Cinema Wasteland Movie And Memorabilia Expo 2009: Cleveland

By Julie Finley

Cinema Wasteland Movie And Memorabilia Expo is a bi-annual film convention that typically takes place during April and October in the Cleveland, Ohio Metro area. It’s put on by Cinema Wasteland, a mail order video service. The event started in 2000 as a response to the banality of most film conventions and trade shows. The idea was to combine the more interesting elements of this niche circuit, which would be: film screenings (mainly horror, indie, B-movie, or newer and older cult films); industry “special guests” (typically actors and crew from various films); and vendors selling films and memorabilia. It also has a masquerade element to it (as in, costumes are definitely encouraged). The idea was to be more engaging than just table after table of people selling crap.

There are still a lot of tables selling lots of crap (of both the good and bad varieties). The first time I attended one of these events was in 2005, and it was very much a fluke and last minute sort of thing. Luckily the local entertainment section of the newspaper made a brief mention of it. I probably wouldn’t have bothered going at all hadn’t I noticed one of the special attractions, and that being the cast and crew members of one of my favorite trashy films, Street Trash. Now that’s just the type of oddball niche to get me out of the house!

Street Trash is pretty obscure, plus it’s about as unique and vile as it gets, with its humor still intact! It’s not a film to be taken seriously. Although it’s in the horror genre, there’s nothing scary about it. . . it’s just gross-out funny stuff! There was no way I would miss that. So I attended, and had a blast! I couldn’t wait to go to the next show, so I bookmarked their website, to keep myself informed of Cinema Wasteland’s future activities.

However, I can’t say I’ve been that consistent in my attendance. The one thing that irked me about Cinema Wasteland was the focus on slasher and torture-porn films. That stuff truly disgusts me, and the fans that are into it, creep me out even more than the movies do themselves! It’s not really a scene I feel comfortable in, especially when you know the person standing next to you looking at a table of DVDs is looking for the closest thing to a snuff film possible. . . and probably will jerk off to it!

Since the Street Trash event, I’d only attended once, and that was because Tura Satana from Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill! was one of the guests. It was quite cool to chat with her even though she was eating a seafood salad sandwich covered in mayonnaise. . . which was gagging me! She was very nice and her wit and beauty is still very much intact. The one thing she and I could agree on were the enormous number of creeps lurking about.

After I was done chatting with her, I felt even more claustrophobic in that atmosphere, and just wanted to get the hell out of there. Pity, since it costs about $20 admission! I checked the website after that event, and most of the coming attractions were Texas Chainsaw Massacre crap, or various actors who played serial killers that either had masks or costumes on when in character (like anyone would know the difference between three different guys portraying Michael Myers). So I figured my interest in this event had pretty much run its course.

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