Something Different in the Darkness: Original Theming In the Haunt Industry.

During my days of rampant visits to haunted attractions of the Halloween seasons past, I visited many a haunt that kept their theming very simple.  A haunted trail or haunted house would be just that.  Walking amongst a dark wooded area or musty walls where all sorts of different creatures, mutants, axe murderers and witches would jump out at you.  No backstory.  No background.  No theme.  Just a good old fashioned free for all.  And I'm fine with just that.  I can see where haunters like to keep their options open and don't want to be bogged down with a set theme.

But, I will say this.  I have to admire haunters who decide to put a theme to their haunts in a bid to think outside of the box.  If you're a big enough entity to afford the licensing of some big name horror movies and characters, you've got a leg up on the competition.  Great for you.  But, there are plenty of haunters out there that bring their own stories and characters into their haunts and that is where I'm particularly impressed.

Lets take a YouTube look at some haunted attractions that put together their own stories of the macabre into haunts.

TheDentSchoolhouse On YouTube (subscribe and give them a Like.)

The Dent School House in Cincinnati Ohio is an actual old school house that has been transformed into one of the midwest's best known haunted attractions.  It's based on a backstory where a psychotic maintenance man went on a murder spree quite awhile back.  Now his ghost and those of many of the students haunt the walls of the old school.

Inside The Magic  On YouTube (subscribe and give them a Like.)

Not all of the Haunted Attraction houses that appear at Universal Studios' Halloween Horror Nights can be themed around their usual franchised staples (Walking Dead, Halloween, The Purge).  They do still step out of their comfort level to bring attraction fans houses from outside of the box.  One such haunt was based off of an old Hispanic legend of La Llorona - The Weeping Woman.  The ghost of a beautiful woman who drowned her two children.

Them Park Adventure On YouTube (subscribe and give them a Like.)

Knotts Berry Farms Theme park's Halloween showcase, known as Knotts Scary Farm doesn't have any access to already existing franchises or licensing that its competition has.  So all of their haunts have to have original theming and storylines.  This one featured is a pretty original idea.  We've become accustomed to the ghost searcher reality shows that have become commonplace within our pop culture.  This haunt brings you on one such paranormal investigation where everything goes horribly wrong.  This show has some pretty over the top (of your head) special effects.  Can you brave Paranormal Inc.?


That will be it for today.  Until the next time, keep your eyes in the back of your heads during the season of dark magic.  You never know what is keeping their eyes on you!

Stay vertical.

Zangz.

Another Ghoulish Gem I had Almost Forgot About. How Could I?

At the end of 2012's Halloween season, my family got together for our annual Halloween diner.  After we finished the meal and put my niece to bed, we gathered in the living room, lit candles, turned the lights off and watched this movie, The Woman In Black.  It scared the crap out of all of us!  I was going to post about it on my blog, but Halloween was coming to an end and I never gave myself a chance.  Skyfall was right around the corner and I was putting all of my movie viewing excitement into the next James Bond opus.

I watched The Woman In Black again yesterday and realized I never reviewed it here and what a crime and mistake that had been.  Especially since I'm the kind of Horror fan that is verry drawn to a real good and creepy ghost story.  And boy, does The Woman In Black deliver in that department.

I love movies like, The Sixth Sense, The Others, and Ghost Story.  Heck, I even love the more cheesy ones like House on Haunted Hill and The Haunting.  There's something about the stories of spirits haunting the living that I appreciate slightly more than the tried and true, axe wielding homicidal maniac chasing a bunch of horny teens around in the wilderness.  I'm always looking for the next chilling fright rather than the next blood, guts and severed head fiesta.  Chilling freights are the focal point of this Edwardian ghost story has to offer.

Based off of the book and play by Susan Hill, the story follows a young widower as he is assigned by his law firm to go a creepy old mansion in an old town on the coast of England to take care of the paperwork of the recently passed owner.  What the young lawyer, Arthur Kipps (Played by Daniel Radcliffe) eventually finds out is that the town is cursed and the mansion is haunted by the ghost of an angry spirit of a woman who lost her child in the muck of the nearby bog.

I wont give away the whole story, but I will tell you that this was one of the creepiest movies I have seen and absolutely love it for that sole reason.

Here are four reasons why this movie has a high level of creep-factor going for it.

1.  It takes place in Edwardian England.  Both the Edwardian and Victorian times are just creepy in general. You had people dressed in back all the time.  Spiritualism and the first signs of paranormal investigations were hugely popular in those days.  You look back at photos from those eras and everybody in them looks unnervingly stoic like their eyes are piercing the viewers soul.

