Okay, so I didn't actually get to have dinner with Leatherface. I just really wanted to use that title. But this past Saturday, at the first annual Summer Fear event in Tatamagouche, NS, I did eat a hot dog across the room from Gunnar Hansen, the power tool enthusiast from Tobe Hooper's original Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Summer Fear is a new annual horror event that takes place in the Tatamagouche Grain Elevator, which has been converted into a sort-of community arts centre, and Mr. Hansen was the event's inaugural special guest. The hot dog cart parked outside the grain elevator filled the venue with the smell of cooking meat, which seemed appropriate, give the carnivorous tendencies of Mr. Hansen's alter ego. I drove up with my employer, Calum Johnston of Strange Adventures Comic Bookshop, to set up a vendor's table and get my TCM DVD signed. Some short movies were screened--Jason Eisener's Treevenge and Jason Shipley's Blood Shed, among others--along with the trailer for the upcoming feature The Corridor, and other assorted short films and trailers, and Mr. Hansen (a friendly, engaging, grandfatherly dude, but still a tall, imposing drink of water) hosted an hourlong Q and A where he shared funny anecdotes from the filming of the 1974 classic that made him a horror icon. He also revealed that he has agreed to a role in the forthcoming Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3D, but he couldn't say what that role was just yet (other than the fact that he's not reprising his most famous role). There were even some fans in costumes, including a Michael Myers who just couldn't resist buying his little plush doppelganger from our table...
...and even a wannabe Leatherface.
Nice try, pal, but it's pretty tough to compete with the original!
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