The Legend of Sweet Creek Horror Convention

The Legend of Sweet Creek Horror Convention
by Tony Jenkins
Punk4Punx Publications

With the con already having been covered by the Field’s local news stations, I’m going to give you a first person inside look at the Legend of Sweet Creek Horror Convention that took place this past weekend, July 12^th-14^th at the Illinois State Fairgrounds. Let me first and foremost say if you weren’t able to make it, you really missed out. Sure, it’s always great to catch the larger, more established horror conventions; but it’s really fucking something when you’re able to support independent teams of artists doing their craft and make history by attending the first event celebrating such a thing. I was able to experience this all compliments of winning one of the contests for two VIP passes to the event, which allowed me to take my +1, my friend Daniel Conner, an aspiring writer/director hoping to get his own start into the business.

Falling asleep at 4 AM Saturday morning to not really wake up until 9 AM, my day had finally begun. Awoken by a beautiful girl that kept me in bed until noon had me worried I was going to be late, but what can I say? She was tempting and definitely had her charm about her, but I knew I had to get going and fulfill my obligations. Kidding, kidding. It was just a late start. My life isn’t that awesome, c’mon now. At one in the afternoon my bro and I set sail against the mighty winds of Illinois to travel two and a half hours to approach the damned land that is called Springfield, taken over by the dread crew of Infectious Effects for 48 hours during a weekend of horror and hell. This is definitely not something I would miss!

Coordinated by Laura Richter teaming up with Tyler Bauer and Infectious Effects Productions, the horror convention convened for preview for those holding passes on Saturday from 5 PM to 8 PM on Saturday and continued from 12 PM to 6 PM Sunday. In addition to primarily focusing on the Legend of Sweet Creek micro-series and its fundraising, part of the proceeds were sent to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital. Anyone that says those in the horror community do not care about such things couldn’t be further from the truth.

Celebrity attractions at the Legend of Sweet Creek include Patrick Barnitt (Star Trek; Deep Space Nine and Voyager, Star Trek: First Contact, Patrick Stewart stand-in for Star Trek: Insurrection, The Coffin and 7even), and three individual “walkers” from The Walking Dead; Michael Koske, Michael Mundy and Michelle Flanagan-Helmeczy, each with their own respective celebrity histories. Other special guests range from wicked artist Roger Scholz, to former Penis Flytrap bassist and independent recording artist Lucifer Fulci, Infectious Effects’ own I Zombie and Lacy to paranormal activity investigators John Winterbauer and Jake Bonnett. Check out the con’s site for a complete list here: http://zenchyk.wix.com/sweetcreekhorrorcon#!guests/c9i5.

Daniel and I very much enjoyed the preview with our VIP status. We lived it up, met everyone we could and ended up laying down some cash to walk away with some goods. Daniel walked off with his signed pictures from all four celeb guests, we both enjoyed some of Roger’s signed artwork, I picked up a bizarro work called Strange Sex from Kevin Strange and his partner, and we definitely got involved in the scene with some of the monsters. I got choked by Jason Voorhees! How cool is that!? Zombie photobombed the picture in style, Daniel snapped shots with the walkers. It was all an introduction for us, but the real festivities started at the soundtrack party.

The soundtrack party brought the performance of three acts: Instrumental badass and guitar virtuoso Alex Chastain performing with Almaculate Conception, energetic and riot inspiring Us Against Them, and last but surely not least death metal greats Grim (Fuck Grim!). This was a chill sort of behind the scenes chance for the guests to chill and enjoy music, drinks, food and more. The multi-talented Lacy picked up some photos from the event with her camera. You can find them on the Infectious Effects Productions Facebook. This was probably my favorite part of the event, just getting to be in a familiar environment of a bar listening to kick ass bands. It definitely gave me a chance to kick it with the IE crew and have some bonding with Zombie himself over an IPA he introduced me to called Raging Bitch, Crown and Coke drinks and having his back when a dude decides to mosh in front of the stage. Now that was some good shit. Look these bands up on their respective pages and give them a listen. You’ll definitely want to hear them, and Grim has a video on YouTube actually done by Infectious Effects called Primeval (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61WnZL9BhL0). In fact, I’m going to jam it while writing the rest of this shit. Aw yeah… Here we go.

