At Comic-Con, Nerd Mentality Rules the Day

Zombie says he has been intimately involved in the marketing of this project, in part because he believes his fans can smell a poseur a mile away. "You know the studios hire companies to put up posts on the Internet pushing a film? Well, the fans can spot these, and you'll see them post back, 'Get off the site you studio shill!' You have to be real or they'll just laugh at your trailer. I'm not kidding."

Zombie says he believes it was only in the last few years that Hollywood began to really understand the importance of this audience. "Before, it was, like: Look! There's a bunch of kooks dressed in stormtrooper outfits. They laughed at them. But nobody thinks it's funny anymore." Zombie thinks this is kind of a revenge of the nerds: "Everything you were tortured for liking as a kid is now a $100 million blockbuster."

To market the "Rejects" project, Lions Gate set up an elaborate stage to the convention floor, which endlessly rotated the movie's many trailers. It also brought the Cadillac used in the movie (rusty with fake blood) and a bunch of makeup artists, who spent every day painting clown faces on attendees to make them look like the deranged father figure Captain Spaulding (actor Sid Haig). They painted hundreds of people, who then wandered around the Con as walking billboards.

John Hegeman, head of international marketing for Lions Gate, is on hand, a studio suit dressed down in shorts and a "Devil's Rejects" T-shirt. Hegeman seems genuinely excited by the convention. "Look at the people." He is pointing. "Moms. Pushing strollers. Dads. College kids. Black. Asian." Oh, and someone dressed as Gen. Grievous from "Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith." Says Hegeman: "This isn't a demographic. It's a psychographic profile. Age has nothing to do with it. Gender has nothing to do with it. They're fans."

To hear Hegeman describe it, fans are pure and real and sort of sweet in their innocence. But you better not disappoint them, lest you get a little taste of the flame on. These people -- mostly adults, by the way -- are some of the friendliest conventioneers this side of a Omaha Shriners' gathering. Very mellow, very polite. Just don't them started on how the Incredible Hulk was done wrong by Ang Lee.

Hegeman says his studio and others not only sell their films at Comic-Con, but make the rounds at a dozen other genre conventions around the country -- at events sponsored, for example, by Wizard Entertainment or the Fangoria magazine Web site, plus Wonder-Con in San Francisco and Mega-Con in Orlando. "It's like a band on constant tour," he says.

Meanwhile, the studios are also "feeding assets" to the fan and genre movie Web sites, meaning they provide a constant stream of short teasers from the upcoming movies (Lions Gate doled out 45 clips for "Rejects" over the last nine months), as well as providing backstage looks and interview opportunities with stars and designers and directors.

So there's no longer such a thing as peaking too early? Hegeman shakes his head. "Not with the core." Then he amends: "As long as you have the goods." At their booth, Zombie is doing an on-camera interview with the tabloid TV show "Access Hollywood," which Hegeman describes this way: "Fine, sure, but it's not our audience."

Their audience shows at the premiere of the movie, held Saturday night, complete with a red carpet. The theater is filled with Comic-Con attendees whose faces were still painted in clown makeup, though by now a bit runny, like Tammy Faye after a good cry. The lights go down. The guts fly. Innocents are slaughtered. Macabre jokes leaven the violence. And voilà, the cast and crew get a standing ovation.

Outside in the lobby, Andy Gould, Zombie's manager and a producer on the film, is asking fans what they thought, and happy to hear the first, early take. Then he wiggles his fingers like a typist and says to a reporter, "We'll go online later and learn what they really think -- but so far, so good." True enough. On the street corner, fan Felix Trevino, 22, a community college student, is still in makeup. His instant-pundit take? "I loved the look, that '70s look, like 'Chainsaw' " -- as in "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" -- "and I laughed. It was funny. Especially Captain Spaulding." He then describes several scenes at great length.

Any disappointments? "I thought it would be more violent," Trevino says, shrugs, like maybe next time. His recommendation? "I'd tell anyone to see it. It's sick."