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Ruler of the Wasteland:
An Interview with Ken Kish of Cinema
Wasteland
By Bob Ignizio
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For the serious horror fan
in northeast Ohio, the annual Cinema Wasteland conventions have provided
something to look forward to for the past 2
years. The man responsible for these can’t-miss events is Ken Kish, and as
a genuine fan he goes out of his way to put on an show the hard core horror
fan will remember. This year he's bringing in some amazing guests,
including the "godfather of gore", director H. G. Lewis ('Blood Feast',
'2000 Maniacs'). Recently I had the chance to speak with Ken about shows
past and future, and his adventures in fandom.
Ken first became a horror
film fan in same way I did, through the numerous horror hosts that used to
appear on local TV. "I grew up in the late sixties and the seventies. As a kid you could
watch late night horror shows on Friday night with Hoolihan & Big Chuck,"
Ken explained.
"Then you had Saturday afternoon with Superhost, Saturday night with the Ghoul, and Sunday
evening with double creature features. My father tended to work late
nights, so he’d get home at 11:00, movies would start at 11:30, and as early as
when I was
5 or 6 years old he’d come home and wake me up to stay up and watch
them."
With all those hours logged
in front of television and movie screens, Ken has seen so many movies (
"Over 20,000 of them," he claims) that picking favorites is almost
impossible. " I could
give you a top 100, maybe" Ken says. "A few that would fit into my
top 25 would be George Romero’s 'Dawn of the Dead' and Lucio Fulci’s ‘Zombie’."
He adds, "Nobody in their right mind can possibly say anything bad about ‘The Texas
Chainsaw Massacre’."
Ken had been doing business
as a dealer at other people's conventions for about 10 or 12 years when he
decided he could do better. "They used to be a lot of fun, but in
retrospect no one ever did anything," according to Ken. "You paid to get into a dealers
room and shop, maybe meet a couple guests. After 12 years of doing that I
decided I could run a show, with events and talks and films and
give people their money’s worth. It was
just my way to kick it into high gear and show all these people who’d been
running disappointing shows exactly what I think one should be."
Having attended his first two shows, as well as some of the competition, I
think he's on the right track..
Last
years’ event didn’t go quite as planned due to the September 11th tragedy
. Still, Ken says, " I was pretty happy with the outcome last
year. We pulled in over 900 people, which was close to our numbers the
first year. We got in all but three of our guests, who are all gladly
coming back this year. I think we really solidified ourselves just by
trying so hard to make sure everyone had a good time. When we did
that, word spread that we weren’t going to let anything stop us from having
a good time at a Wasteland weekend. But this year looks
like it will be the show, especially attendance wise, that I wanted to do
last year."
One thing that
surprised me about this years' event is that H.G. Lewis and Connie Mason
(star of Lewis' 'Blood Feast and '2000 Maniacs') will both be guests this
year. I had always heard there was bad blood between the two of them,
and I asked Ken about this. " They haven’t seen each other in 37
years. It’s not really bad blood as much as when they last worked
together Connie just wasn’t an actress. I know it was very frustrating
for Herschel as a director, especially on such a low budget when you’re
trying to do everything in as few takes as possible. But I think it’s
subsided. I’ve talked to both of them and Herschel assures me he’ll be
cordial and not strangle her."
More Cinema Wasteland on Utter Trash:
Pictures: A couple
pages of shots from the October 2002 Cinema Wasteland Convention.
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