Cutting Deep Into Horror | Found Footage Horror: The Houses October Built (2014)

All right, come this way through the darkened gates of hell. Thundersound. I wasn't supposed to read that so spooky. It is very very spooky. This, this building was made on an ancient Indian burial ground. This this old ponderosa. It was a ponderosa, but a ponderosa doomed to fail, as all ponderosas were. No, only this one was built on an ancient Indian burial ground. If you look this way, you'll see a strobe light. Out out. I'm not gonna out a thank you for looking. We paid cash for the strobe light. Okay. Now if you look over here you can see the menu from the doomed Ponderosa.

No horrifying. Yeah, I like that. You guys put some spiders on it. Oh yeah those are ours. Yeah, they look at the animatronics on them. They're like scuttling around. And the scariest part of all the bills from the closed down ponderosai. Ah no, there's so many bills. There's nothing nothing on this earth more terrifying than an ancient Indian burial ground combined with the horrifying and deeply disturbing margins of restaurants. No, it's so awful thunder sound. This podcast is about why horror scares us, what deep, dark, secret scary cinema shines a light on. The discussions are frank and involve conversations about abuse, trauma, and mental health.

There are also spoilers, so keep that in mind too. Now, sharpen your machetes and strap raisers, because this is cutting deep into horror. Welcome back to Cutting Deep into Horror. I am, of course, your host, Henrique Couto here with my co host Rachel RIDOLFI. Rachel, how are you hungry? Now? Oh, you're hungry? I wanna, I wanna. I wanna say something before we get into our film, and that is I walk out of my office to get a cup of water because I'm on a fast and it's not going quickly, ironically enough. And I peek my head into the kitchen and Rachel has a cold slice of pizza just hanging out of her mouth while she's I guess doing something else, like getting a cup of water or something.

I don't know, but what I mean, it's like three pm, so it's not even a meal time. Well for me, it is. I don't think it is, uh no, But I was like. Well, it's too it's too. I can't do lunch. We're past that. But I don't want to, Like, I don't want to stop my evening for dinner. And I'm hungry now, so I'll just get a slice of pizza. Well, I get you know, get a drink, and then get right back to work. Meanwhile, I'm at twenty two hours now without having any food. Yeah.

Yeah, so the Ponderosa talk made you hungry? Yes, I know. If I've ever even eaten at a Ponderosa Oh, you missed out, dude, I don't think I ever did. What was it was like a steakhouse. Right, yeah? Yeah, so it was like a steakhouse buffet. Oh so like Ryan's Steakhouse around here. I don't think that was national. I think that was regional Ryan Steakhouse. Yeah. That was like the place you went to eat fancy when you were broke. So I went with my mother quite often. It's like a gold Star Corral, gold Star, Golden Golden Corral.

Oh yeah, okay, like a Golden Cral. Yeah like that. I remember when they had the unlimited ribs. I really stuck it to them on the on the margin. Yes, yes, I am single handedly, but I didn't know about the unlimited shrimp at Red Lobster until it was already over. I was so mad. I was like, I would have parked my ass down for three hours eating eating shrimp. I my dream in life is to become a blue whale that can just float through the ocean, catching sea life in my teeth and digesting it. I know, Dear God, I love seafood.

I love any food this far out of a fast, but still it just sounds so good. But uh, anyway, that all being said, I'm well, just in the middle of a fast and you like to recklessly eat around me while I'm fasting. It's good to have hobbies, yes, I think you'd think it's fun. Like what's the most fragrant thing I can eat that he likes? Hmm yeah, yeah, making pasta, sauce and stuff. So anyway, it is the dead emphasis on dead of summer right now. It's it's uh, you know, we're wrapping up July, and we've been we had been on a tear of a lot of found footage films, and I have a feeling we'll end up back there at some point.

But we're gonna take a We're gonna take a detour here soon from the found footage movies. But I realized that you had never seen the Houses October Built. But the problem with the Houses October Built is that it instantly makes me think of Hell House LLC. And I sometimes confuse the two in my head. I know they're two separate movies, but I will be like, wait, which one is Houses October Built and which one is Hell House LLC? Like I have trouble with that. So we decided to do back to back the Houses October Built, and then next show will do Hell House LLC.

Yeah. So, and they're both found footage horror films. And this is part of kind of doing our summer Ween thing. Yeah, all the kids are talking about the summer Ween, doing the summer celebration of Halloween, because you know, it's like dead. A summer is like the least fall you get. Oh yeah, I feel like winter feels more fall than summer. I could be wrong. No, I think you're right, just because of the cooler temperatures and you're a little more cozy and during the summer. Oh, I thought you that winter. No, I'm with you. I'm with you.

