The votes are in on this year’s 13th Annual RONDO HATTON CLASSIC HORROR AWARDS and Famous Monsters of Filmland made a big splash! Thank you to all of our fans and readers who honored us with BEST CLASSIC MAGAZINE of 2015! Congratulations to August Ragone for BEST ARTICLE (‘The Complete Godzilla Chronology, 1954-2004’, FM #275) and to our cover artist Bob Eggleton for winning BEST ARTIST OF THE YEAR!
We also received Honorable Mentions in the categories of BEST INTERVIEW for Joe Moe‘s interview with John Logan (FM #276), BEST OVERALL ISSUE for Famous Monsters #272 (Richard Matheson), and BEST COVER for Famous Monsters #272 by Simon Thorpe.
See the full list of winners here!
ARLINGTON, VA. – The long-awaited release of Clive Barker’s extended version of Nightbreed and a pair of books celebrating science fiction classics were among top winners in the 13th Annual Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards, announced Wednesday after an online vote by more than 3,100 fans and professionals worldwide.
The Rondo Award voting. which took place over seven weeks, ranged far and wide, picking Guardians of the Galaxy as Best Film of 2014 while recognizing the original 1954 Godzilla soundtrack, the revived Famous Monsters magazine and a reunion of the cast of Evil Dead.
The awards were marked by only the third tie in Rondo history: A single vote separated The Creature Chronicles, Tom Weaver’s examination of the Creature from the Black Lagoon films and David J. Schow’s The Outer Limits at 50, a look at the groundbreaking science fiction TV show of the 1960s.
Rather than searching for dangling digital chads among the 3,100 votes, the decision was made to declare a tie in the hotly contested category, which also included books on the history of Don Post horror masks and the art of Japanese monster-making.
Among magazines, the Canadian horror periodical Rue Morgue won Best Magazine for the sixth straight year while the revived version of Famous Monsters of Filmland and the scholarly Diabolique scored in other magazine categories.
It was also announced that horror researcher Frank J. Dello Stritto was named ‘Monster Kid of the Year,’ the Rondo Awards’ highest honor, for his book, ‘I Saw What I Saw When I Saw It,’ a memoir of growing up in New Jersey surrounded by Cold War fears, Mantle vs. Mays and monster movies on TV.
“No work in recent memory has captured what it was like to be growing up in the middle of the monster craze,” wrote one voter. “It was like reliving those days again through the eyes of one of us.”
The Rondo Awards, named after Rondo Hatton, an obscure B-movie villain of the 1940s, celebrate the best in classic horror research, creativity and film preservation. This year’s e-mail vote, conducted by the Classic Horror Film Board, a 20-year old online community, drew more than 3,100 ballots. It is the largest survey of the classic horror genre held each year
The biggest winner was the so-called “Cabal Cut” of Nightbreed, which adds 40 minutes of unseen or restored footage to horror writer/director Clive Barker’s 1990 film. The film won three awards: Best DVD of 2014, along with Best Commentary (which included Barker), and Best Restoration. A Nightbreed cover for Fangoria magazine by Nick Percival also won Best Cover of the year.
Among more modern works, ‘The Grove,’ an unsettling episode of The Walking Dead, was named Best Television Presentation.
Chris Alexander, editor of Fangoria, won Best Interview for his talk with Werner Herzog about the remake of Nosferatu; the Best Article Rondo went to Japanese monster expert August Ragone for overseeing a look at all the Godzilla films in Famous Monsters.
Fan favorite and so-called ‘scream queen’ Debbie Rochon was named Best Columnist for her inside-the-indie-film-industry column in Fangoria; and Chicago’s Svengoolie (honored this year with a Svengoolie Day in Illinois thanks to booster Brian Bernardoni and state Rep. Kay Hatcher), was voted Favorite Horror Host once again.
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Other awards: Monsterpalooza, a convention devoted to makeup and special effects, was tapped for the fourth time as Best Convention. while Diamond Select’s Creature figure was voted Best Model. Joe Dante’s Trailers from Hell was named Best Website; Dr. Gangrene took home the Best Blog award and Monster Kid Radio won the Best Multi-Media award.
Among independent films: What We Do in the Shadows, an elegant satire of vampires struggling to survive the modern world was voted Best Independent Film in spirited voting, and The Mill at Calder’s End, a creepy-crawly tale of dread, won as Best Short. Best Documentary went to Jodorowsky’s Dune, about a failed attempt to film the famed sci-fi classic.
Paul Williams and Guillermo del Toro won Best DVD Extra for their conversation on The Phantom of the Paradise disc.
Among individual honors, Max Weinstein, editor of the intelligoth Diabolique magazine, was voted Writer of the Year; Mark D. Clark, whose work appears often in Monsters from the Vault, was named Reviewer of the Year; Bob Eggleton, who painted a quartet of Godzilla covers for Famous Monsters, was voted Artist of the Year; and William C. Cope was voted Fan Artist of the Year. And sculptor Mike Hill, who recently created lifesize sculpts of Ray Harryhausen and the Aurora version of The Wolf Man, was awarded a second Henry Alvarez Rondo for Creative Design. Nigel Honeybone, the mysterious and quite skeletal horror host from Sydney, Australia was named International Fan of the Year.
Finally, based on suggestions from Rondo voters, four new Monster Kid Hall of Fame inductees were named:
They are Michael Weldon, editor of the influential Psychotronic magazine; Lugosi historian Gary Don Rhodes; Sara Karloff, daughter of the famed actor; and Jose Mojica Marins, aka Coffin Joe. Many of the Rondo winners will receive Rondo busts at the Wonderfest convention in Louisville on May 30. Further information, including runners-up and all the nominees, can be found at RondoAward.com.