2.  The setting is quite unsettling.  First you have this small, crusty township of frightened and seemingly superstitious folks.  Then you have the huge, Victorian mansion itself, sitting in the middle of a seaside bog where the tide comes in at night and blocks off the only small road leading in and out of the property.  The mansion also sports its own family burial ground upon its property.  And don't all old Victorian English manors have their own cemetery?  I'm pretty sure it's a law in the UK.

3.  Ghostly children and their creepy old time toys.  Again, I won't go too far into the story but, yes, there are a few ghost children in the film and ghost children are always creepy.  Whether it be two twins staring at you in a hallway or some girl crawling her way out of a well, they scare the livin' bajeesus out of everybody.  And I don't think I have to even start on the creepy old, wind up dolls that go off for no reason whatsoever.  Monkey with the symbols, anyone?

4.  The Lady In Black herself.  The Grand Dame of this ghost tale is pretty simplistic in looks, but can still give viewers night terrors.  When a pale woman shrouded in a mourning dress is viewed out of the corner of one's eye and then disappears, don't tell me that it's not enough to crap your pants a little bit.  Of course the writers and director make sure she has some great pop-out moments that had the hairs on the back of my neck shoot straight up.  And I don't use that term as a euphemism, that physically happened.  It's science!

So if you're looking for a real good horror film this spooky season that truly scares you and you don't want to be grossed out, The Woman In Black is definitely Halloween viewing material.  Especially with candles and pumpkins being lit as you only light source.  You'll have nightmares for weeks.

In other Halloween happenings, some friends and I went on a moonlight ghost tour of downtown Milwaukee last night.  We went last year, but we were hit with a downpour of rain that blew sideways and destroyed the umbrella I had brought.  So we decided to give it another try this year with far better results.  We didn't see any ghosts, but did hear of the old ghostly folklore of the Haunted Pfister Hotel where Joey Laurence as well as a few professional sports players got spooked. Another particular eerie story involved an woman shrouded in black (familiar?) who haunts the outside of an old church in downtown Milwaukee.  A fun, if not chill filled evening was had by all.  If you're in the Milwaukee area during the Halloween season and want to go on the tour.  click here for more information.

And in tradition before I end this post here is another walkthrough of a haunted attractions called Reign of Terror located in Thousand Oaks, CA.  This is last years show.  Pretty impressive!

Them Park Adventure on YouTube

That's it for now.  I'll try and find more Halloween high-jinx I can drum up or get myself into in the coming weeks.  Stay tuned and stay vertical.

Zangz.

GEEKS, NERDS AND FAN BOYS, ASSEMBLE!

I've had a nice little hiatus from posting here, but my creative juices are screaming for an outlet lately so I'm finally driven to post something.

The main subject that has scooped me up and out of my general imaginative and creative malaise recently was the viewing of the insanely anticipated, Joss Whedon helmed super-hero movie, Marvel's The Avengers.

This movie had every indication of not sucking.  A wonderfully mixed cocktail that includes Mr. Whedon, the man who created and wrote some of the greatest genre TV (Buffy, Firefly and Dollhouse, to name a few) as not only the director, but also the writer.  Then put a half of glass of one of the most famous super teams to ever grace the pages of comic books.  Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, The Hulk, Black Widow and Hawkeye under the comand of Nick Fury.  Then add one shot of great actors reprising their rolls from the previous Marvel, super hero films that had already made a big impact within the geek community.  Mix and stir and put a pickle in it and you have a cocktail full of geek magic.

The hype for this movie was so insane that it put the project on pedestal of such a great hight that any sort of failure would not be an option.  This had me a bit worried.

As we all anticipated the coming of The Avengers, an example that I was given at one time about another film project that had all the makings of a great picture, kept running through my mind.

Here was the original pitch on that other "can't miss" movie....

• From the mind of author Michael Crichton
• From the people that brought you, "Raiders of the Lost Arc", "Back to the Future", "Poltergeist", The Color Purple", "Cape Fear" and "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?"
• Special Effects by Stan Winston.
• A summer blockbuster, action adventure!
• Starring Man-God, BRUCE CAMPBELL!

And that film turned out to be..... CONGO

This proves the point that you may have all the wonderful pieces in place, but you still have to know how to move them.

So with a little trepidation, I took Friday afternoon off and went to see "Marvel's The Avengers".  After one initial viewing I can most certainly say that Mr. Whedon definitely knows how to move his pieces!

Back in my $30 to $90 dollar a week comic book addiction days, I was a DC Comics kind of guy  (despite the fact that their new logo kind of blows).  I've always leaned more toward the darker side of comic stories.  Batman and DC's Vertigo Comics imprint were always more compelling than, what I saw as, the Disneyesque, soap opera driven Marvel universe.  That's not to say I had any dislike for the Marvel super heros.  I've always appreciated Stan Lee and what his Marvel Comics brought to geekdom.