No. I was more talking about how summer is so unlike fall. Yeah, but yeah, I know, I'm with you. I get what you're saying. But yeah, it kind of makes you. It kind of makes you yearn for the fall, for thin, sweater weather, you know, for those for those three and a half days a year where the weather's perfect. So that's why we decided to do our little Halloween in the Summer episodes, starting with The Houses October Built, which was made in twenty fourteen, and it was directed by Bobby Rowe. And I meant to double check where it's available right now.

I believe it's it's not on Shutter. We learned that the hard way. Yeah, we'll have to talk about that. Yeah, we made we made a mistakes were made. But it looks like it's also available on Pluto TV Free with Ads, Plex Free with Ads and some other places too. Just don't let it. Don't let them confuse you, because I went to watch The House's October Belt with you on Shutter Yeah, and it wasn't that film. It was a different film by the same makers. It was basically the inspiration film. Yeah, like the thesis that film or whatever.

Yeah, apparently, I mean, did you dig deeper into where that came from or. No, I dug a little bit deeper into it. I guess like Bobby Rowe had made it as a passion project, and then when he was showing it to people, they were like, wow, this is amazing. When he took it to a film festival, everyone like, yeah, you need to do something with this. So the original Houses October Built, which is like twenty ten arrange, it was a very low budget, very you know, see to your pants found footage film, because what the House is October Built is about is a group of filmmakers, because it's a found footage movie, so of course it starts with a group of filmmakers.

A group of filmmakers decide they're going to capture a bunch of haunts and kind of capture the experience, but also like try to dig into the more folkloric side of haunts, the idea that there are ones so scary and so extreme you could die, or they use dead bodies or whatever. And the original Houses October Built was actually almost entirely a haunt documentary with a little found footage flavor and a shock a scare ending, which I can't lie worked really well, it really did. I hadn't seen The House of October Bilt in about five years, so when we were watching it and it stars mostly the same people.

As we were watching it, I was like, man, I didn't remember this, and man I didn't remember this, and man, this is a slow burn, but I do like it. And when it ended, I was like, something's up. And then you went to sleep and I told you in the morning, I was like, that wasn't the right one. As I was watching, as I was thinking about it, I was like, there was a lot more that happened in the movie I saw. I'm pretty sure. So if you love the House is October Built, it's totally worth watching.

And I guess it's like a Shutter exclusive because it's that original version. It's also like way more dated, way more like the dawn of iPhone era life, which I got a real kick out of time capsule. Yeah, exactly, so that one. But don't accidentally watch The Houses October Built twenty eleven or twenty ten. Make sure it's the two thoy and fourteen one, and you will get a real kick out of this film. It's it's got a lot of fun stuff going on, but it's also just it's it's dripping with Halloween because the idea is that in the last couple of weeks of Halloween of October, they're checking out all these haunts, and they're real haunts and real haunt actors.

It's just that they is also a found footage movie. So it's all kind of happening at the same time, right, and it's really fun. I didn't go Cuckoo Bananes for The Houses October Built Part two, but I did get a kick out of it, So we won't be talking about that here tonight. We're talking about the original The Og. The Og and a film that was helped in major part by RLJ, which is actually kind of the parent company of Shutter to get it kind of released wider, and I think Jason Blum had something to do with it a little bit or something.

But it doesn't matter. We're going to take a quick break and we come back. We're going to start really laying out what happens, just what happens in the House of october Ville. I guess you could say we'll lay the foundation. Oh yeah, yeah, I don't get it either. Right after this, so during the break, Rachel was apologizing for taunting me with food because of bringing up the ponderosa thing and then bringing up being hungry after that, that making her hungry so earlier this week on Wednesday, we had a brand new horror story on Weekly Spooky.

It was called Camping with Chupacabra and by Douglas Waltz, and I loved that story turned out great. Doug and I workshopped that one together. I told him, I was like, I love a choopacabra thing. That's like summertime. But the thing I hadn't considered because I was at the I was recording that story on the second half of a forty eight hour fast, so like really late in the fasting phase. He describes in length early on the food that the camp cook in Puerto Rico makes for everybody. So he described muffungo. Oh no, which is a food I haven't had in forever.

I need to just make some muffungo for those story. It's deep fried mashed plantains with pork cracklands, oil. And. Garlic, a lot of garlic. And it's like mashed potatoes with some meat and stuff. It's so so good. You bash it up in a mortar and pestle. Oh, it's so good. But no, that was torture. And I'm sitting in a dark room just reading like it describing it described the desserts and stuff too, and I was just like, what agony? Torture, absolute torture, absolute torture. But speaking of torture, yeah, haunts, some people feel like they're torture.

