Interview with Texas Frightmare Weekend Founder Loyd Cryer
Written by The Dhampir
Texas Frightmare Weekend has only been around since 2006, but there’s no denying its rising popularity these past three years. It has boasted such genre legends as George A. Romero, Tom Savini, Malcolm McDowell, Sid Haig, Elvira, Doug Bradley and Dee Wallace Stone to name a few, and promises many more of horror’s hallowed faces at future conventions. Not only does it carry the big names in horror, but it also has supported independent filmmakers (and Texas natives) like Mel House (interview), Tony Brownrigg (interview), Stacy Davidson (interview), etc.
As TFW heads into it’s fourth year in 2009, we were lucky to get a chance to sit down with the “man behind the curtain,” or founder and creator of Texas Frightmare Weekend Mr. Loyd Cryer!
Dhampir: Loyd, first I’d like to thank you for sitting down with me to talk about TFW, a once small convention which has grown by leaps and bounds since its inception. How did it all get started?
Loyd Cryer: It’s really pretty simple. I’ve been a horror fan all my life, since I was about four years old. The first movie I ever remember seeing was The Exorcist. So being a horror fan and living in Texas, where there were no horror conventions, it just seemed [to me] like, why aren’t there any horror conventions out here? So I came up with this brilliant idea one day, I’m gonna do a horror convention in Texas! So we planned it out and I kind of checked around to see what was going on, in the horror convention realm, I guess you’d say, did a lot of planning and it all finally came together in Feb ’06. We did our first Frightmare and it was scary, but here we are heading for out fourth show and, knock on wood, it’s been a successful and a fun ride!
Dhampir: How does someone go about starting a horror convention? I mean what kind of contacts do you need or initial investment? It cannot be cheap!
Loyd Cryer: (Laughs) No, everybody asks me that all the time, “How do you get a hold of people, how do you get your funding?” To be quite honest with you, the first show was put together with any spare cash, we had and credit cards we put everything we had; all of our credit cards were just maxed out for that first show! It was nerve wracking, cuz, you know, you’re like, if this show doesn’t make money then we’re in serious debt here, brother! (Laughs) Putting it all together, you just start searching out contacts. I had nobody that helped me do the first show. I didn’t feel that it was right to contact another convention and say, you know, “Hey can you give me your list of guests?” So I basically just started e-mailing people and it was surprisingly easy to find a lot of people. Our first show, we did a Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 reunion. Once we found one of the people, which was Bill Johnson, who played Leatherface in that film, everything else just came together. I had contacted Tom Savini, he’s pretty accessible and it just kind of rolled from there. After the first year it got a little easier because then you have a few contacts to work off of. It was a little tough, kind of like “Let’s throw it against the wall and see what sticks!” That’s pretty much how we ran the first show!
Dhampir: I’ve attended two of the shows now and will be at the fourth as well. It seems as though you have vendors and talent that want to come to your convention, is that the case?
Loyd Cryer: Yeah, we actually had that with the first show too. I think that’s where my talent lies, in promoting and actually getting out there and spreading the word. Once I got out there and spread the word on the first show, we started having people knocking on our door. We had to turn down quite a few guests that first year because we felt like we had enough guests and we didn’t even know if it was gonna be successful or not! We still had a lot of guests, but we kept it as small as we could.
Dhampir: Have you been surprised at home much it has grown?
Loyd Cryer: I’m always amazed at how big it’s grown. We had people contacting us, we had press contacting us, and everyone always said in these interviews that I’ve done. “Why do you want to do a horror convention in the ultimate ‘Red State’?” Honestly (Laughing) I didn’t know, I didn’t realize that things were that bad in Texas, that we were all locked down and nobody embraced horror movies. I knew a few people that liked horror films. I just thought, “Well everybody likes them too!” So yeah, it grew out of something really, really small. It’s gotten pretty big and I hope that people keep embracing it.
Dhampir: Speaking of being in the “Red Zone” in the middle of the Bible Belt, have you gotten any hate mail or people protesting the event in any way?
