We had a wild and crazy few days in Bloomington, IN for the annual pilgrimage to The Dark Carnival, and have now arrived safely back at ZRC HQ in Madison.

Here is the festival that was:

Day 2:

The ZRC saw all the films we wanted to evaluate, including ‘A Chance in Hell’, ‘Fitness Class Zombie’ and ‘Dead Friends’. We also witnessed disturbingly hilarious antics from the horror hosts of Atomic Age Cinema, including 2010 Zombie of the Year Baron Mardi.

Basement Boy should really be more careful about what vials he swipes from Doc Calamari’s lab; not all of them are alcoholic in nature.

Scenes from the festival’s fire show. Very neat stuff.

A Q&A with some of the people behind ‘The Small Assassin’, the period piece, officially endorsed adaptation of the Bradbury story. If you get a chance to see this one don’t pass it up! It helps to illustrate the real menace facing our society (rather than Zombies): babies. Terrifying babies.

Would you take cookies from this squid-man? I don’t recommend it.

And yet, many people did. Astonishing the lack of care for one’s personal safety sometimes on display these days.

Day 3:

We wrapped up the festival with a slate of mostly non-Zom films, talked with some of the other attendees and vendors and even did a little picketing in front of the theatre (though of which films I won’t say yet so as not to spoil the detailed reviews coming soon).

Some of the very talented people behind the scenes who, amongst other things, clean up the messes that Doc Calamari inevitably creates.

A tip from experience: you cannot buy off the AAC hosts with gifts. (Though major awards from Zombie Rights Organizations seem to go over well.)

You can also view all our 2011 DC pictures here.

Who gave him a kazoo anyway?

Also, this video from the opening party finally got uploaded to Youtube correctly; I’ll probably append it to the earlier post as well, but for the benefit of newer readers, here it is:

Tags: Movies, Public Appearance, Zombie Public Event

This entry was posted by John Sears on Tuesday, October 25th, 2011 at 2:02 am and is filed under The Dark Carnival, ZRC News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.