Some people feel like they're fun. And that's what our film is about. So before we dive fully into the houses, October built, what do you think about haunts? Because I had you been gone to any haunts before I took you to one? No? No, you took me my first haunt. Wow. Yeah, this is something I think I've talked about this before, maybe not with you, but like in the olden days, probably the days a little bit earlier than we are here, for neighborhood haunts and haunts run by churches were super common. And I and I don't mean these.

There was a documentary called hell House that came out in like five oh six somewhere there that was about like Christian themed haunted houses where it's like we're burning in yeah. Hell houses there. Yeah, yeah, But I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about just the neighborhood church would put on goofy costumes and put on the put up the strobe light, and put up the cobwebs, and you would get to walk through a little spot of it, and they'd make it this little haunt for you. It's so weird because that was so common in the in some of the eighties and nineties, and then people got a little bit more about it.

But before that or later than that too, I mean even today. One of the number one people organizations that put on haunts are jc's j's. You don't know a jc's are. No, I knew she wouldn't know what jc's are. You know why, I don't know. I just kicking them. So j c's, which used to be known as JCI USA, which is the United States Junior Chamber, are civic leadership and community service organization for young people okay, but not children, young adults okay, eighteen to forty. So there are branches like all over America and I think the rest of the country too.

The whole idea is to empower young people to create positive change in their communities. So we have a jc's haunted house still in Dayton. I think they're called like the West Side j C's or something like that. I can't remember now, but jc's would do haunted houses and they do it to raise money for their organization because they're a charity. Yeah, so it's very very common for you to like see like the Miami Valley Jc's, you know, Skeleton Farm or whatever they name the haunt. So that's one organization that was like pushing haunts for a very long time and still does in a lot of areas.

Yeah. So so the first haunt I took you to your first haunt then, hm, because I went to a few. I went on a haunted hay ride when I was really young, and it scared the ever loving hell out of me. A guy with a chains I was chasing after our trailer, very very spooky. I'm guessing it was down by Middletown. I was really young, I'm talking like eight seven eight years old, so I don't remember where it was, but I would guess Middletown. What was the first where did I take you? Was it? It was the I mean, I always call it spooky haw but it's oh, oh.

Yeah, of course. See I forget about that one because we were invited. To terror Town terror Town Town, LLC. That's not what it's called not anymore. They changed their name. I think you think hell House LLC. Their Facebook page. I remember because I followed them on Facebook for a while. But oh yeah, but it didn't say that on the sign though. No, not on the sign. It was all Hallows Eve, terror Town on the sign. Yeah. So they're out by a little bit more toward like Cincinnati. There are ways away, about an hour hour and fifteen minute drive, I think.

But that was really cool. It was literally an old West town, but they make it all haunted and it was really a blast. They invited me there as a influencer two years in a row, and then apparently they just stopped doing that, so it wasn't just me, They just don't do that anymore. Yeah, but they were just starting. I mean I felt for them because I could tell that there was a lot of stuff that wasn't ready and they were trying their best to still make it really fun. And I scare easily, so it was not a problem for them to get me pretty scared.

Oh yeah, I mean they do a great job. There, they do, they do. But what were your first thoughts then? Walking into a spooky yeha I. I was actually like I was absolutely smitten, uh from the get go, because it was it was kind of like the perfect the perfect introductory experience. And I don't know if you remember this, because we you know, we got there, we got there a little bit early. We're standing in line and uh waiting for them to like open up. And there was some guys like toward the front of the line and they started like being a little rowdy, and Haunt actors came out.

They were trying to like introduce their show, and these guys in the front started heckling them. Well, they were actually plants. They weren't in the front either. They were three they were three spaces behind us. It was behind us, that's right. Yeah, yeah, they were plants because the count actors all came up and grabbed them and like beat them up a little bit and threw them into the thing. And then when we came in they were in the stocks. Yeah. No, that was solid. That was a very solid one. And the funny thing is they were being so obnoxious.

Even the like the couple next to us was like, guys, just like shut up, let us enjoy it now. Of course, then there was the drunk guy ahead of us in the actual haunt who was like literally trying to ruin the whole experience that that. I may have been confusing myself because of him. Well, yeah, well there's always one at these haunts where it's just like, I'm not even scared. See how not scared I am Because I'm not even scared. I'm not even scared. It's like, cool, then go somewhere else, something that you'll enjoy. Then, yeah, stop ruining it for the rest of us.

