When customers step into Hang Ups Custom Framing and Matting, they are in for a visual treat that contrasts with the shop’s deceptively ordinary exterior. Rich eggplant-colored walls with exposed sections of gray boards, wall-mounted candelabras and an organ circa the early 1800s create an eerily stylish space that smacks of a haunted mansion fit for Vincent Price. Brad Carter, the shop’s owner, has always had a love for the dark, mysterious and spooky.
Carter purchased the shop last November. It was pure serendipity when he discovered that the previous owners were interested in selling the shop. At the time, Carter was working for Batesville Glass. He had considered purchasing another frame shop that was for sale in Southside, but the transaction didn’t pan out. While in Hang Ups one day to purchase a frame, he mentioned to the owner that he had thought about buying the other shop in the area.
“The shop wasn’t listed for sale, but she told me if I was serious, she would sell Hang Ups to me,” Carter said.
Carter said he credits his sense of style and essentially who he is today to another serendipitous event. Before moving back to Batesville in 2000, Carter lived in Little Rock, where he had worked in radio with 103.7 The Buzz as a talk-show producer. It was during that time that he met Joe and Dorothy Armbrust, owners of Wicks and Wax Gifts Inc. Carter happened into their shop one day and admired the Halloween villages on display. A conversation with the Armbrusts led Carter to work at Wicks and Wax for a couple of years.
“Everything about who I am now was influenced by them and the time I spent there,” Carter said. He said he even patterned Hang Ups after the décor in Wicks and Wax.
Carter’s childhood love of Halloween and horror films has evolved into a passion for collecting horror-movie memorabilia. His home is a testament to that passion.
A large door knocker from Rob Zombie’s home adorns Carter’s front entrance. As you move through the house, posters from horror hits such as Halloween, Pet Cemetery, Salem’s Lot, Phantasm and Hellraiser line the walls, all bearing the autographs of actors or directors connected to the films.
Freddy Krueger’s signature bladed glove, autographed by Freddy himself, Robert Englund, sits in a display case. A costume worn by one of the actors in Stephen King’s The Mist hangs in Carter’s home office. An original charcoal drawing of the Addams Family by Richard Harrison Green, the Walt Disney animator who drew Beauty and the Beast, is at the end of the hallway. Another original drawing by Nathan Thomas Milliner, an artist for Horrorhound Magazine and Scream! Factory, hangs among movie posters and framed autographs along the staircase.
Carter attended his first horror film meet-and-greet in Little Rock in 2007. In 2009, he saw an advertisement about shock star Alice Cooper appearing at the Texas Frightmare Weekend, a horror convention held in the Dallas-Fort Worth area every spring.
Carter has attended the convention every year since then and has met a host of stars, including writer and producer Clive Barker, known for films such as Hellraiser, Candyman and Nightbreed; Cassandra Peterson, otherwise known as Elvira; Fairuza Balk, who starred in The Craft, The Waterboy and American History X; and The Boondock Saints stars Norman Reedus and Sean Patrick Flanery.
When asked what it is like to be in the company of so many stars, Carter said it is no different than hanging out with anyone else.
“It’s almost disappointing in a way, but that’s the cool part. They become real in that moment that you meet them. They’re no longer this larger-than-life character on the screen. But I never thought I’d be able to say that I’ve sat at a bar and had a conversation with Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th,” Carter said. He said has met every actor who has played the role of Jason.
Film stars aren’t the extent of Carter’s brush with those who run in famous circles. He’s had extensive encounters with big names in the music industry as well.
A Cave City native, Carter went to work after high school at 93.1 in Batesville as a disc jockey, running a gospel radio show. After a year, he moved to Little Rock to take the job with 103.7 The Buzz. It was mainly through his work in radio that he met musicians such as Toby Keith, Merle Haggard, The Pretenders, The Misfits, Metallica, Lynyrd Skynyrd and, of course, Alice Cooper.
A musician himself, Carter has played guitar since he was a teenager. He’s collected guitar picks from many of the musicians he’s met, including Mark Slaughter, Angus Young and John Fogerty, to name a few. However, the pick from Fogerty did not come to Carter from Fogerty himself. Carter met “Sweet Connie” Hamzy, a famous groupie iconified in Grand Funk Railroad’s song “We’re an American Band” while working in radio. Hamzy was backstage at a concert where Fogerty was performing.
“John was staying on his tour bus until the show began,” Carter said. “Connie said she was going to go onto his bus to say hello, so I asked her to bring me a guitar pick from him. Later on, she found me again and handed me this pick. So I got a pick from John Fogerty courtesy of Sweet Connie.”
While Carter’s encounters with the famous have been plentiful, he still has a few names on his list he’d like to check off.
“I’d like to meet Bruce Campbell from The Evil Dead,” Carter said, “and I want to meet Matthew Lillard. He starred as Shaggy in Scooby-Doo, and he was in Scream and Thirteen Ghosts. He’s just a great actor.” Carter added that he’ll get his chance to meet Lillard at this year’s Frightmare convention.