'It Came From Texas' Film Festival Is a Horror Fest With a Splash of Kitsch and Camp

A festival of horror films is creeping into Garland this weekend. But the films in this particular corner of cinema weren't curated because they were necessarily good. Instead, the movies for the It Came From Texas festival were chosen for campy, charming qualities that rise above mere things like plot, dialogue and pacing.

The brainchild of longtime film enthusiast and publicist Kelly Kitchens Wickersham, It Came From Texas grew out of the longtime Dallas Producers Association's It Came From Dallas event, which ran from 2005 to 2017. Kitchens Wickersham worked closely with the association's Gordan K. Smith, a Dallas-based writer, editor and producer.

Because It Came From Dallas showed only snippets of trailers of forgotten local classics, Kitchens Wickersham thought the time was right to screen a series of quirky classics in their entirety.

"I was always a little bummed that we couldn't see the full films Gordon expounded on," she recalls. "I longed for the chance to see them in the theater with an audience who would have as much fun with them as I knew I would."

When she got wind of the fact that Garland was looking for a film festival, she presented the concept. Luckily, Garland Cultural Arts Director Amy Rosenthal wanted to lean into the quirky and campy side of the arts, and It Came From Texas was born.

"Kelly and I have been talking about doing something like this for a long time," says Smith, an "unofficial B-movie historian" who has worked at every end of the industry from the writers' room of Turner Classic Movies to the now-defunct Blockbuster's HQ. He even moonlighted as an Elvira-esque horror host, "Svengoolie," when he lived in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in the mid-'90s.

"There's all kinds of strange stuff made by the Dallas film community over the decades, and among the most famous cult movies made in Texas are the horror and sci-fi ones," he says.

Love it or hate it, at the tip-top of that list is Tobe Hooper's 1974 classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which is considered the first-ever slasher film. Screening on Saturday, Oct. 28, this little movie that changed the ratings code of the Motion Picture Association of America will be screened alongside student films from Garland High School's Reel Owl Cinema at the Plaza Theatre on State Street.

Also in the mix Saturday is an early double feature of Zontar: Thing from Venus and Manos: Hands of Fate, plus a screening of the Rondo & Bob documentary focusing on Chainsaw art director Bob Burns and his obsession with actor Rondo Hatton, aka The Creeper, a character actor in a series of 1930s and '40s thrillers and noir films famed for his craggy appearance. The night closes out with Don't Look in the Basement and Don't Look in the Basement 2 screened as a double feature for the first time.

"It's perfect for these films to surround our crowned jewel Texas-horror treasure, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the film that really changed the horror genre forever," says Kitchens Wickersham. "Seeing all the films in this festival will really showcase the before Chainsaw and after Chainsaw, like its own little petri dish."

On Sunday, Oct. 29, look for feature showings of Beyond the Time Barrier, The Amazing Transparent Man, Attack of the Eye Creatures and The Killer Shrews, an array of quirky celluloid Gordon says was chosen as much for its availability as it was for its timeless qualities.

"I would say [the selection] had a lot to do with what was in the public domain and easy to get," says Smith, who will be hosting several screenings to deliver some facts and history along with trailers for other films, Alamo Drafthouse-style.

"Had it been money, no object, I'd have some things like Phantom of the Paradise, Logan's Run and Future Kill," Smith says. "But [movies like] Manos are a cult classic just waiting to be discovered. It was hardly ever seen outside of El Paso until Mystery Science Theater people were looking through a catalog of public domain stuff and came across that. Now it's replaced Plan 9 From Outer Space as the worst movie ever made, and we're getting the best possible version to show."

Speaking of Mystery Science Theater 3000, the homegrown version of the sci-fi comedy review show is The Mocky Horror Picture Show. Founded five years ago by Liza Barksdale and the Observer's own Danny Gallagher, this live movie riffing experience will close out the fest Sunday night with the troupe's take on The Giant Gila Monster, starring a Mexican beaded lizard in place of the Gila.

"It's myself, Albie Robles and Liza Barksdale," says Gallagher. "We riff on a movie on mics, but we throw prompts on the screen and put a countdown after it so audiences can yell jokes at the movie. [Gila] is kind of the perfect cheesy movie to do this with, but I want to go see every movie Kelly has picked because it's just such a crazy idea that hasn't been done."

Gallagher says locally made horror and the festival share a Texan individuality that every fervent movie fan should respect.

"People that want to make movies and aren't in the Hollywood system and don't have the resources to make a giant multimillion-dollar movie, just go and do it and don't wait for permission," he says. "It's very Texas, and I identify with it because Mocky Horror was born out of the same idea. That kind of spirit bleeds into the movie, so even if it's objectively bad, you laugh at it because the spirit of filmmaking and storytelling comes across the screen so well."

It Came from Texas passes are $60, and you can buy individual tickets for $7–$15 on the festival’s site.