David Schmoeller (Film) received a Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in World Cinema. The event took place at the Fantaspoa Film Festival in Porto Alegre, Brazil, the largest genre film festival in South America, and featured the world premiere of his 10th feature film Little Monsters (2012). The film was shot on location in Las Vegas with a crew comprised of UNLV department of film graduates and local professionals. The feature film tells the story of two boys who are released from prison on their 18th birthdays after killing a 3-year-old boy when they were 10. Fantaspoa also screened five of the most culturally impactful feature films by Schmoeller, including his first feature, Tourist Trap (1978), which was recently selected as one of the 130 landmark horror films of all time in the Jonathon Rigby book Studies In Terror: Landmarks Of Horror Cinema ( 2012). Tourist Trap was cited as the favorite film of master storyteller of modern horror, Stephen King in the jacket of his book Danse Macabre. Also screening at the festival was Puppetmaster (1989), starring Academy Award nominee William Hickey and Golden Globe winner Paul Le Mat. It is considered one of the most successful horror film franchises in cinema history, spawning nine sequels. A program of his short films screened at Fantaspoa, including The Spider Will Kill You, his thesis film from 1974, which was nominated for a Student Academy Award, as well as a number of award-winning short films he made during his tenure at UNLV.
