Ama Lea Talks This Saturday’s Year of Fear and Prom Night Massacre at Bearded Lady’s Mystic Museum in Burbank, CA
For those in Los Angeles, CA, the Halloween season continues this Saturday with the event Prom Night Massacre, which celebrates the release of photographer and filmmaker Ama Lea’s Year of Fear 2018 Calendar, to be held at Bearded Lady’s Mystic Museum in Burbank (3204 W. Magnolia). We caught up with Lea to discuss the event; read on for the details!
Kicking off at 9pm, Prom Night Massacre encourages guests to come in reflective of the event and will feature special guests Barbara Magnolia (Suspiria), Ashlynn Yennie (The Human Centipede), Brea Grant (Beyond the Gates), Sarah French (Death House), and Elissa Dowling (We Are Still Here), all in attendance and signing, as well as drinks and treats served by Year of Fear models, short films presented by Etheria Film Fest, classic horror tracks and prom tunes spun by DJ Poster Child, raffles and prices, red carpet photo ops, and the release of Lea’s Year of Fear 2018 Calendar.
Said Lea of her 2016 inspiration for the horror-centric beefcake calendar, “I created Year of Fear mainly out of a frustrated moment. I was being hired pretty much solely to take half-naked pictures of women in horror. I was like, ‘I just wanna exploit men for a change! I should make a firemen’s calendar of hot half-naked dudes, but as monsters or slashers.’ My now producing partner Nathaniel Emond, who was at the receiving end of this rant, responded with, ‘That’s actually a great idea. You should do it.’”
“We are now going into our second year,” she continued, “and have added a female calendar to our roster. I was very hesitant about shooting a women’s calendar, but as I started researching what was already out there, I actually got angry. Every horror calendar featuring sexy women was either full nude or topless, featuring them portraying male characters or being murdered. So I thought to myself, ‘If I’m going to do this, I’m going to do it right.’ There are tons of amazing female characters in horror, so I’m only shooting images based off them. No nudity, no dying girls, just bad-ass sexy characters!”
As for her careful approach to the project, Lea stated, “First of all we don’t own the rights to any of these characters so we have to straddle that parody line very closely. The first year we did slasher characters, and this year we did monsters, which was a fun departure but also challenging because we had to have a team of makeup artists on every shoot and build elaborate sets. We even shot with a giant Clydesdale horse which hated all the lights! The fun of it is seeing my favorite characters from old movies show up on set looking like the Halloween cast of Magic Mike! When I saw Frankenstein’s Monster (model Jade Parnell) walk onto the lab set under all the green and blue lights, I couldn’t stop giggling. It was great.”
Regarding her upcoming projects, which include the completed short film From Hell, She Rises (a Hammer Films send-up written by Michael Verrati and starring Sarah Nicklin and Emma Jacobs, which is currently winning awards on the film festival circuit), Lea teased, “Next for Year of Fear we are doing a fully 80’s calendar for 2019, which I am personally thrilled about! We will also be doing a limited edition print series that will be released in the springtime. I can’t say what it is yet, but everyone will definitely get a chuckle.”
Tickets to Prom Night Massacre are available online at shopamalea.com for $5 for one, $6.66 for two, or at the door the night of the event for $5 each. Year of Fear calendars can also be purchased there. For more information, check out Year of Fear on Instagram @yearoffear, on Twitter @theyearoffear, and on Facebook.
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