“Horror.” It’s almost a dirty world in the acting community. Sure, everyone has to do the dreaded slasher or DTV monster flick to pay their dues, but, past a certain point, those roles go out the window, replaced by moody indy dramas, Academy Award winning masterpieces, and, if you’re lucky enough to stay in the business past forty, edgy erotic thrillers that reinvent you as a middle-aged sex symbol.

Soft spoken, polite, articulate and thoughtful rather than blunt and demanding, blending in seamlessly with the crowd at Fantastic Fest, Annick Mahnert does not fit the typical image of the angry, haranguing Hollywood producer. Then again, she’s NOT your typical producer. After studying production at NYFA, she cut her teeth at Roger Corman’s Concorde-New Horizons before going big-league, handling programming and distribution for such studios as 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros., then went solo in 2013 to become an independent producer.

Not many people can boast that they’ve been killed by two iconic movie villains, but those are exactly PJ Soles’ bragging rights. Slaughtered by both Michael Meyers and Carrie White in the space of a few years, she endeared herself to generations of horror fans as a spunky girl with a lot of lip but not much luck. Though she turned in equally memorable comedic performances in Rock and Roll High School and Stripes, it’s her double-deaths for which she’s probably most remembered; and while many actresses who cut their teeth on the genre before departing it are reticent to discuss those bloody stepping stones to stardom, Soles has embraced her roots, returning to do cameos in such modern films as The Devil’s Rejects and participating in festivities to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of Carrie, which was celebrated last fall by Scream Factory with a gorgeous Blu-ray release.

While every country with a horror culture has dabbled in just about every subgenre imaginable, it’s fun to look at which of those particular genres tend to crop up in certain places more than others and think about why. Italy, for example, was the epicenter of cannibal and zombie films for just about the bulk of the 70s and 80s, whereas Japan was the destination for supernatural horror in the late 90s and early 2000s. Canada, curiously, appears to be the place that body horror calls home.