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Rock and Shock picks up SpookyWorld’s slack
BY LIZA WEISSTUCH
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Kevin Barbare, who co-hosts The Hill-Man Morning Show on WAAF, is no stranger to bloody massacres. For longer than his dozen years in radio, he’s made a practice of attending horror-movie conventions across the country, and he had a part in a no-budget zombie film called Bone Sickness (Morbid Vision Films) that went direct-to-video this year. He says that when his listeners recognized him at events like the annual Chiller Theatre Convention at New Jersey’s Meadowlands, they often asked why Massachusetts has never had anything similar. Eventually, after many years of forming contacts with movie stars, gore connoisseurs, memorabilia vendors, and other horror-circuit folk, he put together Rock and Shock, a weekend-long horror convention with a horror-metal festival tacked on. It makes its debut next weekend at the Worcester Centrum and the nearby Palladium. You don’t have to look any farther than the Misfits, who headline a Saturday-night gig at the Palladium, to understand that the audiences for heavy metal and horror movies have long been intertwined. The band’s lone original member, Jerry Only, is a regular at Chiller Theatre, and the horror-con audience was instrumental in helping him to relaunch the Misfits after a hiatus of more than a decade. Barbare recognized a natural affinity: "I look at people who go to our [WAAF] shows and I see people who go to these horror shows and they look like the same people. It seems to go hand and hand. People like to be scared — not grossed-out and violent, but people like to be scared." Still, when he decided to stage his own horror-con, he figured he could improve on the model. "I’ve been to tons of horror shows, but we added things we thought belonged, like the rock-concert component. I’ve never been to one that has rock-station-audience appeal beyond the horror movies — like with tattoo artists and piercing people and an art gallery like we’ll have." The debut of Rock and Shock comes at an auspicious time. For many years, October in Massachusetts was ruled by SpookyWorld, which billed itself as "America’s Horror Theme Park" and included, in addition to the typical haunted-house fare, many of the staples of a horror convention: movie-memorabilia exhibits, costume vendors, and visits from slasher-flick stars and aging goth-rockers. But last month, SpookyWorld auctioned off its inventory and gave up the ghost for good. Rock and Shock will fill that vacuum by offering the opportunity to go skull to skull with actors, directors, and movie-crew members who’ve made careers of making hair stand on end. Cast reunions for Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, and Haverhill native Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses will be part of the proceedings, along with appearances by freelance character actors (the guy who played Leatherface in the 2003 Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake) and scream queens (Angela Bettis from Carrie). Sid Haig, a horror legend who was tapped by Zombie to play Captain Spaulding in House of 1000 Corpses and will return for the 2005 sequel The Devil’s Rejects, will be roaming the grounds. He may be a veteran actor, but he’s a neophyte on the convention circuit. Still, in the single year he’s spent appearing at such events, he estimates he’s "pressed the flesh" with 300,000 fans. At one festival in Cleveland, as he recounts over the phone from his California home, "A kid came up to my table and said he and his friend always talked about going to a horror-film convention. So they took the bus from South Dakota to Cleveland to get an autograph. That was a shock." Rock and Shock runs October 8 through 10 at the Palladium, 261 Main Street, and the Worcester Centrum Centre, 50 Foster Street, both in Worcester. For tickets to Centrum events, call (617) 931-2000; for Palladium concert tickets, call (800) 477-6849. For complete details about bands, stars, and ticket prices, visit www.rockandshock.com
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