Never before released signed photos, limited to 100 copies, will be sold at the show!  All proceeds go to film production costs and talent compensation.  Buy them here too!

Richmond, VA.  On Sunday, August 8, Richmond’s legendary Bill Bowman, known to fans across the state at “The Bowman Body,” will be the guest of honor at the one-day Virginia Comicon event at the Crowne Plaza West hotel.

Horse Archer Productions will also be there to put the finishing touches on their fifth documentary which explores Bowman’s extensive TV and media career in the Commonwealth.  The film is called Hi There Horror Movie Fans, after Bowman’s signature opening line.

“Bill played a lovable out-of-the-coffin ghoul who was always falsely praising his ‘fine motion picture’ for the evening and then giving sideways glance and snide comment off to the side,” said Sean Kotz, who is co-directing and producing the film.

“He played the character on channel 8 in the early 1970s back when it was WXEX, but few people in Richmond may realize that he also had shows in Charlottesville and Northern Virginia until the late 1980s,” he added.

 

Bowman’s Richmond show was “Shock Theater,” running mostly on Saturday nights after “Soul Train.”  Kids and adults alike would stay up late awaiting Bowman’s entrance as slowly lifted his coffin lid and draped a single tennis shoed foot over the side.

 

“It was originally only supposed to be a summer replacement,” said Bowman in last year’s documentary about Virginia’s horror hosts, Virginia Creepers, also by Horse Archer.

 

However, Bowman said on the last show that if the fans were out there and wanted to see more “Shock Theater,” they should write in because otherwise the next place they’d see him would be “selling hotdogs on Virginia Beach!”

 

The region responded with more than 700 letters that week, including one from William and Mary with over 400 signatures.

 

Bowman’s show in Richmond ended in September of 1976, but he was soon back on the air and out of the casket in “Cobweb Theater” in Charlottesville until 1979 and on “Monsterpiece Theater” in Fairfax from 1983 until 1987.

 

Co-director and producer Chris Valluzzo said that when Virginia Creepers was released, the strongest reaction they got was from Bowman Body fans and that is what propelled the follow up film.

 

“We had to cut some of the funniest stories from Virginia Creepers simply for the sake of the running time,” said Valluzzo.

 

“But we got lots of letters and pictures and more stories about Bowman for months afterward and we knew we should tell the rest of the story,” he added.

 

Guy Rose and Brett Carreras run Virginia Comicon, a show with a 25 year history and several thousand regular attendees.

 

Rose, who remembered getting his picture taken with Bowman at the Petersburg Fair in the 1970s, suggested the idea of having Bowman as the guest of honor and taping fan interviews at the Comicon.

 

“When I was about 12, Bowman Body appeared on late night TV to host horror movies,” said Rose. 

 

“I remember him well, from his patented Band-aid on his forehead and ukulele, to his commercials for Liberty Super Market. The Bowman Body was an icon to local TV and his fans.”

 

The show will be from 10 am to 4 pm at the Crowne Plaza West hotel on Sunday.

 

Bill Bowman will be present with a crew from Horse Archer to film interviews and sell T-shirts, posters, DVDs and rare autographed pictures that were taken in 1973 by Charles Allen Sugg but never published.  The photo run is limited to 100.

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