From Zombos Closet

My Haunted Halloween:
Randy Bates of Bates Motel & PennHurst Asylum

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Pennhurst Asylum

Five questions whispered, in a haunted place where there be monsters, on a crisp Autumn night, in-between the screams of horror and delight…to mayhem-keeper Randy Bates of The Bates Motel and Haunted Hayride, and Pennhurst Asylum Haunt Attractions…

Why is a Haunted Halloween important?

Halloween has become one of the most celebrated holidays of the year, and this is important as the Halloween season lasts the whole month of October. With the advent of high tech horror movies and their amazing special effects, Haunted Attractions strive to create an atmosphere of realism that will rival these Hollywood films. More people than ever are going to Haunted Attractions, hayrides, corn mazes and pumpkin patches. This is important because it tends to bring families together. I have had many parents tell me that attending our attraction is the only time their children (and teenagers) enjoy going out as a family. They say it brings them together.

I operate two Major Haunted Attractions, The Bates Motel and Haunted Hayride, located outside Philadelphia, PA, and Pennhurst Asylum, in Spring City, PA. Both are highly detailed and themed, and have acombination of high tech animatronics, digital sound and light systems, and professional actors. Both attractions are members of America Haunts, the national coalition of America’s best haunted attractions.

The Bates motel features a 25 minute long Haunted Hayride through the dark forest at Arasapha Farm, filled with amazing sets, 80 actors and huge pyrotechnics. The Haunted trail is a 20 minute walk through the tall corn with tons of actors, detailed sets and buildings, custom soundtracks and more scares than you can imagine. The infamous Bates Motel is a high action Haunted House that has incredible detail, custom sound and lighting, and some of the best actors in the business.

Pennhurst Asylum consists of 4 attractions. The Asylum is a hospital themed walk-through of the first and second floors of the old administration building. With 14 foot tall ceilings and beautiful architecture, this haunt shows off the building that was built at the turn of the last century. The Dungeon of Lost Souls is a medical experiment laboratory gone horribly wrong. Using items found on the abandoned Pennhurst property, this attraction is dark and intense. The Tunnel Terror haunt is located in the subterranean tunnels of the Pennhurst complex: a 900 foot walk-through of the darkest history at Pennhurst. Our Ghost Hunt attraction is a self-guided tour of the Mayflower dormitory, reportedly the most haunted building on the premises, and featured on Ghost Hunters and Ghost Adventures. Pennhurst Asylum is like no other haunt in the country.

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What elements make an ideal Haunt Attraction for you?

I like a Haunted Attraction that immerses you in their show. When you walk into a Haunted House, or enter a Haunted Hayride, you should be lost in the realism; it should make you feel that you are in another world.

Personally, I prefer highly detailed sets, and unexpected scares. When an actor or prop pops out at the least expected location, that makes me smile. If you have a lot of detail, it should be well lit and defined. If there is little, detail, it should be dark. I really like the fine detail, and in my attractions have many hidden nuances that most people don’t pick up on, but we as the owners, place a lot of subtle jokes here and there. Our exploding gas station has a real gas station sign with prices for regular, improved and premium. Our price for premium is $6.66! It’s the little things that keep customers coming back every year.

What's the most unexpected moment you've seen during a Haunt Attraction?

In 2010 we had a customer stagger out of the Bates Motel and collapse on the ground, holding his chest. Our EMT was right there and believed the customer was having a seizure and told me to call for an ambulance. After a few minutes, the customer sat up and took a couple of deep breaths. When asked if he was feeling OK, the man responded that he had a defibrillator implant and that it had fired going thru the last room of the Haunted House. I asked him why he would go through a haunted attraction with a heart condition and he told us that he goes to them all the time, but just never got that scared before. Despite his objections, we sent him to the hospital anyway. One of the great things about being a member of America Haunts is that we have a vast amount of industry knowledge and are able to share this with all of our members. One of them is customer service and we all are able to benefit from the group experiences.

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Describe your first Haunt Attraction experience and why it scarred you for life (in a good way)?

We had run our Haunted Hayride for several years before going to a small haunted house in Salem, Massachusetts. My wife and I knew a bit about running an attraction and decided to go to Dracula’s Castle. The haunt was very small: only three rooms and a couple of actors. When we came out, we were a bit disappointed and decided to sit on a bench to view other customer’s reactions. Surprisingly, most came out laughing and talking about the show. They really had a good time. We looked at each other and right there decided to build the Bates Motel haunted house, knowing that it would be a hit.

What's the one Haunted Halloween question you want to be asked and what's your answer:

Why do you run a Haunted Attraction?