Out late and up early was the battle cry of the IE crew, myself and Daniel. Zombie and Lacy had us all beat, as the duo awoke to prepare his mohawk scar. If you haven’t seen some of her make up or custom paint work, you best get your ass online and check it out too. 8 AM, an hour before my alarm even goes off. As requested I’m handed a cup of probably the blackest coffee I’ve ever seen or had. Coming from Zombie himself, I can’t at all say I’m surprised. Thanks again for letting us crash at your home by the way man. I still dig the clowns! Oh, and thanks for driving us to McDonald’s for breakfast Lacy! You’re the best! After three of us (Zombie, “Pedro” and myself) suffer through our hangovers a little bit and fight the good fight of getting going, we manage to finally head out to get things set up for day two .

After a Facebook argument that was posted in the comments section on one of my posts, I’ve got to say I hope the fucker eats his words. It’s of course easy to say it doesn’t look like many showed up on a preview day that was intended for VIP’s and event people only. That does make it limited, but maybe it’s just my thinking. Sunday was loaded. The public were swarming in, little kids were being zombified by Lacy, crowds of 20 people at a time gathered to watch the highlight of the IE booth with the 12 minutes of footage the IE crew have put together of Legend of Sweet Creek. I had to have watched the footage at least in the double digits easily, and I loved it every time. The opening scenes are great, and Pedro’s crawling bit under the bridge is just badass as all hell. Hearing some of Zombie’s stories on the filming didn’t grant disenchantment, it made the scenes even more badass knowing what was done. They did some hella good work on it. Check the Infectious Effects website out to get a viewing and see what all the hype was about and why the namesake of the con.

I’ve got to say, the vendors were really great. Jim of Voodoo Comics gave me a great deal with purchasing Oxymoron, a Comix Tribe indie take on the Joker, throwing in issues one and two of The Red Ten, a new comic series featuring said character. Lucifer said he’d be honored to have me put a pin of his on my vest, and I picked up a horror soundtrack CD of his own work that he compared to John Carpenter’s work, alongside one of his death metal CD’s. I’ll give them a spin and maybe end up writing something on them another time. Roger signed my tasteful zombie pin up and gave free a smaller Cthulu work after a comment on another image I had made. I also picked up an antique instrument of dentistry, I’ve no idea what it’s called or was intended to do, but it looks like a small scale spear and well, having an instrument for such purposes on your person can’t be a bad thing. There were so many nifty things to look at, and not enough money in my pocket to get them all. Let me say real quick that the food vendors were good people. The prices weren’t bad at all and they were fun and charismatic when serving. You know it’s awesome when you ask for extra love on a tenderloin with cheese sandwich and somehow you know it’s there!

All in all, the weekend was a great success, and if I understand correctly, there are already plans for a return event next year. I’ve got it on good source that this will be the case. Will it still be named the Legend of Sweet Creek? That’s up in the air, but the idea of a returning horror convention is definitely out on the table. If that’s the case, you can definitely expect me to be doing everything I can to get in on the action and VIP again if possible, if I don’t just end up working at the damn thing. Trying to sell wares for the IE crew was fun and a throwback to memories of my own pulling work in St. Louis, Salem and elsewhere selling off our wares as a vend. Good times, good times. So if you’re in traveling distance or even a local of the central IL area and are looking for a new horror con, definitely be on the lookout next year for what IE will be cooking up. Check out the Facebook page and website to read up on everything that took place, and without a doubt you best damn add Infectious Effects on Facebook to support their efforts with Legend of Sweet Creek. Now, stop reading this damn thing and go check out www.infectiouseffects.com! Tony out.