Loyd Cryer: I haven’t gotten any hate mail! Not one piece of mail, not one e-mail, or anything like that. Not anyone in person. No-one has ever looked at me and said “How could you do this? How could you bring this nastiness to Texas and Blah, blah, blah!” I think a lot of people, no matter who you are, you have a favorite horror movie. Everybody has a favorite horror movie that they saw when they were a kid and so I guess it’s kind of strange, now that you mention it. I’ve never gotten any negative feedback on what we’re doing. We’re just doing a horror convention!
Dhampir: So the convention goers kind of invade the surrounding area. At malls and such we get some pretty strange looks. Your thoughts on this?
Loyd Cryer: Yeah some people got some strange looks, but there wasn’t one complaint! I didn’t get to see everything, because when you’re running a convention, you don’t get to see what all is going on. Some of the video of the Zombie Walk that I’ve seen, some of the zombies were walking up to the mall goers, tapping on their windows, there was laughing, it just didn’t seem like a negative experience. We did kind of get that from the hotel we had last year (Hilton DFW Lakes, Grapevine TX) they kind of looked down their noses at us. Which is a weird situation when you’re paying a hotel tens of thousands of dollars and they look down at you like you’re crazy! That’s really the only negative thing we’ve ever had. People tend to embrace horror films in general, I think!
Dhampir: Speaking of horror films, what would you say is your favorite?
Loyd Cryer: The Exorcist. I know it sounds a little cliché but it really is my favorite horror film. Just because it’s a classic. It broke a lot of new ground and in its time, it was a phenomenon. When I was four years old, my mom, she took me to the theater to see this film and that haunted me ever since. I don’t watch it very often because I don’t want to lose the chills that it gives me when I watch it. I watch it about once a year.
Dhampir: Eileen Dietz has been there for two of the shows and this year Linda Blair will be there. Some of the celebrities, Tyler Mane, for example, don’t do a lot of conventions. How do you convince celebrities that make few convention appearances to come to Frightmare?
Loyd Cryer: Quite honestly, most of the people we bring in, I’ve been bugging them for a while. Tyler, I’ve been bugging him since he was announced to play Michael Myers. I’ve just stayed in contact with him. We tried to get him in ’07 and again in ’08. I guess he just finally broke down and said “Please dear god, just leave me alone! I’ll come do the convention.” (Laughs)
Dhampir: Is there a lot of word of mouth between the celebrities where they say “Hey, this guy’s a good guy, you should go in and do his convention”?
Loyd Cryer: Yeah, that’s a lot of it. We really do get a lot of that. When you contact somebody the first time and say “Hey would you like to do our convention?” sometimes they’re a little offset and they may not reply to you but when we can go through a list of that people that we’ve had at our event. We’ve never had anyone, any of these celebrities walk away utterly displeased with what we’ve done. Then you can list their names and you can tell them [other celebrities] “You know, Malcolm McDowell has attended our event.” It makes it a little easier. They say [to themselves] “You know my peers have done it, so I guess it’s not a bad thing.”
Dhampir: Frightmare has grown, year after year. I understand that the venue for this year has wanted you to hold it there for a while now?
Loyd Cryer: Yeah, after ’06, after the first show. Which for those who had not attended that show, we held it at a convention center, not a hotel. What we did is, after that show we really need to do this at a hotel because, logistically it’s tough to get attendees and guests back and forth to the convention center. So we started looking around for a hotel, the Sheraton popped up and they’d been after us for a while to do the event, but , quite honestly, the Sheraton wasn’t what we had envisioned. We wanted a luxury hotel setting, every time we do this. At that time, the Sheraton wasn’t a luxury hotel, it was a little older and it needed a facelift. So we didn’t accept their offer and they kept coming back to us and coming back. In the meantime, they’d completely renovated the hotel. So it kind of fits what we’re doing this year. We wanted a luxury hotel and they’d upgraded the hotel. So that’s why we’re there!
Dhampir: You also have this tendency to throw out these odd little quick additions, kind of like the “Nightcap of the Living Dead” plus the Night of the Living Dead screening last year. From looking at some other convention websites, you don’t get that with a lot of other conventions. A lot of times it’s just the convention with the guests whom they’ve advertised. Up to about a week or two before their event. How do you come up with these little add-ons?
