For a horror convention, it’s a must-see. Especially if you’re into gore.
So says the man who does bad stuff to people on camera for a living (more on that later).
For years now, Kevin Greig, a unit production manager, has been coming to the annual Days of the Dead horror gathering at the Plaza, which kicked off Friday and continues through Sunday.
It’s a wild menagerie of midnight movie celebs, fake guts for sale, gnarly cosplay and a whole lot of blood and beer, with Greig and his industry peers commingling with thousands of fans throughout the weekend.
Here are five highlights from opening night:
A cheeseburger in scaradise
Let’s begin with a few words of wisdom from the man behind “Sewer Gators,” “Killer Kites” and the immortal “Murdaritaville,” where a group of Jimmy Buffett impersonators are preyed upon by a half-man, half-bird.
“I’m allergic to pretentiousness,” says director Paul Dale, a New Orleans native whose entry into horror came as a kid when his dad woke him in the middle of the night to watch “Army of Darkness.”
“I just find it much more enjoyable to have a good time and laugh.”
“Life kind of sucks, sometimes,” he continues. “So, why not turn your brain off and just have some fun?”
That’s precisely what we’re here to do — and an apt encapsulation of the weekend, to boot.
This is a self-aware scene where horror and humor frequently intertwine.
Dale is leading by example, promoting his latest film “Unipooper.”
Trust its tagline: “This one’s pretty corny.”
Shop till you drop … dead
Is that a Care Bear with a baby doll head jutting from its stomach?
Rhetorical question around these parts.
It hangs next to a Minnie Mouse plushie outfitted with some seriously serrated teeth and a stuffed Mother Goose with blood-coated mandibles.
They’re among the many playfully perverse creations of Badly Behaved Babies, which shares a booth here with Killer Art, whose wares include hand-painted, horror-themed knives, cleavers and chainsaw blades.
The two companies are run by a husband-and-wife team.
“She does the cute and cuddly,” notes Killer Art founder Robbie Rittenhouse, a former tattoo artist. “I do the stabby-stabby.”
Days of the Dead doubles as a sort of flea market of the macabre, with dozens of vendors selling everything from “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” water bottles to Beetlejuice T-shirts to rubber “face-hugger” novelties from the “Alien” franchise.
And don’t forget the copper beetles made from bullet casings courtesy of the locally owned Dealer of the Dead, whose hauntingly beatific offerings include embalmed octopus tentacles and cat heads.
“I love animals; that’s why I preserve them,” says owner Tarah Una, a licensed taxidermist. “I call them forever pets.”
‘Want to be in a horror movie?’
Greig pulls out his cellphone and shows us a film clip of a blond woman getting her face treated like wet taffy.
To think, this could be you.
“I’m gonna show you the type of kill you can get,” says Greig, who’s worked on films like “Desert Fiends,” “Skate to Hell” and “Lost Media” with director Shawn C. Phillips, who flanks him at their booth on Friday where a sign reads “Want to be in a horror movie? Ask us how!”
OK, we’ll bite.
Greig explains that he and Phillips are crowdfunding their forthcoming sequel, “Desert Fiends 2.”
Contribute, and you could be getting croaked on screen in no time, just like the lady he showed us in that clip, whom they met at last year’s Days of the Dead.
Better start readying that IMDb page now…
Best costumed crew
Cletus the Clown is weirding us out.
The green-haired nasty, played by Nate Pate, eyes us menacingly, flanked by a gang of gnarly, impeccably costumed creeps, including the toothy Klorox (Kayla Hall), the hammer-wielding Executioner (Ethan Tuck) and the patriotic, oh-say-can-you-scream Ding Dong (Juan Rodriguez).
Turns out, they’re locals.
The crew populates the Halloween Maze (8490 W. Desert Inn Road), a free-standing haunted attraction that brings the scares year-round with events like the forthcoming Bloody Valentines on Feb. 13.
“We are the only full-contact haunted house in the city,” notes owner Nathan Harris, a lifelong horror fan since he saw “A Nightmare on Elm Street” at the tender age of 5, and who launched the Halloween Maze in 2021.
“What got me started was COVID,” Harris says of how his love for Halloween begat his haunted house. “I used to do a big yard display, and then during COVID I said, ‘If the world’s going to end, I guess I’m going to go really big this year.’
“I actually built it into my house, and I let the whole neighborhood come through,” he continues. “And then one of my friends said that I should try doing this on a bigger scale.”
He’s been giving Vegas the creeps ever since.
The biggest draw of the day
Where the Bear Jew roams, the crowd follows.
The line extended all the way outside the convention hall when actor/director Eli Roth appeared shortly before 8 p.m., fans thronging to get an $80 autograph or $60 selfie from the man best known for helming films such as “Hostel” and “Cabin Fever” and portraying the aforementioned Nazi smasher in Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglorious Basterds.”
Roth was definitely the top draw of opening night, when there were over three dozen celebrity appearances, from C.J. Graham (Jason Voorhees in “Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives”) to the screamiest of scream queens in Felissa Rose (“Sleepaway Camp”).
Other popular guests were David Howard Thorton, who plays Art the Clown in the “Terrifier” film series, and actress Linda Blair, who first turned heads — including hers— as a possessed 12-year-old in “The Exorcist.”
Bring a can of pea soup.
Contact Jason Bracelin at [email protected] or 702-383-0476. Follow @jasonbracelin76 on Instagram.