CELEBRITY GUESTS FOR 2017
LOCAL GUESTS FOR FLASHBACK WEEKEND 2017
SVENGOOLIE
SVENGOOLIE FBW 2017 SCHEDULE
Saturday, August 5
- 2:00PM ??? 4:00PM - Svengoolie autographs & photos
- 4:15PM ??? 5:00PM - Svengoolie hosts the Sinister Visions Costume Contest
Every year at Flashback Weekend we look forward to the annual visit from Chicago Television Legend "SVENGOOLIE". Rich Koz has portrayed the popular character since 1979, and is now seen nationally Saturday nights on the Me-TV network, as well as on Chicago’s WCIU, "The U!" Also featured are "Doug Graves" the laid back musical sidekick, Tombstone the talking skull, and Kerwyn the prehistoric rubber chicken , along with Sven’s popular musical numbers and commercial parodies wrapped around films from the classic Universal Studios library.
Svengoolie/Rich?? has received 8 regional Emmy Awards, and was inducted into the prestigious Chicago Television Academy's 2004 "Silver Circle" for outstanding contributions to Chicago television. He has won the national Rondo Award as ‘favorite horror host’ numerous times, and the Illinois legislature?? has officially named??October 31??(Halloween), 2014, as “Svengoolie/Rich Koz Day” in the state- and his original TV coffin will be on display permanently in Chicago’s Museum of Broadcast Communications.
DANN GIRE
Flashback Weekend Master of Ceremonies
Daily Herald film critic Dann Gire has been a member of the Flashback Weekend cult since the very beginning. He serves as the president and founding director of the Chicago Film Critics Association, and has won the prestigious Peter Lisagor Award for Arts Criticism six times. (His mentor/rival Roger Ebert has won it only four times.) Gire has also been an adjunct faculty member in William Rainey Harper College’s English and Journalism departments since 1984, teaching courses in drama, film & literature, journalism, short stories & novels, mass communications and feature writing. He put both Zack Snyder's remake of "Dawn of the Dead" and the family feature "The Incredibles" on his top 10 list of best movies of 2004.
NICK DIGILIO
Flashback Weekend Co-Host
Talk Show Host/Film Critic for WGN Radio. Nick has been reviewing movies for over 23 years on WGN Radio in Chicago. He also hosts a highly-rated weekend talk show on 720am that covers everything pop culture and news related. He has also written, acted in and directed over thrity plays in and around the Chicago area including the horror classics "Among the Dead" (in which he played an insane?redneck who killed zombies) and "Operation Infiltration: An Experiment in Terror" (which was a salute to great genre films like Romero's "The Crazies" and Philip Kaufman's "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"). He has LOVED horror films for his entire life and is incredibly excited to be co-hosting the Flashback Convention for yet another exciting year.
Top Five Horror Movies of All Time:
- John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN
- George A. Romero's DAWN OF THE DEAD
- Dario Argento's SUSPIRIA
- Don Coscarelli's PHANTASM
- Tobe Hooper's THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE
(but, of course, this list changes constantly depending on his mood).
STEVE (CAPONE) PROKOPY
Flashback Weekend Co-Host
Steve Prokopy is the Chicago Editor for Ain't It Cool News (www.aintitcool.com), where he has contributed film reviews and filmmaker and actor interviews under the name "Capone" since 1997. In 2005, he also joined the staff of the Chicago-based media outlet GapersBlock.com as the site's Friday film critic with his Steve@theMovies column. Steve has been a horror fanatic since he was a youngster, and was even suspended from high school for a day after a presentation he gave his classmates on his hero, make-up master Tom Savini. He has been a Flashback Weekend co-host since it began in 2002 and is thrilled to be back again this year.
Top Five Horror Movies:
- Sam Raimi's THE EVIL DEAD
- George A Romero's DAWN OF THE DEAD
- John Carpenter's THE THING
- Wes Craven's A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET
- Herschell Gordon Lewis' BLOOD FEAST
HEATHER WIXSON
Flashback Weekend Co-Host
After falling in love with the horror genre at a very early age, Heather Wixson has spent the last decade carving out a name for herself in the genre world as a both a journalist and as a proponent of independent horror cinema. Wixson is currently the Managing Editor for DailyDead.com, and was previously a featured writer at DreadCentral.com and TerrorTube.com where her online career began; she???s also been a contributor at FEARnet as well as a panelist for several of their online programs.