Yes, be in a freaking wet blanket on a Tuesday afternoon. I hate you. I just made that up. I'm going to use it. Oh it's a good one. Yeah, actually good one. So okay, So that was your first haunt experience, Like I said, I think mine was. I know, I know that at some point when I was younger, I went to a church haunted house because my babysitter was very religious. But I don't. I like I remember like a rec center or something, but I don't. And like, uh, and maybe they did, like the you know, put your hand in the thing and like, oh it's O for guts.

All this is peeled eyeballs. And it's clearly just a grape. Well you can't see it's yeah, that's mind's eye. But I'm almost certain i'd been told I went to one of those, and I think I have like very vague memories of it. But what I really remember is that haunted hay ride with the guy with the chainsaw chasing after us. That was so cool. But since then, I mean, the Dayton, Ohio area, we are maggoty with haunts. We have so many haunts. I haven't gone to all of them yet. I'm hoping this year to go almost every weekend if I can find people that will go with me.

Nobody ever wants to go with me. Well, I have weekends for you now, so. Yeah, but then you'll be like, I'm so cold after we've been there twenty five minutes you start. But I still like, once we start having fun, I think I'm generally pretty game. You probably gonna die in the cold. I mean, yeah, that goes without saying, But that doesn't mean I can't be game beforehand. That's a fair point. That's a fair point. Well, we're gonna take a quick break and we come back. We'll dive into the particulars of the haunts. They're looking at in the Houses October built.

Right after this, the movie. Starts with a group of friends from Ohio. Of course they are because because of course they are. Because why wouldn't they be. It's always it's always Ohio. It's always it's always been Ohio. The heart of it all. So a group of filmmakers and friends from Ohio, they've decided that leading up to Halloween, they're going to film themselves visiting a whole bunch of haunts across the country, trying to find the most extreme haunted houses. And the first haunt that they go to is kind of your standard there, uh, you know, the the strobe lights and you know, haunt actors just kind of like jumping out at you.

And the the friends are some of the friends, three of them, they're pretty like they're they're into it, they're having fun. But the leader is it Bobby. He's like really intent on the fact that the stars scares have to be more extreme, and he calls like what they're experiencing like pedestrians scares. Yeah, uh, And he's kind of a like kind of an asshole to some of this the Haunt actors and antagonizes them a little bit. But it gets worse because the Haunt actors tell them like, you're not allowed to be filming, and Bobby tells them like, no, just keep just keep filming, and that really pisses off the Haunt actors.

Well, it's worth mentioning. Before the film even starts, we get like, we get a peek forward in time as we see Brandy like beaten up in locked in a trunk, and then we go back in time. That's right, because I was mixing up this one in the twenty ten. That's what I was afraid you'd do. But no, so but that makes but that also helps kind of establish the tension of knowing like something bad is going to happen to these people, and yeah, they're they're going to the Haunts, and they just the characters range a lot because there's Brandy.

She's kind of the she's the only girl, and she's kind of the host of this documentary, and she's also very clearly a longtime friend of most of the people there. Yeah, because you've got her boyfriend Zach, and then cameraman Jeff, and then Bobby and Mikey. So it's gonna be hard to keep them all split up. But like we have like the heavy set you know, funny guy, and the producer guy who's like a bit stressed, and the creative guy you know who's directing it. And yeah, but you're right, he is, like he's kind of pushing because I think that as they're visiting more haunts.

And it's great, you get to see these haunts, you get to see people waiting outside them, you get to talk to the actors a little bit. It's fun, it is, but you could see how the which was the guy who was being a jerk, Bobby Bobby, you could see how he would feel like, since it's his money, I believe he's the one who's paying for it. You could see how he feels like they're not getting anything particularly special. Yeah, you know, they're just kind of getting the usual stuff. You know, here's the usual scares, the usual boo, the usual, this, the usual that.

So I could see why he would want to push, and he kind of starts laying those little the little groundwork of like what's the scariest haunt you've heard of? Like, is there any place you've heard of that's maybe like underground, And at some point they get wind of a story about a haunt. Actor who went home and killed their whole family. Yeah, and that kind of sets his imagination on fire. Yeah, so it's the atmosphere of it's really cool because I mean they're driving around, they're seeing all these sights and meeting these Haunt actors. A having a little bit of friction, especially when it comes to the haunts that don't want you to film inside the actual haunt, which most of them do not want you to film inside the actual haunt unless they give you, like explicit for permission.

You're not supposed to pull your phone out and film anything nothing like that, which makes sense because you don't want to spoil it. People will see it and it'll be spoiled. Yeah, it's like peeling peeking back behind the curtain, like it just ruins the illusion. Well it's not even behind the curtain, you're just seeing the show. Yeah, it's just but they's supposed to surprise you. I mean, even if you went last year, they always change enough to make sure you still get freaked out at a good haunt. So but yeah, so the friction's going on, and of course there's a friction between all the friends, although there is a pretty solid camaraderie attitude of like for the most part that like we're all old friends, like where none of us are actually that mad at each other.

