WAMG attends WonderFest 2009

I attended the 20th Wonderfest Sci-Fi and model convention at the Crowne Center Hotel in Louisville Kentucky last weekend. This is my 19th year in a row attending Wonderfest (I only missed the first one) and it’s a show I always look forward to. Wonderfest started in 1990 as a small-scale convention for a couple hundred model kit makers who enjoyed building figure kits and were looking to swap and buy those old Aurora monster and superhero models. This was right about the time the garage and resin kit hobby really taking off and Wonderfest soon became a showcase for figure sculptors and painters and has evolved into a huge model and science fiction media show with attendance in the thousands. Each year the show has a theme, often revolving around a movie. In 2004 for example, they celebrated the 50th anniversary of THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON with guests Ricou Browning (underwater Creature), Ben Chapman (out-of-water Creature), and Julie Adams (the girl in the white one-piece) and screened a 35mm 3-D print of the movie. Other past guests have included Ray Harryhausen, Jim Danforth, George Romero, David Hedison, Basil Gogos, Ann Francis, Ed “Big Daddy� Roth, Joe Dante, and Yvonne Craig. Well-known Hollywood special effects and makeup artists often attend as well as top fantasy illustrators and comic book artists.

This year’s theme was the 30th anniversary of Ridley Scott’s sci-fi classic ALIEN. Guests in attendance related to ALIEN were Veronica Cartwright (who played Lambert in the original film), Tom Woodruff, who actually wore and helped design the Alien costume in all five of the ALIEN sequels, effects artist Steve Wang who worked on several of the ALIEN films, and makeup artist Steve Johnson who also worked on the sequels. The three men gave well-attended panel discussions about their experiences with the ALIEN franchise and all presented informative presentations. Film historian and renowned movie prop collector Bob Burns brought some of the original space suits from ALIEN to display as well as some props from the film. Ms Cartwright was super nice (looking great at 60) and introduced a 35mm screening of the original ALIEN at a nearby theatre Saturday night where the Alien himself joined her onstage (Ms Cartwright also brought along her younger sister Angela who played Penny on LOST IN SPACE and was one of the Von Trapp children in SOUND OF MUSIC). Ms Cartwright had great stories to tell about the making of the famous chest-bursting scene and it was a treat seeing ALIEN on the big screen again.

I first got in to the monster model kit hobby in the mid 1980’s when I became determined to reacquire some of the toys I had when I was a child in the 1960’s. The only monster kits available then were the old Aurora plastic models and a few offshoots (remember the “Pirates of the Caribbean� kits by MPC in the early 70’s?). I loved building and painting monsters! Around the late 1980’s I started hearing about “garage kits� which are limited-run (usually) solid-resin models made by creating a mold from a sculpture and pouring solid resin into it to make kits. Over the past two decades, thousands of different monsters have been created as garage kits, usually in 1/6 or 1/8 scale (but sometimes bigger). Any movie monster (and many movie characters) you can think of has been made into a garage kit at least once, and Wonderfest is the place to find them and admire the new ones that are being introduced. I used to save my money through the year for Wonderfest, then go there and blow it all on kits (now you can buy them on-line). This year I picked up an excellent resin kit of Taurus, the giant blue ape-monster from the 1970 classic EQUINOX and a styrene Robbie the Robot. Just looking at the kits on display always inspires me to get to work on my own models.

The heart of Wonderfest is the model contest, easily the largest competition of it’s kind in the U.S. There were over 500 models entered this year in categories that included Horror figures, dioramas, spaceships, Kaiju (Godzilla, etc) and more. The detail in the sculpting and painting on almost all of these is breathtaking and it’s amazing how far the hobby has come over the past 20 years. I took some great photos this year of some of the kits that were my favorites (I had to leave Sunday before the winners were announced so I don’t know who won). Some of the very best model painters, airbrushers, and sculptors offered how-to demo classes, sharing their skills teaching newer kitbuilders.

As usual, I spent much of Wonderfest in the enormous dealer room. I set up there as a dealer myself for 10 years selling vintage monster toys and movies, but am glad now to just be a shopper. There were over 300 dealers from all over the country (and Japan) selling resin kits, busts, DVDs, artwork, T-Shirts, old and new monster toys (TONS of Godzilla stuff), and movie memorabilia. I picked up an original 14×36 insert poster from FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE SPACE MONSTER and a 14×22 Window card from THE FLESH EATERS. They’re both already on my wall!

Other highlights of Wonderfest this year included the Rondo Awards ceremony (online fandom’s awards for the year’s best in horror film, television, books, comics, art, writing and more), full-scale classic monster replicas, a screening of the 1957 classic IT THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE with a live running commentary by Bob Burns (who worked on the film as assistant to 50’s monster maker Paul Blaisdell), Universal Monster Army’s eye-popping display of vintage 60’s monster toys, Larry Blamire’s premiere of THE LOST SKELETON RETURNS AGAIN (sequel to his THE LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRE), and fans parading their amazingly elaborate costumes.

Wonderfest is a fun and unique event thatI highly recommend to anyone with an interest in models, special effects or horror movies and I can’t wait until next year. Now I have to go down to my basement and get to work on my EQUINOX model!