Answer: Despite the stress of operating two large attractions, the gratification outweighs the downside. When the weather cooperates, the business does very well, and affords me the time to spend with family and friends in the off season. Running a haunt also means watching our customers enjoy our show. We provide the adrenalin rush of being scared, and there is nothing better than watching a group of people running out of the Bates Motel screaming at the top of their lungs.

When I go through our Haunted Hayride, I love to find a central location where I can hear the screams from each scene and know the customers are having fun. Our Hayride uses 12 tractor pulled hay wagons and at any given time, 8 – 10 of them are in the woods, so you can hear the screams all around you. The other benefits of running our attraction is being able to work with my grown children, family and friends. Our staff is like an extended family of 240 people who all get a kick out of giving our guests the best show possible.

I could not imagine working anywhere else!

Double Bill Pressbook:
Invasion of the Animal People
and Terror of the Blood Hunters

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The poster art for Invasion of the Animal People is scrumptiously insane. "Giants of the ages run amuck in icy death attack controlled by alien brains!" Say what? And since I've a penchant for using redundant leading letters on words myself, this tagline is awesome (in my humble opinion): "Monsters walk the earth in ravishing rampage of clawing fury!" Terror of the Bloodhunters has the better title, but note how it's ignored in the advertising campaign for this "exploitation natural" double bill. 

invasion of the animal people pressbook

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Double Bill Pressbook:
Invasion of the Animal People
and Terror of the Blood HuntersRead More »

ParaNorman (2012)
A Shade Short of a Full Story

/ Art/Animation / 1 Comment

 


Paranorman

Zombos Says: Good

The animation, direction, and visual artistry of ParaNorman are exuberantly delivered; the story, not so much. Norman Babcock (Kodi Smit-McPhee) sees and talks to ghosts, including his grandma (Elaine Stritch) who sits and knits on the living room couch. This peculiar gift, of course, has ostracized him from the kids at school, the neighbors, his shallow sister (Anna Kendrick), and even his parents (Leslie Mann and Jeff Garlin). The only kid in the small town of Blithe Hollow, Massachusetts, who likes being with Norman is Neil (Tucker Albrizzi), your script-standard ostracized fat kid sidekick. Bullying the both of them is dull-witted but big-fisted Alvin (Christopher Mintz-Plasse).

Putting the bully on all of them, and the rest of the townsfolk, is a 300 year-old witch who raises from the dead the people who condemned her, including Judge Hopkins (Bernard Hill). Norman tries to ignore the horrific visions he’s having of the coming doom, but his eccentric, lumber jack of an uncle, Prenderghast (John Goodman), insists he must be prepared to stop the witch by going to her grave and reading from a special book. His uncle explains he has done this every year on the anniversary of the witch’s execution to keep her quiet for another year.  This time around, though, his death presents something of a problem.

It also presents the funniest scene when Norman must release the book from his, now ripe, uncle’s death grip. The gyrations involved are delightfully insensitive and Three-Stooges-crazy. There’s another sublime moment of innuendo when the zombies, fresh from the grave, enter town. It involves a vending machine, the approaching zombies, a hungry man, and a bag of greasy chips that gets stuck. I’d have done the same thing.  I think we all would have. These moments come and go, and in-between is a Halloween-perfect palette of colors, scenery, and PG-sinister dangers slowed by artistically lazy moments where the dialog reaches for, but misses, its point, the main characters stand idle while their urgency continues, and the fulfillment of lesser moments are lacklustre, making them even more noticeable when compared to the magical promise around them.

Wikipedia mentions this is the first stop-motion movie to use a 3D color printer to make the characters’ faces. While that may be impressive from the production standpoint, it’s the unflattering body shapes of the characters that drew my attention. Done with wit and a wink they are satirically revealing of the personality each character possesses.

Also impressive is the ending to die for, which may be too intense for very young kids. It crackles with energy bolts driven by rage, resentment coming from estrangement, and lost innocence. The book is the key, and yet it’s not the powerful spellbook that Norman, and we, expect it to be. Neither is the witch. Neither are the zombies.

With a little more charm  and a little more guile in the story, ParaNorman would have been, at the least, the male version of Coraline. Without them, it’s like drinking Chteau Margaux 1995 from a plastic cup: the experience just isn’t complete.

