2009 Hall of Fame
CASPER VAN DIEN
Casper grew up as part of a military family in Ridgewood, New Jersey. When he and his family moved to Florida, he attended Admiral Farragut Academy where he graduated third in command. After attending Floriday State University, he moved to Hollywood to pursue an acting career. He found early success in recurring roles on Beverly Hills 90210 and the soap opera One Life to Live.
He jumped to leading man status when he starred as James Dean in the television biopic James Dean: Race with Destiny. He then landed his best-known role, as Captain Johnny Rico in Director Paul Verhoeven’s 1997 science-fiction film Starship Troopers. The film was a box-office smash, leading him to major roles in Tim Burton’s critically acclaimed film Sleepy Hollow (1999) and the title role as the “Lord of the Jungle” in the Warner Bros. film Tarzan and the Lost City (1998). He has also starred in over twenty other feature films, including The Omega Code with his wife Catherine Oxenberg. Since then, Catherine and Casper have worked together on several different projects and have formed a company together to produce socially responsible, quality family entertainment with the intention of uplifting and transforming people. He recently returned to the role of Johnny Rico in Starship Troopers 3: Marauder and is in development on the film Royal Exile: The Betrayal of Prince Paul of Yugoslavia, in which he wrote the script and is directing and producing the project.
Casper is devoted to many charitable causes, including Childhelp USA. This organization is devoted to stopping child abuse, and all proceeds from signings during his appearance at the International Horror and Sci-Fi Film Festival will be donated to this worthy cause located in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Starship Troopers
In a sardonic use of propaganda, young adults of the future are pressured by the government, authority figures and each other to volunteer for military service as a prerequisite to achieving full citizenship.
People have ventured off Earth and are beginning to colonize other star systems. When the insectile alien inhabitants of one such system react to colonization with a devastating attack on the Earth, humankind’s response is a fully fledged invasion and a policy of systematic elimination of the species. This policy is implemented by the high school leavers we have followed into their careers in the armed forces.
A love triangle between buddies, and their various paths toward violent glory and bloody tragedy, stitch together the grand-scale spectacle.
MARILYN BURNS
Marilyn Burns was born in Erie, Pennsylvania, and started acting in a bit part in Robert Altman’s Brewster McCloud. She was working at the Texas Film Commission while attending the University of Texas when she took part in a casting call for the role of Sally Hardesty in Tobe Hooper’s iconic horror film The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and was anointed a horror genre ‘Scream Queen.’ She followed Chainsaw with Tobe Hooper’s Eaten Alive (1976), where she played a vacationer who unwittingly stumbles upon a hotel run by a madman who feeds his guests to his pet alligator.
Marilyn continued her ‘Scream Queen’ status by starring such horror movies as Brutes and Savages (1977), Caution: Children at Play (1981), Kiss Daddy Goodbye (1981), and Future-Kill (1985). In 1976 she appeared in the major television miniseries Helter Skelter (1976). Her role as Linda Kasabian, the Charles Manson follower whose testimony helped lead to the convictions of the cult leader and many of his followers, was a
major hit.
She currently lives in Texas and acts and direct on stage. She appeared in a cameo for The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 1994 and was recently named one of the Ten Sexiest Scream Queens by Movifone.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Tobe Hooper’s influential cult classic continues the subgenre of horror films based on the life and “career” of Wisconsin serial killer Ed Gein. When Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns) hears that the Texas cemetery where her grandfather is buried has been vandalized, she gathers her wheelchair-bound brother Franklin (Paul A. Partain) and several other friends together to see if grandpa’s remains are still in one piece. While in the area, Sally and her friends decide to visit grandfather’s old farmhouse. Unfortunately, a family of homicidal slaughterhouse workers who take their job home with them have taken over the house next door. Included amongst the brood is Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen), a chainsaw-wielding human horror show who wears a face mask made out of human skin. Sally’s friends are rapidly exterminated one-by-one by the next-door neighbors, leaving only Sally left to fight off Leatherface and his clan.
JUDITH O’DEA
Judith O’Dea is an American actress known for her role as Barbra in the George A. Romero film horror classic Night of the Living Dead (1968). Originally from Pittsburgh, she moved to Hollywood to pursue her acting career. Just as she settled into her new home, Producer Karl Hardman called her about a new film project he was working on, and the rest is history.
In addition to her best-known role, O’Dea has acted in theatre, television and radio over the last 35 years and has performed in such horror genre films as Serial Slayer, Claustrophobia, and Evil Deeds. She also appeared in The Pirate, November Son, The Ocean, October Moon and Women’s Studies.
Besides her acting career, O’Dea owns and operates O’Dea Communications. Drawing on her extensive entertainment experience, her firm deals in oral communications workshops, seminars and training for on-camera, professional and non-professional speakers across the country.
Night of the Living Dead
Over three decades after its release, George Romero’s low-budget, stomach-churning classic is still one of the greatest indie horror films ever made. Directed by Romero in 1968, Night of the Living Dead is an independent black-and-white zombie film. Ben (Duane Jones) and Barbra (Judith O’Dea) are the protagonists of a story about the mysterious reanimation of the recently dead, and their efforts, along with five other people, to survive the night while trapped in a rural Pennsylvania farmhouse.
