On Friday the 13th of February, a veritable holiday for horror fans, a lanky man whose face is plastered in black-and-white corpsepaint breezes through the downtown Hilton on Michigan Avenue wielding a chain saw. “Killer” Kyle Skogquist, the 33-year-old guitarist for long-running Twin Cities horror-metal band Impaler, is on the hunt for Gunnar Hansen, who played Leatherface, the psychopathic killer with a mask made of human skin, in the 1974 cult classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Mad Mobster’s celebrity guest list includes the usual actors beloved by horror fans—Hansen, Brad Dourif, who voiced murderous red-haired doll Chucky in every Child’s Play movie, and Kane Hodder, who played unstoppable killer Jason Voorhees in four latter-day Friday the 13th films. Given equal billing are big names from the true-crime realm, including former FBI special agent Virginia Curry and Columbine High School shooting survivor Richard Castaldo, who is paralyzed from the chest down after suffering five gunshot wounds.
Kyle Kuchta, who directed a recent documentary on horror conventions called Fantasm, says he had an averse knee-jerk reaction to the Mad Mobster lineup at first blush, but warmed to the idea after reading more about it. “Horror has always been an escape, but when you relate that to true crime there’s not an escape—that’s reality,” he says. “I don’t think there’s fans of true crime, but there’s interest in what evil exists in the real world. ‘Cause we can make up monsters, slashers, and ghosts—but when it actually happens, you want to learn why. It’s human nature to be curious.”
Harder’s table-top displays hold snapshots of the collector alongside inmates, most notably Charles Manson. All the murderabilia exhibits are in the small lobby-level Buckingham Room, which has been redubbed the “Manson Exhibit” for the weekend. Harder has also brought CD and vinyl copies of Manson’s bizarre folk recordings to sell, and some of his prized Manson yarn art, including a large white spider with a red swastika on the abdomen—though he doesn’t want to part with that item. “A guy offered me $6,000,” Harder says. “I declined.”
The rest of the floor is a tangle of horror-centric sights: a table with mini figurines of characters from popular pictures and cult obscurities (e.g., 1982’s Basket Case), a display of prop hearts and assorted bloody creations from a Bloomingdale, Illinois, effects company, a pair of young girls getting made up—one to look like a zombie and the other a Tim Burton-esque doll. But the convention’s true-crime elements come into view from the margins and pop up unexpectedly.
Shortly after Castaldo exits the stage he’s approached by an attendee wearing a black T-shirt with an image of “Dimebag” Darrell, the Pantera guitarist who was shot and killed while performing with Damageplan in 2004. The attendee asks Castaldo to pose for a photo with him, and bends down next to Castaldo’s wheelchair. “You’re the real hero,” he says to Castaldo. “If I could give you my legs I would.”