Loyd Cryer: I guess, from when I was doing my research getting ready for the first show, goin’ around to all the different websites and looking at other conventions, it seemed like everybody did the same thing – they brought in the same guests every year. That was kind of our goal in the beginning, be a little bit different. Just come up with some stuff that seemed a little different. Lot of it’s marketing too, I don’t wanna draw back the curtain, or the illusion of anything but, Like, “Nightcap of the Living Dead,” we’d just planned to do an after party. Noel [G. Noel Gross] came up with that catchy little name for the thing. It just creates a whole different theme when you call something “Nightcap of the Living Dead!” Rather than calling it the 40th anniversary Night of the Living Dead after party.
Dhampir: Let’s talk about the vendors for a moment. A lot of your vendors are return vendors and what I call convention circuit vendors – you see them at the same conventions or see the same vendors at each and every convention. You have a few vendors that aren’t at every other convention. Is that a case of them being Texas-based, or is it because they want to be at Frightmare?
Loyd Cryer: A lot of it is because they’re from the area. I think a lot of it is what I was talking about in the beginning, it’s that we didn’t have one [a convention] and most people, and even I don’t like to travel myself. I mean, I’m not gonna get on an airplane and spend a whole weekend [just] for a horror convention, I’m just not gonna do it. Not knockin’ the people that do that. I think we just filled a need in the area. I think Necrobilia, for example, might not have done a convention, had we not started one in Texas. We have a lady from San Antonio, called “Creepy Classics” she’s just got a massive, massive collection of videos, old horror videos. She comes out every year and sets up a table and sells horror videos. There’s Mike Rhodes down in Houston, he’s been a collector all his life. He’s got just rooms full of memorabilia, posters dating back to the 50′s, a lot of them are signed. He’s got stuff that’s signed by Vincent Price. He comes every year, sets up a table, he wants to get rid of a lot of his collection. So it makes more sense for him to come up from Houston than to fly to New York or something.
Dhampir: You’ve also provided a venue where young, independent horror filmmakers can showcase their talent. Guys like Mel House [interview], Stacy Davidson [interview], Anthony Brownrigg [interview] and Gerald Nott to name a few. Was that part of your intention?
Loyd Cryer: Yeah absolutely! Originally, I wanted to give people a venue, people that made films in Texas. Where they could say “We’re at our home, we’re at our convention. Texas Frightmare Weekend is our home.” and they can present their work, side by side with some of the masters in the genre. I looked around and there were a lot of people who were making horror films in Texas but you never really heard about them. When somebody from Texas made a film and got distribution on it, nobody ever said, “Look at this guy, he’s from Texas” and so that was kind of what I wanted to do. It really comes down to the filmmakers, they’re there and I just give them this convention to come and show it [their films]. It’s great, I mean we get a lot of really great films from Texas. Like you said, we’ve had Mel House, Stacy Davidson, Parrish Randall, tons and tons of people. We’ve even found people who’ve made films in the past in Texas, like Terry Lofton who did The Nail Gun Massacre, he was right over in Segoville, TX. We’ve got the director of Bloodsuckers from Outerspace (Glen Coburn) came out and premiered his film for the first time on DVD. A few months later he got distribution on it.
Dhampir: We’re seeing more and more of these independent filmmakers getting distribution. I know that Brownrigg, just started distributing Red Victoria earlier this month, Stacy Davidson’s Domain of the Damned started selling in December, Mel House’s Closet Space had European distribution last year too.
Loyd Cryer: The Flesh Keeper is out there and I hope they get distribution on that one soon too.
Dhampir: TFW is “presented by” Anchor Bay. How does that relationship work?
Loyd Cryer: You know, every good convention has an event sponsor. Basically it’s just an exchange, they come out and promote their stuff and we get a lot from them too. We get to promote their films which is a benefit to us, too, cuz we get films like Laid to Rest that’s about to be released by Anchor Bay. So, we get to see their films plus it’s just cool having Anchor Bay out there giving away free SWAG (Stuff We All Get/Stolen Without A Gun). We’ve been real lucky to form a relationship with Anchor Bay. I’ve always thought that they were just a legendary DVD company. They were releasing horror on DVD when it wasn’t cool to release horror on DVD. They’re a great bunch of guys, if you’ve never met the guys at the Anchor Bay booth, I definitely recommend getting over there cuz they will give you some free stuff.
