Today we take a look at Shudder’s Halloween offering Shudderfest!

by Adam Holtzapfel

With Halloween being different this year, last week Shudder announced that on this past Saturday, October 31st they would be holding the inaugural Shudderfest. A day long event of panels, followed by a showing of Halloween and an exclusive one time showing of a mystery film that won’t be aired again until 2021.

Having the link live at around 11am EST the schedule teased an intro by Keith David. Users logged on early to join the chat room until the countdown clock started at around 11:50am EST.

Once the clock struck noon fans were treated to the Horror Royalty Panel.

This panel was moderated by Yahoo’s Kevin Polowy as he chatted with Lin Shaye, Tony Todd, Robert Englund, Tom Savini, Doug Bradley, Lance Henriksen, & Kane Hodder. During this hour a lot was covered.

The panel ranged from some stuff that seemed old hat for those of us that have been to many conventions, while adding some new stuff. I was unaware that on the set of The Hills Have Eyes 2 that Wes Craven has asked Kane about his skin from his burn. This led to a joke of Robert saying he was never considered for Jason Voorhees and Doug Bradley saying if he was, Jason would never be silent.

Also during this Tom had remarked that a scene with Lance in Pumpkinhead made him cry and that was all he remembered of the film. Lance discussed preparing for a scene in Near Dark and getting into character. Lin discussed how hard it is to do a scene getting choked and cutting off her fingers in the 2020 remake of The Grudge. Tony discussed why he did the bee seen in Candyman. This was a fun panel for fans.

At 1pm we have the Blair Witch X Host Panel. Moderated by Shudder’s Sam Zimmerman. We see the team behind the found footage film The Blair Witch Project (Eduardo Sanchez, Gregg Hale, & Michael Monello) chat with the director and actresses of the Shudder Exclusive, Zoom film Host (Rob Savage, Haley Bishop, & Emma Louise Webb).

Throughout this hour they discuss the impact of The Blair Witch Project and it’s influence on the found footage subgenre and how Host felt like the next natural step.

The teams discussed their tactics and troubles of filming. As well as how the cast of Host is all friends while The Blair Witch Project consisted of over 1000 auditions.

At 2pm fans were treated to The Future Of Black Horror. This is a panel I was looking forward to as I’ve always been represented in the genre and this gave a perspective that isn’t mine.

Panelists discussed how Get Out has led to more black horror projects being discussed and a resurgence. How in the over the decades films like Son Of Ingagi and Ganja & Hess were made but didn’t stick. This also focused on how this led a discussion on how a new Tales From The Hood, Horror Noire, and Lovecraft Country came to be.

This also led me to think of how the few films I could recall (Night Of The Living Dead and The People Under The Stairs) where an African American character had made it through the film instead of falling victim to the tropes that they’re killed early on.

There were also mentions of Queer Horror which made me think do films like Sleepaway Camp fall into the Queer/Trans Horror subgenre?

I hope this panel gets added to the Shudder app, as I feel this is one everyone should see. I went in wanting to see it and left wanting to see more.

At 3pm we had Interview With The Glampire as Grady Hendrix of Paperbacks From Hell answered Q & A on the lore of vampires using novels based on the creature of the night.

While this wasn’t my thing, the chat room seemed to love it! There were some laughs for this one man show and a lot of praise.