Mania Entertainment's first annual ManiaFest, a four-day showcase of science fiction, fantasy and horror films chaired by actress Chase Masterson ("Leeta"), opened yesterday in Santa Monica with a slate of genre shorts and features that culminated in the West Coast premiere of "Beyond Re-Animator" starring Masterson's Star Trek: Deep Space Nine castmate Jeffrey Combs ("Weyoun," "Brunt," "Shran" and others).

Combs was the highlight of the Q&A session at the end of the night where he discussed his involvement with the second sequel of the 1985 cult horror classic "Re-Animator" and his second reprisal of the title role, Dr. Herbert West. "It was all very weird, but challenging," he said about playing the character again 13 years after "Bride of Re-Animator."

"My big thing was acknowledging that some time had gone by, but at the same time letting everybody know that no matter what, this character just does not stop, he does not change. The other thing that I really really felt was important, so that he had some credibility, was that his work had a progression to it — that he wasn't just reanimating ever fresher bodies and then they would come back as frothing zombies. I always pushed for, 'Well, what's he working on now?'" So rather than being a simple retread of the previous two movies, this sequel has Dr. West discovering a way to extract "nano-plasm energy" from one body and inject it into another, so that a reanimated dead person can be a less violent, more "rational" zombie (theoretically, at least). Definitely midnight-movie type of fare, "Beyond" is a colorful gore-fest with a lot of campy humor, but the horror effects never upstage Combs' dementedly nuanced performance.

ManiaFest continues through the weekend, with an emphasis on horror Saturday with such films as "Nightmare on Elm Street" and "Halloween," and on "comics-to-film" Sunday, with "Batman," "Superman," "Flash Gordon" and others. Each day begins with a genre-themed panel with luminaries such as Stan Lee, Wes Craven, Rob Zombie and others, and each night a new film is screened with a Q&A afterwards. At the closing ceremony Sunday, Craven will present special effects legend Stan Winston with a lifetime achievement award.

Masterson is very much a hands-on organizer of this event. "It is the first year of ManiaFest, and we're really excited about how well it's going," she said at the end of the first day. "We're extremely flattered and happy to have some amazing guests, and tonight, it was great to see the support for Jeffrey with 'Re-Animator' — it's a really fun film." The actress-cum-festival producer got involved to help promote fare that has historically been left out of the mainstream. "Finally I think the studios are waking up to genre entertainment on an extremely large scale. It's exciting to see that the stuff is being taken as seriously as it should be," she said.

The festival is taking place at the Laemmle Theatre in Santa Monica, California, and benefits the Boys & Girls Club of Santa Monica. For more information, check out www.maniafest.com.