Horror fans head to Monroeville Mall for Living Dead Weekend

Leonard Lies remembers exactly how he died.

“I was zombie-ing through the mall, makeup on, and these people come in on a motorcycle,” he said. “One guy is in a sidecar, and so I zombie past, and I knock him out of the car. And he’s really upset, so he runs up and kicks me in the chest and knocks me on the floor.”

As Lies started to get up, he grabbed the man by the leg.

“And as I’m starting to bend back up, he takes this machete out of his boot, and he says, ‘Say goodbye, creep!’ And he sticks it in my head —through editing,” Lies said. “And I’m dead.”

Lies was an extra in George Romero’s 1978 classic horror film “Dawn of the Dead,” playing one of the eponymous undead zombies who would later be affectionately known as the “Machete Zombie.”

When he originally performed that stunt in Monroeville mall, he was 23, and had never filmed a stunt before, having started out as a grip on the production. He wasn’t sure until the premiere of the film whether he had made it into the final cut.

On Friday, he and other actors from Romero’s films and other horror and thriller favorites returned to Monroeville Mall to meet fans and sign autographs at the annual Living Dead Weekend convention.

The event runs from Friday to Sunday at the mall, bringing horror buffs, artist vendors, and actors and experts in the world of scary movies together. Tickets and photo opportunities are available inside the mall.

“If you like George Romero films, especially ‘Dawn of the Dead,’ this mall is a living set,” Lies said. “It’s still the mall. A lot of it is transformed, but it’s still the mall.”

Horror fans travel from all around to attend the gathering, said Dave Novak, who manages The Living Dead Museum, which is open all year round in the mall. The museum showcases eight rooms of artifacts, props, and information about Romero’s movies and other horror films.

“Meeting everybody from around the world who are fans, we all have the same shared interest,” Novak said.

The mall, itself, brings a lot of zombie fans together, and the stores benefit from the influx, he added.

“With Living Dead Weekend, everybody is here to pay tribute to George Romero,” Novak said. “You go to a different convention, there might be different fandoms around, like ‘Doctor Who’ and ‘Star Wars,’ and some horror stuff. But here, everybody is here for George first and foremost, and the movies second.”

Fans of horror

Dave Strohm and Lindsay Strohm came all the way from Ontario, Canada to the mall. It was their first time attending.

Dave is a big fan of Romero’s films specifically. Seeing “Night of the Living Dead” made a big impression on him when he was a kid.

“It’s such an original movie, and the black-and-white was super scary when you are a kid,” he said. “It was a low-budget movie, so it was one I could afford when I went to the store. I watched it so many times, and I just get something new out of it every time I watch either one of the movies.”

He was most excited to check out the film location tour around the mall later in the evening. The tour runs once a day each day of the convention.

“It would be a dream for me, a.), just to come to the mall, which I’m here now, and b.), to have a tour to see all the behind-the-scenes stuff,” he said. “That’s just extremely interesting for me.”

Ryan Postlethwait of Pittsburgh said it was cool to see local artists and artists from out of town at the event. He was excited to meet horror-world celebrities.

“It’s good to kind of chat with all of them and get some insider info on some cool movies,” he said.

Savannah Urie and Chelsea Urie, sisters from Connellsville, have different tastes in horror movies. Chelsea prefers modern ones, while Savannah likes the classics.

“When I was a little kid, I got into horror movies by ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ and ‘Killer Klowns from Outer Space.’ I just liked to be scared when I was a kid,” Savannah said. “I would sit in my room with the lights off, watching horror movies in the dark.”

Penn Hills resident David Shablesky is a fan of ‘Martin,’ a 1977 Romero vampire thriller starring John Amplas. He was excited to meet Amplas at the convention.

“The storylines, and a lot of them being an allegory for something else, sort of speaks to society at that time,” said Shablesky of older horror movies.

Douglas Education Center Tom Savini’s Special Make-Up Effects Program students Echo Charlton and Salma Leal showed up to the convention in full zombie makeup and costumes, complete with fake blood. They were eager to see their professor, Jerry Gergely, who had a booth at the event.

“Horror is one of the things I do like, but not only just specifically the horror genre,” Leal said. “I like the behind-the-scenes of actually making weird creations in your imagination come to life.”