So every time a new Marvel super hero movie comes out, I find myself excited, but not to the point of fan boy craziness.  But, after seeing this movie, I probably should have been fan boy crazy after all.  I'm not sure if it was because I controlled my hopes and dreams before I saw it, but this movie kicked my ass eight ways to Sunday!  I loved the hell out of this flick!

There is one main reason, one person, who is responsible for this.  Joss F*#KING Whedon!

Sure, you can have your all star cast and your uber-awesome 3D effects and great action intense set pieces, but it won't mean a frackin' thing unless you have a great visionary guiding the story and characters.

This movie would have been just another big budget summer blockbuster that could have come out and had its two weeks at the top and then disappeared only to find limited success on DVD and Blu-Ray like many, many other summer blockbusters (let's see how "Battleship" does).  But Avengers has something that other blockbusters don't.  It has heart.

Let's face it.  The story-line itself is pretty basic and standard Avengers comic book fare.  Thor's God-Like evil brother, Loki, decides to seek revenge on Thor by using a intergalactic portal opening weapon and employs an alien army to try and destroy the earth.  Nick Fury and his secret service organization called S.H.E.I.L.D. bring the super heros together to help save the earth.  Not anything comic book geeks aren't used to in the Marvel universe.  Been there, done that, got the shirt several times.

But, somehow it is made fresh and new.

The first and foremost thing I love about this movie is the characterization, something Mr. Whedon has a crazy gift for, as anyone would know if they've ever watched the second greatest TV show ever, Firefly (Deadwood is the first, just sayin').  He has a love for the characters in his projects and it shows in his passion for the material.

Whedon magically takes each and every super hero and gives them their own place and story and time on screen that doesn't take away from any one of the team at all.  He brings in the feel from each of the previous super hero movies without ostracizing any of the characters.  There are a couple of characters I would have liked to have seen a little more of, but it doesn't deter from the sotry at all.  I'll get to those characters later.

Tony Stark (Iron Man) feels just like the Iron Man from the previous Iron Man films.  The same can be said for both Thor and Captain America.  They're the same characters we loved form their own films without being compromised or changed to fit the team up.

And the new Hulk / David Banner actor, Mark Ruffalo, fits in wonderfully as the soft spoken, somewhat troubled yet still caring scientist who turns into everyones favorite big, green raging machine.  Bixby would be proud.

It's the writing for each of the characters, including Banner's that makes this film stand out from the other Marvel super hero films.

It's wonderful watching how these characters interact and react to each other.  The dialog between them is something Marvel fans will absolutely love and adore.  Sure, there are the huge fights against each other that are staples of the comics that are pretty grandiose and visually impacting.  But, it's the quieter moments with each other that give the film heart.  The viewer gets to feel out the newly assembled super team as much as they feel each other out also.  That's the magic of Whedon.

There's also a fair amount of humor in the film that is nicely peppered throughout that makes our heros a little more human.  There's a scene between Hulk and Loki toward the end that is pure awesomeness.  HULK SMASH, indeed.

As for the action sequences and visual effects, of coarse they're going to bring it full throttle!  There's tons of action, explosions and crazy ass damage all over the place.  A geek's visual smorgasbord.

During my viewing of the film, I enjoyed every minute of it.  After having time to think about it, I could have had a little more emphasis on the characters of Hawkeye, Black Widow and Nick Fury.

Though Hawkeye played a pivotal roll in the film, he was somewhat still in the background.  If I were an uber-comic nerd I would have had more of an issue with his costume.  Having a black leather suit with purple highlights and no mask might seem hot and trendy for Hollywood, but THIS....

...is what Hawkeye looks like.  Why is Hollywood so afraid to put their super heros in masks?  Is Captain America the only one who gets mask time?

Black Widow certainly had a lot of cool scenes.  But, for some reason, I felt there was something missing from the character.  She needed more than to look hot in skin tight outfits.  And Nick Fury was originally looked upon as a bad-ass character who was going to whoopass and take names later.  Partially because the role was played by Samuel L. Jackson.  But, his character ends up doing a little ass kicking and more commanding and giving orders from the bridge of his secret air ship while the heros do the muscle work.

Admittedly those were the typical paltry, geek gripes that in no way, shape or form deter from the awesomeness of this movie!

In closing I'll raise a frosty Schlitz Tall Boy in the air and salute one Joss Whedon, for taking this beloved comic and its characters and giving them a wonderful send up that I hope many Whedon directed and written sequels will will come from!

ALL HAIL JOSS WEHDON, MAN-GOD OF THE AGES!

Zangz.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Widow_(Marvel_Comics)