Book Review: Dead Reckoning
Little More Dead Needed, I Reckon

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Zombos Says: Good

So what if they’re Vood00-type  zombies, Mercedes Lackey and Rosemary Edghill attempt to turn the Wild West a wee bit wilder in Dead Reckoning, a novel that moseys down the Nancy Drew-ish trail with its modicum of walking undead pitted against three characters in search of a franchise worthy of a young adult series: a cavalry scout raised by Indians; a young girl gunslinger in male disguise riding her horse Nightingale; and a scientifically-inebriated, emancipated woman riding her steam-powered wagon.

A promising, action-filled start leads to a lengthier, predominantly lukewarm middle, which leads up to an action-filled climax. The authors spend many words on chit-chat when more rough-riding and sidewinding is needed, especially when Jett, the black-clad, silver-studded, gunslinging and gambling southern sister who’s looking for her brother, ties one up with the snake oil and brimstone mastermind behind the zombie outbreak. The mastermind’s lacklustre explanation of how he creates them doesn’t move the story along much, and his leaden backstory intrudes into the suspense that’s having trouble building up through fits and starts. For a novel with a lot of zombies, two feisty woman, and one even-tempered man stepping carefully between them, you’d expect more sparks to fly. I recommend the authors watch a few Roy Rogers movies for pointers on sizing up their cowpoke action around the sagebrush humor and campfire lulls. I also recommend they add sagebrush humor. Having Honoria pout and shout and bluster about is not the same thing.

During a stop-over in Alsop, Texas, Jett can’t get her drink down fast enough at the local saloon before a bunch of zombies attack the town, wielding weapons! The encounter is mostly bloodless, although everyone in the town is killed. Jett’s horse manages to rescue her when she’s surrounded. White Fox, the scout, and Honoria Gibbons, the adventurous scientist who wears “rational dress,” make Jett’s acquaintance when Nightingale rides into their campsite, with Jett barely conscious. They go back to Alsop (although Jett rather gallop in the other direction) and find it deserted except for the town drunk, Finley Maxwell. Honoria sets up her portable laboratory in town while Jett and White Fox go investigating. They come across the Fellowship of the Devine Resurrection, led by one suspicious character named Brother Shepard.

The zombies are more meat-cleaver wielders than meat eaters. They’re brought to undead life for a nefarious and clever purpose. Not much of a mystery as to who’s doing the zombiefying, but the mystery as to why does provide some suspense in-between the zombie attack on the jailhouse and the town drunk’s sudden death and resurrection.

Jett’s agenda is mainly to find her brother and get out while the gettin’ is good. White Fox’s agenda is to follow the trail, as is Honoria’s, that leads to the answer of why small towns are going empty and the townsfolk gone missing. Clever touches are sparse but promising if this series kicks into second gear: Honoria uses her rich and eccentric father’s vast library like Google to research her troubling findings. Her telegraph skills come in handy as she sends her father the queries and he provides the lengthy answers. She also believes in the power of reason and science to help master any situation, and her rather dangerous steampunk-light vehicle, what she calls an auto tachy-pode,  hints at cleverer gadgets to come. There is also Jett’s penchant for male clothes and attitudes to provide enough hard-riding gumption while she searches for her brother, who disappeared after the Civil War. Jett’s southern leanings and anti-north sentiments can also stand some life-changing growth across a potential series.

Dead Reckoning has all the right ingredients for a tasty sarsaparilla soda, but the carbonation is a tad too flat for my adult taste. I’d reckon you’d have to be a Mennonite-type young adult to find it more than adequate, too. Less backstorying, stronger highs and softer lulls in the action, and a deeper look into what makes Jett, Honoria, and White Fox tick, need be provisioned before Lackey and Edghill saddle up for another adventure.

The Possession (2012)
Jewish Demons Can Be a Mouthful

/ Movies (Horror) / Leave a Comment

The-possession-header

Zombos Says: Good

Two thoughts pushed their way to the top after I saw Ole Bornedal’s The Possession. The first was how much less frightening the dybbuk  demon is than Pazuzu in The Exorcist: I find that evil, when it’s personable, when it speaks directly to you in  a normal, conversational fashion, is more terrifying than the silent type. The second thought was how Bornedal’s beautifully moving camera, along with Anton Sanko’s suitably depressing piano tinkling heralding austere, fade to black, moments, fairly killed the story’s momentum. Antiseptic, plain vanilla, no contrast, these are some of the words I would use to describe how the story unfolds. This is still a good movie, mostly due to Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s intensity as Clyde, a father who slowly realizes the truth, Natasha Calis’s sinister behavior as the possessed girl, Em, and a delectably creepy hint of a backstory for the wooden box that traps the dybbuk (or fails to). This is the kind of movie I found myself wishing they’d stuck with that backstory because the present is comprised of moments we’ve, mostly, seen before (and were done with more con brio when we did). Except for that exquisitely bad to the bone looking box.

