When the newsagent in my village in Somerset started renting videos I was transfixed by the single rack of brightly coloured boxes by the Post Office
counter. I remember thinking I’ll never have to wait for my mum to take me to the cinema again! I paid particular attention to the top shelf of X-rated horror movies - I Spit on Your Grave, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and other horrors. The BBFC banned the most notorious of these.

So back then Fangoria magazine became a bible for me. At the “Fangoria’s Weekend of Horrors” in Austin, Texas, the first stop on this year's convention roadshow, these films are celebrated with a ghoulish fervour. In attendance were B-movie celebs from the silver screen and the straight-to-DVD  crowd.

Donnie Dunagan -who starred with Boris Karloff in the (1939) Son of Frankenstein to Tom Savini and Robert Rodriguez were all present and incorrect.

There is a a fair bit of shameless promotion of freshly-produced horror here too. My favorite pitch of the weekend came from the director of Gutterballs which previewed here: “It’s a haunted house slasher movie… in a bowling alley!”