Dhampir: You also have a sponsorship with Bloody-Disgusting.
Loyd Cryer: BD is simply a media sponsor this year. They’re helping get the word out about the convention. In turn we get the word out about their website, as if they need any help doing that? They’re one of a few media sponsors that we have on board. We have local media sponsors, Pegasus News helps us out a lot. They’re a great place to go to for local stuff in the Dallas Fort Worth area, to see what’s going on. All kinds of events, interviews, and anything you could think of. They’re great for that. We’ve been lucky to form relationships with a lot of horror media. Deadpit is a media sponsor. They’re so funny. We kinda feel kindred with them because they’ve got that country redneck accent goin’ on. They’re always fun.
Dhampir: Let’s talk about the web site a little bit. How long after, or before the first event was the website up and running?
Loyd Cryer: Probably around six months to the event. It took a while to get it goin’. It’s always tough, to me, it’s the hardest thing, is getting somebody to design the website. Because I have no website knowledge, you know, I don’t know HTML from Adam! (Laughs). So, I went out and found a guy that actually that I paid to design our website, the original website. Then I met Noel through doing the convention. Noel is our web guru now, he’s just a brilliant, brilliant guy when it comes to web design. He does things with that website that I never would have dreamed would have been possible.
Dhampir: Through the forum on the website, you stay pretty accessible to the fans. Whether we are praising or complaining.
Loyd Cryer: Well sure, and I think it’s because we’ve made the website, the whole convention in fact, everybody’s convention. I don’t walk around going “This is my convention!” try to take all the glory for it; it really is everybody’s convention. It’s the fans’ convention. We encourage everybody to tell us who they want to see at the next convention, I think all the fans, everybody, has a stake in it.
Dhampir: You tend to be not only accessible on the website, but at the actual event as well.
Loyd Cryer: I think that it’s because that’s the way I am. I’ve been in retail all my life. I work for a car dealership now and I work for a Lexus dealership, and customer service is the top priority. So if people pay from $25 all the way up to $200 for a ticket, then I should be there to help answer any questions that they have. I want them to walk away feeling that the money was well spent. I think the only way I can keep in control of that is to be accessible. If I lock myself behind a door, who knows what could happen? The Dhampir could go crazy and just light the place on fire! (Laughing) But that’s just my background, that’s just what I’ve always done. Customer service position all my life and it’s not an easy job, but it’s all I’ve done. I’ve always been in front of somebody. I’ve always had some sort of customer base that I’ve had to take care of. I’ve worked for Lexus now for nine years and let me tell you, every one of those customers that we take care of is just pampered to death. I just feel like it’s my duty, if I’m running this convention and I’m taking people’s money. Then they should walk away feeling like they got their money’s worth.
Dhampir: Post-convention, you get a lot of people who get on the web-forum who complain about this or that. Some of it borders on the ridiculous. How does it affect you personally? Does it make you second guess yourself or do you just let it go?
Loyd Cryer: I personally take care of every complaint, taking it all into consideration. I might say, “We probably could have done that better.” or “Well, you know I did the best I could on that.” A lot of times when I get a complaint of the forum, I’ll PM (Private Message) the person and ask, “What I could have done to make it better for you? At this point, I know you’re not happy, so what can I do to make you happy?” I know I can’t please everybody, but I do try.
Dhampir: You also keep it very family oriented in the sense you’re there with your family, and your wife and kids are involved in the event. Those who have gotten to know you and your family know that if there’s a problem and we cannot find Loyd, then just ask your wife or daughter. Is it a family endeavor from the planning and contacting celebrities to the actual execution?
