Celebrating the Unpopular Arts
 

I’m Going to the Hellmouth!

Sunnydale High. In 1974, I was thrown out of the window on the far left (first floor, luckily) for being a little guy with a big mouth.

Fun fact: The high school where I spent 9th and 10th grade, Torrance High School, is today famous for two things: it served as the fictitious Beverly Hills high school in the original run of Beverly Hills 90210, and it also appears in the first three seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Sunnydale High, better known as The Hellmouth.

Funner fact: Some clever folks have organized a Buffy fan convention called HellmouthCon, and very cleverly arranged to hold it on the campus at THS.

Funnest fact: Apparently my work here, sporadic as it’s been the last couple of years, is enough to warrant giving me a press pass to HellmouthCon. So I will be attending the event, wallowing in both ’90s vampire TV nostalgia and ’70s high school nostalgia, all at the same time.

Everything you could possibly want to know about HellmouthCon is on their website, https://www.fandomcharities.org/hellmouthcon, but here’s a little bit to get you started…

HellmouthCon on the Hellmouth
Torrance High School
2200 W. Carson St.
Torrance, CA 90501

The event begins on Friday, June 14, with an Evening of Trivia at Keegan’s Sports Lounge & Grill from 6:00 to 9:00 PM. There’s no entrance fee for this, you just pay for whatever what you eat and drink. The venue is 21 and Over Only, sorry kids. At 9:00, it’s Keegan’s Karaoke Friday, but that’s not an official part of Hellmouth, but maybe you could get up and sing something from “Once More With Feeling” anyway? Keegan’s is in Downtown Toorance, less than a half-mile from Torrance High, at 434 Marcelina Ave. 

The actual HellmouthCon starts Saturday morning, June 15, 2024 and goes all day at Torrance High School, with registration opening at 8:30 AM. There’s a Photo Opp with the “Bad Girls of Buffy” at 9:00 AM in the courtyard (when I was there, it was “the Senior Quad,” and God help you if you were caught there between classes if you weren’t a senior). Then there’s a “Breakfast with Villains” thing at 10:00, which is also when Campus opens for everyone, with programming (not yet revealed) running 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM, Fan Experiences (of an undisclosed nature) the “Sunnydale Mall” (vendors’ area), and the Photo Studio all open at 10:00 AM, and the Okamoto Kitchen food truck will be on-site 11:00 – 6:00.

Your admission ticket includes an After Party (7:00-10:00 PM) celebrating the 25th reunion of Sunnydale Class of 997:00 – 10:00 PM with music, games, dancing, refreshments, and surprises. (Given that I’ve skipped all my high school reunions, I’m not sure how excited about this to get, though my high school classmates were never outed as vampires or monsters. Which they might well have been….)

On Sunday there’s a Walking Tour (sorry, it’s sold out, no tickets available) of “Sunnydale” (locations used in the series) and a docent-led private walk-through of the house featured as the home of Buffy and her mom (and eventually little sister Dawn), presented by the Torrance Historical Society and Fandom Charities.

Tickets are $80 for adults, but there’s an Early Bird Discount if you order by June 14, bringing it down to $72. Kids under 10 are free, youths 11-17 are $20, and Military and First Responders (active, retired and veteran) are also free.

Like any niche convention, the guests are people that fans of the show will know, but not the A-listers familiar to the general public. As of right now, they include Juliet Landau (Drusilla), Julie Benz (Darla), Mercedes McNab (Harmony), Clare Kramer (Glory), Robia LaMorte Scott (Jenny Calendar) Dagney Kerr (Kathy Newman, Buffy’s first college roommate), and Mike Rad (a monster called Rookie in Season 4, Episode 1, when Buffy goes to UC Sunnydale). There’s also David Greenwalt, who was a writer, director, and producer on the series; David DeLeon, makeup artist; Jeri Baxter, hairstylist; and Danny Nero, David Boreanz’ stand-in.

Anyway, that’s what I’m doing next weekend.

4 Comments

  1. Le Messor

    That sounds awesome! As a Buffy fan, I’ve thought it’d be cool to visit that high school.

    (Though I also just took a look at a Greg Hatcher legacy file, so my sense of time is messed up and I keep thinking this was in the past, not the future.)

    I just made a mistake on the verification, and I can still post.

  2. That sounds like it’s going to be a fun weekend! That’s a pretty good lineup of actors, too. I thought I’d read that Robia LaMorte Scott had been less willing to engage with the show after she was on it because of her personal beliefs, but maybe she’s changed her viewpoint since.

    Did you know when 90210 and Buffy were filming that it was your old high school, or was it something you found out later?

    1. I recognized THS immediately when I saw it on 90201 (our kids’ babysitter was watching it when we came home from somewhere); I heard from somewhere that it was on Buffy, but at the time, I wasn’t watching a lot of TV. In 1997, I had an 11- year-old, a 7.year-old, a 2-year old, and a lot of volunteer and freelance projects going on. We didn’t have any kind of on-demand viewing except the VCR, and if we did tape something, we seldom got around to watching. I’ve still never seen more than about 20 minutes of 90210. We binge-watched Buffy about 10 years ago.

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