It not only looks old but it looks like one you’d fear was full of dark secrets.  Its contents are even more bizarre than the ones seen on that cable show Oddities. It made me wonder what its oddly shaped jars contained and why those contents were put there, and especially how the dybbuk was trapped the first time. Instead,  we see the diagnostic-tests-at-the-hospital scene, although this one does provide the scariest moment of the movie with a brightly conceived visual; and, of course, there’s the now standard family situation to generate budget tension–mom (Kyra Sedgewick) and dad are divorced and mom has an annoying suitor (Grant Show); and, of course, there are langorous scenes of bodily invasion, like moths flying in and out of mouths.  What is it with winged bugs and possessing demons?  Can someone, anyone, please give me an explanation for their overuse in horror movies and their preference for oral cavities?

Picking up the box at a yard sale, Em opens it and the possession begins with her becoming more and more Goth in appearance (no offence to Goths or Emos intended, but hey, it’s a spooky look). Em also puts on a large, hard to miss, ring, which turns her hand all veiny and purple. Her parents and sister don’t seem to notice. Another reviewer noted how odd it is that neither parent notices the purpling hand or the Victorian nut-cracker of a ring. Dracula wished he had a ring like that.

The usual quirky behavior of the new man in Clyde’s ex-wife’s life provides the usual banter and time-filler between more serious moments with Em being sucked dry of life by the demon. Bornedal is so visually artistic and thematically structured in his approach, however, there’s no meat on this horror bone. Comparison’s to The Exorcist, and other possession movies, are inevitable. Where Bornedal brings a fresh take  is when he jostles Clyde’s predictable, coaching-life world alongside an older, steeped in tradition, Hasidic world in Brooklyn as Clyde seeks help from the experts, who in this case are the rabbis.

They see the box and tell him to take a hike, with it. A brilliant and unexpected move. In The Exorcist, the priests tackle Pazuzu as a matter of faith and conviction. And both priests do not survive the ordeal. Here, the rabbis choose survival first, knowing what’s in the box is serious enough to warrant being in the box. The head rabbi’s son, Tzadok (Matisyahu), still retains his faith and conviction: he’s young, what does he know? He leaves with Clyde and both must do one thing first: find out what the demon’s name is because that is what’s needed to force the demon back into the box.

The name is found a little too quickly, but it leads to the showdown between the rabbi’s son with conviction, the father with conviction, the mom with conviction, and the demon with conviction. Bornedal doesn’t ignite enough hell fire though, and compromises the showdown by resorting to strobe-lighting views as the demon pulls itself out of someone’s mouth (there’s that foreign object in mouth again theme: see the movie poster) and crawls along the floor, reluctantly, toward the box. Stylish? Yes. Dramatically hot? No; tepid. Terrifying? A little.

The ending follows the prescribed sequel-antic expected for generating a horror movie franchise. I doubt, however, this box will turn up again unless it’s straight to DVD.

Halloween 2012:
Walgreens Animated Ghoulish Coffin Riser

/ Halloween Novelty / 2 Comments

Found these at Walgreens, discounted to half-price! Better grab onto a couple of bats and fly over to the store nearest you before they sell out. The light up skull plays–what else?–the classic theme from Halloween. The clown is the creepiest of the bunch, even just lying there, but when he pops up and screams, well, who doesn't love a creepy, screaming colorful clown on Halloween? I immediately thought of Pennywise the clown from Stephen King's novel, It, when I saw that happy–and toothy–grin. I plan on putting a few candies in the coffin with him and seeing how badly I can get a kid to pee his (or her) costume. Nah, not really. But then again…

halloween Animated Ghoulish Coffin Riser
halloween Animated Ghoulish Coffin Riser
halloween Animated Ghoulish Coffin Riser

Halloween 2012:
Animated Zombies Overrun CVS

/ Halloween Novelty / 1 Comment

I found this handsome dude at CVS/Pharmacy. The little 28-inch high fellow followed me home. His eyes light up as his head and hands loll around as he moans and groans. For some odd reason, a blast of mad-scientist-stormy-night punctuates his hunger pangs every so often, too. He freaked out the clerk at the register, and Minnie, my Miniature Schnauzer, barked like crazy and wanted to rip him apart the minute she saw him. So, yes, he’s a keeper. Funny how they dress all these Halloween zombies in suits and ties; some subtle social commentary going on or just a coincidence? I wonder.

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halloween animated zombie