Loyd Cryer: It’s very family oriented, I said at the beginning that I didn’t have any help, but I told you a lie. It was my family that helped me through it. Every single one of them, like you said, my daughter, my step son, my son. I’ve got two other daughters, you know my wife, they’ve all been there to help me through it all. Erika plays a pivotal role, and that’s my daughter, everybody knows Erika, well, Sue too. When you check in, when you register at the convention, Erika is there, puttin’ your wristband on and getting you ready. Prior to the convention, Erika is spending a lot of time putting together guest lists, making sure that registration goes smoothly. I have a network of friends who help me out too. I have a buddy and his wife, they come over every year to help us stuff VIP gift bags. There’s a lot of work that goes into these things that I know people don’t see on the surface. There’s tons and tons of people, helping me get this thing ready. And it’s all out of fandom, that’s all it is.
Dhampir: Let’s not forget your neighbor Pauly, your security guy.
Loyd Cryer: My neighbor Pauly, comes over every year, he’s a big giant Samoan guy. He helps us with security, he’s one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet, but he runs a tight ship! He helps us keep things together. His wife Maggie assists the guests every year. We’re fortunate enough to have a lot of friends, family and attendees who just make the whole thing roll as smoothly as it does. It’s weird that we’re doing a horror convention and so many nice people are involved. So many nice people are horror fans!
Dhampir: At the convention it seems that no matter how weird someone may be, or how much of a, and I use this word with great affection, freak someone may be, at Frightmare, once they walk in, chances are that they’re not the strangest person there.
Loyd Cryer: You know, that was one of the first things that we noticed, going all the way back to ’06, when we booked this thing. The guys at the Grapevine Convention Center, they were really nice, but they kept asking us things, like “Are they gonna come in here with blood all over them? Are they gonna be mean? Are they gonna be violent or anything?” (Laughs) When the day of the show finally came, you walked in the halls and bumped into somebody it was “Oh, I’m sorry sir.” or “excuse me ma’am.” and that kind of thing. I say that you’ll meet the nicest people at a horror convention, you really will. I’ve been to others outside of Texas, so I know it’s not just in Texas. I don’t know, I just think that, personally, I think that horror fans are a very intellectual group of people. That they’re very smart and I don’t think that you’ll meet a nicer bunch of people.
Dhampir: Not to bring any negativity, but you have had a couple of minor incidents, most notoriously someone getting bitten at the Zombie Walk. Could you talk about that?
Loyd Cryer: That was a funny thing, wasn’t funny when I first heard about it. The hotel came running up to me, “There’s somebody says they were bitten by a Zombie!” I said “Oh my god! What is going on, they’re out of control.” Well, you know how the hotel is, it’s a Hilton, it’s a big corporation, they want to cover their asses, so to speak. They had the guy sit down and write a letter, write out how it all happened. So they had it on file, just in case there was an issue. So I read it, and the guy had went up to a girl who was dressed up like a zombie, they were playing around, like they always do. He says “Hey, you’re a zombie, why don’t you bite me?” So the girl bit him! (Laughs) He asked for it! So he got bit. I guess he wasn’t expecting her to bite as hard as she did. She bit him because he’d asked. It’s one of those things, where you sit back and say [to yourself] “Well that’s one side of the story, what’s the other?” He asked to be bitten, he was bitten, case closed.
Dhampir: Other than that, you haven’t had any real issues at one of these conventions.
Loyd Cryer: Well thank god! Knock on wood. Like I said, we’ve got a great group of people. All the attendees are great, they’re there because they want to be there. They’re there to meet people that they admire. So I think that unless you do something just horrible, you know, cheat people and rip them off, then you’re gonna have a happy crowd of people. As long as you remember that they’re your customer.
Dhampir: There’s that other horror convention in Dallas every year. They resorted to some alleged underhanded tactics last year. Do you watch what they do, see where their mistakes are, listen to the complaints of their attendees and work on ways not to repeat their mistakes?
Loyd Cryer: Well, without saying anything bad about them, it’s their event, I guess. I’d have to be stupid not to [pay attention]. But that’s with everything, you take your life experiences, other conventions, stories and nightmares that you’ve heard about. You try to take that into consideration. Plan in advance for it, say to yourself, “Well I certainly don’t want this to happen so I’m gonna do this.” But believe me, no matter how much planning you do, there’s gonna be a new challenge every year. It’s just gonna happen! Something will pop up this year, I guarantee you, that everyone will be upset about. It was just something we didn’t plan for. That’s all you can do, you just have to plan for what you can, and if it happens, then you know not to do it again next year.