Wixson recently finished her first book, Monster Squad: Celebrating the Artists Behind Cinema's Most Memorable Creatures, and is currently finishing her second upcoming book project as well. She calls Flashback Weekend her "home away from home," and is thrilled to be returning as a co-host this year.
Top Five Horror Movies:
- John Carpenter's The Thing
- Tom Holland's Fright Night
- Chuck Russell's A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
- Fred Walton's April Fool's Day
- Andrew Kuehn's Terror In the Aisles
JOHN LAFLAMBOY
THE MOLE MAN OF BELMONT AVENUE, SQUEAL, THE ART OF PAIN
John is a stage actor who trains at The Artistic Home in Chicago and co-stars in The Mole Man of Belmont Avenue with Mike Bradecich, which he also co-wrote and co-directed. He has co-produced two other feature films (The Art of Pain and Squeal). As an actor, John has fought ninjas and zombies as a lead in the feature film The Art of Pain, been killed by a Pigman in the feature film Squeal, performed the motion capture movement for the video games Stubbs the Zombie and BioShock and had very small roles in very small commercials that only his mother seems to have seen.
John is also the founder and director of Zombie Army Productions, a production company that produces Chicago’s largest haunted house (Statesville Haunted Prison & City of the Dead) and one of its newest haunted houses (HellsGate).
KITTY ZOMBIE
Chicago's favorite zombie will be attending Flashback Weekend! Unleashed upon the world by Zombie Army Productions in 2007, Kitty has become a staple of the Chicago horror and zombie scene and a crowd favorite, recently starring in his own pilot "The Adventures of Kitty Zombie". With the body of a killer and the mind of a puppy, Kitty is a particular favorite of the little ones, as he brings a Herman Munster-like quality to what would otherwise be a terrifying physical presence.
To find out more about Kitty, visit KittyZombieAdventures.com
RON FITZGERALD
Ron Fitzgerald (AKA Master Ron Fitzgerald) is an award-winning Actor, Gothic Illusionist and Host for dark, sticky fun! Fitzgerald has appeared as an actor in numerous feature films and has recently portrayed Dracula in "Dracula's Orgy of the Damned". Ron has just completed his own film project, which he co-wrote and co-produced, with director Vincent Bilancio, titled "Dark Realm" which combines his acting abilities with his Gothic illusion show.
CHAD SAVAGE
Chad Savage is a dark artist/designer and the owner of Sinister Visions inc., a dark visual design company that caters to the horror, Halloween & haunted attraction industries. Besides providing branding, art and websites for hundreds of haunted houses around the world, he manages a series of genre websites including ZombiePinups.com, PumpkinCult.com and the DarkChicago.com series of sites, and is the Art & Marketing Director for Flashback Weekend and The Zombie Army.
Sinister Visions inc. is an official sponsor of Flashback Weekend, and will host/sponsor the Costume Contest on Saturday - details HERE!
To learn more about Chad Savage and his work, visit SinisterVisions.com and ChadSavage.com.
JIM SORFLEET
Jim Sorfleet is the owner of SnS-Photo located in Chicago. Jim has been creating visually stimulating images professionally for over five years and his portrayals of the eerie and macabre has been described as disturbingly titillating.
His work has been featured in numerous gallery shows including those at Horrorbles in Berwyn and the 1901 Gallery in Chicago. He is an internationally published artist whose magazine credits include features and covers of Gothic Noir Magazine, Dark Parlour- Magazine and others. His work has graced the covers of fine novels such as Electric Angel by Author Sue Dent, Indiana Horror 2012 by James Ward Kirk and Train Gone Sorry by Melissa Skyer.
SnSPhoto (Jim Sorfleet) is the official event photographer for Flashback Weekend.
To find out more about Jim and SnS-Photo, visit his website at www.sns-photo.com.
Cerina Vincent was scheduled, but unable to attend.
Check back for updates!
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Celebrity guests subject to change without notice
due to unforseeable filming/scheduling conflicts.
