*****Pre-Halloween: You are Invited to attend Rick and Brian's Haunted House (theme: All Clowns, All the Time!) Yes, we are trying to adjust to no more kids at home (one working in Southern Calif., and one attending UCSB), and our dog of 17 years died this year (Shayna - RIP). We wanna have more fun before we're done!
We're doing a Halloween Haunt fest in Southern Cal, followed by the annual Rick and Brian's Haunted House in El Segundo on Halloween Thursday Night 10/31/2013 (see photo of Rick's Pumpkin Clown below). We're also checking in on the parents and helping out if we can.
Haunted House in El Segundo: We're in again this year, and you are invited to go through the Haunt!!! The Haunted House opens around sunset/dark - time around 6pm. Rick picked the theme of "All Clowns, All the Time". He already has a custom prop built and installed at the corner of Loma Vista and Mariposa (see photo above and below).
Some clown photos from some of Rick and Brian's Haunted Houses from year's past (below - click to enlarge):
Some of the fun stuff that we did a few weeks ago for Halloween this year:
2013 Dates Open:
Friday 10/11 - Sunday 10/13,
Thursday 10/17 - Sunday 10/20,
Thursday 10/24 - Sunday 10/27,
Thursday 10/31 - Saturday 11/2.
2013 Dates Open:
Thursday 10/10 - Sunday 10/13,
Thursday 10/17 - Sunday 10/20,
Thursday 10/24 - Sunday 10/27,
Wednesday 10/30 - Thursday 10/31.
Knott's Scary Farm Halloween Haunt is a more lighthearted experience than the gory Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios. The monsters are creepy, but not quite as aggressive, and I felt more inclined to growl back at them than to run, but I suppose if you're timid, some of them are still pretty scary and above all startling. I didn't find the giant candy corn and Tigger with a monster mouth too intimidating.
There are three fog-filled scare zones with different types of ghouls from ghosts to carnival freaks to maniacal monks. The thirteen mazes also have creative themes including murder victims turned to porcelain dolls, Killer Klowns, vampires, axe murderers and aliens. Some of the maze themes are switched out every year, so there's always something new to see. We didn't do all 13 mazes, but the ones we did were not too gruesome. That could just have been a matter of our selection.
The shows are more silly than scary and will appeal to those who like stupid adult humor. Refreshments, including beer, are available inside the park, and Mrs. Knott's Chicken Dinner Restaurant offers a Midnight Breakfast Buffet from 11:30 pm to 3:00 am.
For younger kids, Knott's Camp Spooky Costume Party is a daytime non-scare celebration of Halloween in Knott's Camp Snoopy with a haunted maze, trick-or-treating and themed entertainment for kids 3-11 on weekends in October.
Location: Beach Blvd. in Buena Park, one mile south of the 91 (Artesia) Freeway and two miles south of the 5 (Santa Ana) Freeway
Location: Bethany Presbyterian Church
1629 Griffith Park Blvd, Los Angeles,, 90026
Available 10/10 and 10/11
For 2013 the original interactive horror theater company is BACK with a vengeance. This year, the much anticipated DELUSION live-action horror experience returns to Los Angeles with a new location, new story, and new official title – DELUSION: Masque of Mortality. Taking place at the Bethany Presbyterian Church in the Silverlake area of Los Angeles, show-goers will be taken back in time to 1930, where there has been an outbreak of the plague. Mysterious figures calling themselves The Doctors have promised a remedy not only to the plague, but of a greater life, free of the oppression of God and human limitations. Amongst all of this, you find refuge in The Church, where you await to be summoned when the time is right… In the meantime, you will seek comfort at the bar where fellow refugees will imbibe on craft cocktails of liquid courage, while they await their destiny.
DELUSION is the original first-person horror experience where you are the lead character. If you haven’t attended DELUSION, imagine being a character in a horror film.. moving through a dark, new world, where secrets and horror lurk around every corner. To survive, you must push forward into dark paths, and unravel the mysteries yourself. Last year’s executive producer, Neil Patrick Harris, says “DELUSION re-imagines and redefines the horror experience with an innovative blend of theatrics and action in a live performance that has never been done before. There are no seats, no comfort of the fourth wall and audience members really have to engage and participate to move the story forward.”
Variety Arts Theater
940 S. Figueroa St.
Los Angeles, CA 90015
Saturday October 12, starting at 7pm (various times) $42 each
Brian and Laura went to "The Purge: Fear the Night" the weekend after we did - I hope they liked it!
If you live in Los Angeles you may be familiar with the annual maze/attraction Blumhouse Productions, the production company behind Paranormal Activity, Sinister, Insidious and The Purge, holds in the 89-year-old Variety Arts Theater downtown. This year the attraction has morphed into the truly thrilling experience of “The Purge: Fear The Night“.
I went with some friends last night (October 12th), not really knowing what to expect. I knew that producer Jason Blum had brought in co-directors Josh Randall and Kristjan Thor (creators of the apparently awesome Blackout haunted house – which I need to visit at some point) to collaborate.
While some of the ephemera/iconography associated with the film might be confusing to people who haven’t seen it, especially in the beginning moments, the specificity of the attraction doesn’t diminish the enjoyment factor at all. And if you’ve seen the movie but didn’t care for it, that shouldn’t affect your experience either. “The Purge: Fear The Night” is about everything that happens outside of Ethan Hawke’s house during those hours and there’s a great variety to the type of scares that are put to use.
You are told to enter the maze alone – timed out from each other by about 30 seconds – and from those initial first steps into absolute darkness I could tell I was in for something different. Since the surprise factor is part of the fun, I’m not going to spoil the attraction by providing a beat-by-beat breakdown of the evening.
The performances are great and you’re guided through the building with an incredible sense of urgency. You’re positioned as a delegate for the New Founding Fathers and are on the run from “Constitutionalists.” The pacing of this is great, it’s often breakneck but there are also plenty of chances for you to slow down a bit and become an active participant and problem solver in your environment. You might rejoin your group only to be pulled away from it in the middle of a hallway – you never know. And while gore is never the focus conceptually, there’s no shortage of that either.
Every room is different, from hospital environments to apartments to wide open fields (on a set, of course). You never know where you’re going next and you can’t predict just how you’ll be involved in the action. You might be asked to fish through dirty sink water to find something, you may be asked to kill somebody (please don’t take that literally). The experience runs just the right amount of time – our experience took just over an hour from entering the dark solo maze at the entrance, to exiting into the bar scene at the end for a Tap It beer from SLO.
If you’re looking for a great night out (and are over 18) you should definitely hit this up. Get tickets and plan an evening around it. There are plenty of bars and restaurants in the area to help justify the cost of downtown parking… and you just might need that drink afterwards.
No comments:
Post a Comment