Dhampir: Have you ever had any problems with any of the guests, where they were difficult to deal with and said to yourself, “He/she is never coming back!”?
Loyd Cryer: No, no, never have. Everybody has just been really, really nice. It’s just been a reciprocal thing you know? If you’re nice to people, they’re gonna be nice to you. You just treat people the way you want to be treated, and they’ll treat you back the same way. There’s been a couple of agents I’d rather not talk to ever again. But as far as guests? No, I can’t think of anybody. I mean it’s been such an amazing experience meeting all these people after idolizing them since I was a kid. If you just treat them like a human being, then they’ll treat you the same way.
Dhampir: Are there any celebrities that the fans are beating you up to get and for one reason or another they just remain elusive?
Loyd Cryer: Yeah, John Carpenter comes to mind and I don’t think that’s any secret to anybody. John Carpenter is kind of a reclusive guy. I don’t know if he just doesn’t dig doing horror conventions or he just doesn’t like to travel or what the deal is. We’ve offered him way too much money and he’s turned us down! (Laughs) Kurt Russell is somebody that we get [requests for] all the time. Kurt Russell has turned us down. Rob and Sherri Moon Zombie are the tops, we get more requests for those two more than anybody! Rob and Sherri all the time. I will tell you, Rob Zombie, we actually offered him, and they were going to accept our offer and Halloween II came around. So that completely knocked him out of being able to do our event because Rob pretty much immerses himself in the films that he makes. He’s there from the beginning all the way until the end of post production.
Dhampir: That’s how you lost Dario Argento last year right?
Loyd Cryer: That’s exactly how we lost Dario Argento. That’s, you know, that’s the pitfall. These people are all working, most of the people we bring in are still working actors and directors or whatever they’re doing in the industry. Dario, at that point, got the offer for Giallo. It was filming during our convention, so he just couldn’t do it! You know, you get people hyped up about certain people, and then sometimes they just cannot make it. That’s why we bring in a mix of guests that everyone is gonna have fun with these people. You could bring in people who are really, really obscure and if they cancel, nobody cares. We try to bring in people that somebody recognizes. Hopefully that makes up for whatever cancellations happen. Another note on that too is that we really work hard to ensure that our commitments from these people are solid before we announce them. Everyone on the [web] forum says that I tease them too much. It’s really all about, hey I’ve got somebody, you guys are gonna like it, but it’s solid yet.
Dhampir: A lot of people will post on the web forum that they were only coming to see so and so. Isn’t Frightmare more like a circus, where, if you don’t like the clowns, there’s the dancing bears, if you don’t like the bears, there’s the trapeze act kind of thing? A little something for everyone?
Loyd Cryer: Yeah, that’s a good way of putting it. That really is, because we do get people who attend the conventions who don’t even care about the horror movies. They just want to come out and check out what this horror convention thing is all about. We try to do things that everybody is gonna be interested in and have a good time at. To me, I always thought that the focus was with the guests, but we have people who buy tickets to just sit in the screening room and watch movies all weekend. That blew me away the first year that I noticed that. I got to talking to a couple of attendees and I was asking “Did you meet so and so, did you meet this person or that?” and they were like “Oh, no. I don’t meet guests. I go and watch all the movies.” So, there’s something for everybody.
Dhampir: Your vendors are so diverse, from sci-fi to clothing to jewelry to horror memorabilia. Occasionally you even see a table that makes you wonder why it’s at a horror convention.
Loyd Cryer: Yeah, well last year we had an energy company, Green Mountain Energy bought a table with us. When they first contacted us, I was like, well, I’ve got the space, I guess you can buy a table. They just wanted to come out and see if they could sell some electricity! You know, it’s diverse every year. Most of our vendors have full time jobs, so there are times where we’ve had a vendor for a couple of years and they can’t make it back because they had to work or whatever.
Dhampir: Well, let’s wrap this thing up and let me thank you once more for taking the time to do this interview. I’m sure our readers will enjoy it.
Loyd Cryer: You’re welcome. Absolutely, I enjoyed doing it.
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