the day was Uncanny Tales, and you can read about those films here. By all accounts, they were hugely well received, like all shorts blocks at Telluride Horror Show.)
But my big plans for the day were to host a Q&A with Bryan Fuller for the Colorado premiere of his film Dust Bunny! I'm an enormous fan of Fuller – Phil used to tease me that my weekly reviews for Hannibal were “more love poem than review” – and gateway horror is a passion of mine, as a kid who wasn't allowed to watch full-blown horror, but still managed to get my spooks in thanks to films like Something Wicked This Way Comes and The Watcher in the Woods. I've seen Dust Bunny three times now and I love it more each time. It was an extraordinary honor to speak with Fuller about the dark, precise whimsy of his feature film debut – and if you're attending the fest, we're screening the film again and doing a repeat Q&A today!
And of course, with a fest as experiential as Telluride Horror Show, you're not going to get through the day without some extremely memorable events. Jeremy Robert Johnson hosted another Horror Summit, this time with authors Daniel Kraus and Stephen Graham Jones, Grady Hendrix brought back his nigh-indescribable Witchcraft for Wayward Girls live show, and all of the authors in attendance (Johnson, Kraus, Jones, Hendrix, Sarah Langan and Paul Tremblay) held a Horror Book Fair signing event.
And one of the highlights of the festival each year is the Pig Roast, which is, well, what it sounds like. It's held at the base of the famed Telluride Gondola, with free barbecue and sides for pass-holders. The weather finally cooperated, with the rain holding off long enough for us to gather outside, enjoy each other, the food, the fall colors and, for me at least, the UT/OU football game (we won). Hard to beat.
And that was Day 2! Here's what's on for today.
