There’s The One That Ate Barbara
By Mike Everleth ⋅ December 26, 2008
The above video is by Jeff Krulik from when he attended the Night of the Living Dead 40th reunion at the Horrorfind convention in March 2008 in College Park, MD. In true Krulik fashion, he doesn’t interview director George Romero or any of the cast members, but instead trains his cameras on some of the more unusual fans in attendance.
Most interestingly, Jeff films Romero signing a stack of vinyl soundtrack LPs owned by Brian Horrorwitz, who owns record albums from Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, Martin and Creepshow. Romero seems quite amused by the collection and even reveals that he never met any members of Goblin who did the music for Dawn. The band apparently only interacted with producer Dario Argento.
Also appearing in the video are, yes, the “one that ate Barbara” actor William Hinzman; some guy dressed as P.J. Soles in Halloween for a costume contest; and local DC TV horror host Count Gore De Vol, who works a lot with the Spooky Movie Festival, which I covered on the Underground Film Journal this year.
For fans of Romero, Night or of Krulik, I hope you enjoy this video. Otherwise, they’ll be coming to get you.
Underground Film Feedback (4 comments)
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Ahhh, yes…Horrorfind! My stomping ground! Many good memories.
However, I love Jeff as much as I love Dark Cherry soda (which is A LOT!), but Bill Hinzman did not kill Barbara – he’s the one who killed Johnny, and it’s Johnny who comes back to get Barbara at the end (even though we never really do see what her fate is) – sorry to ruin it for everyone. (btw – I am all over this, in the background – yikes!)
I know. I waffled on putting that detail into the post, but I liked the line that Jeff delivers so much I just left it as is. I guess technically Hinzman is the one who TRIES to eat Barbara.
Which part of the video do you appear in?
It’s so rare I can nit-pick anything, with any sort of authority I couldn’t resist! haha – for the record, both Bill Hinzman and Kyra Schon do a lot of the east coast shows, and are great, fun people – they represent the two most iconic images from NOTLD, and have such a healthy regard to the fandom and the people they encouter in this world outside their normal lives – and Judith, who doesn’t do many shows at all, is a real sweetheart.
The disappointing thing about that Horrorfind was that Carl had died a few months earlier (he was Kyra’s real life father), and Marilyn (Carl’s real life wife) couldn’t make the show.
Kyra use to have a line of trowls that she signed (“I hurt”) at conventions, and Bill usually dresses as his zombie character one day a show – they started a few years back when he dressed up for a stage production, and got a great reaction from Tom Savini – Bill’s claim to fame is that he is the first zombie in a Romero zombie film, and now often simply referred to as “Zombie #1.”
Picture of me and my writing partner, Bob Hinton, with Bill from several years back: http://www.underpantsofthedead.com
C
Ah, you got me Mike and Curtis. I stand corrected. I think I was so overwhelmed I wasn’t thinking clearly, but I still might have misconstrued it. My biggest regret is that I didn’t approach that day, or that weekend, with any kind of bigger plan to commemorate it, because I truly felt it was such a remarkable assembly of iconic characters–I could have gotten miles of material with a better camera, microphone and pile of $20 bills for compensation. I never wanted to bother anyone without purchasing something, or at least compensating them for their time. I mean literally every zombie seemed to be there! Oh well. I’m glad for what I was able to get, I just happened to be at the Romero table when Brian was getting his albums signed. I really dig these events for the ability to participate in fan interaction, either directly or as an observer. It really deconstructs the mystery of acting and filmmaking. And that’s a good thing.