So I like the dichotomy. I think that the interactions really help sell it. Oh no, I absolutely agree. And you really start to feel for especially like Bobby and Zach and Brandy. You really start to feel for them, those three because they are kind of like the heart and soul of the work team, and everyone kind of like orbits around them, So it's up to them to keep the whole project going. But there is kind of that question that that Brandy and Zach pose fairly early on, which is like is this safe? Like should we really keep pursuing this, And of course Bobby's answer is always an unequivocal yes, we should.

We should keep digging. We should keep digging more and more, and like the further we're we're gonna dig, like, the more we're gonna get for our film, and this is going to be great. And one of the things that I really loved was the countdown to Halloween. Yeah, yeah, I kept showing how many days till Halloween. Yeah, that was great, not just for the atmosphere of the film, and not just because it made me more and more excited for Halloween. But because the very very first scene of the movie was Brandy getting thrown into a trunk, you kind of every time that that, you know, Halloween draws one day closer, you're like, Okay, I know some shit's going to go down.

Yeah, when when is it going to start happening, Which it starts happening pretty pretty early on because after they leave the first Haunt after kind of like antagonizing the Haunt actors there, they start getting pursued and followed by somebody in a pig mask. Yeah. Yeah, And it starts out just it starts out really weird because they realized that the person that pursued them they had seen them at a Haunt like three hundred miles away. Yeah, it was like two or three hundred miles away. Because they say that, they're like it can't be the same guy that was like we drove a day.

Yeah, like how would you get here? So it does start out pretty innocuous, and then it, of course, you know, keeps getting darker and darker the more they pry into what could be going on. Well and Haunt actors, I mean, that's one of the one of their superpowers in general is just kind of like staring you down, making you nervous. You know, they love it. They're not afraid, uh to do that. Sometimes they'll like hold steady after you've like kind of laughed and broke. They just won't let it go and to keep you unnerved or keep you on edge.

I could see why it would be a lot of fun. Having been a professional wrestling manager who was a bad guy. There's something great about getting our eyes out of people. But when you get to go after him one by one, it's a hell of a thing. Like the Haunt actors that hang out by the bathrooms and stuff to like and or mess with you in line and things like that. Those guys, it's a it's a fun it's a fun experience. But yeah, there are definitely like little red flags of like this doesn't seem like a normal kind of Haunt experience right now.

Yeah, that keep getting dropped throughout it, but keep that. But that Halloween vibe of like friends and spooky good times still carries the film, and I think that's one of the reasons people enjoy it so much. Absolutely, And when we get back we'll talk about how not fun it starts to become right after. This, So our group of friends, friends friends, our group of friends find themselves at the next haunt and and once again filming when they probably shouldn't be. But at least they're not like antagonizing the Haunt actors anymore. But that doesn't really seem to matter, because now they seem to be like getting targeted by specific Haunt actors.

Yeah, but Bobby could care less because he starts talking with some other guests at this particular haunt and they tell him about the most extreme haunted house, which is called like the Blue Skeleton, and it's not actually a haunted house, it's more like a haunted experience, and like. Yeah, yeah, the house moves. Yeah, the house moves every year. And they tell him that this year it's in Louisiana, and uh, that's when he like obviously makes up his mind, like obviously we have to go to Louisiana now, like screw everything else. Yeah, but the hard part is they don't even know where in Louisiana.

Yeah, because it's all so secret. It's also also I'm sure every time it says blue Skeleton, I keep thinking of Red Skeleton. Red Skelton. Oh gosh, you don't even know who that is due I do not Comedian from way back when. Oh okay, it's okay, you don't know Red Skeleton. I do not makes me feel old, even though you're a year younger than me at best. At best, bet is that because I'm only like nine months younger than you. Do So it's something like that. Yeah, so, but no. So they're trying to figure out the Blue Skeleton thing and they're getting drips and drabs, but they know that they need to go to Louisiana, and I guess prad yeah, you know, start asking people about it down there.

Yeah, because they keep hearing that it's the scariest whenever they had some people saying like, I don't know, like they might have they might have used real dead bodies there. I've heard crazy things. It was the scariest thing I've ever experienced in my life. And blah blah blah blah blah. And I do want to mention that the scariest haunted house ever is a thing from I feel like most childhoods. Oh yeah, the. Idea that there's some secret haunted house or some really back then, it wasn't even secret. It was just it was just always just far enough away that you couldn't like go when you were a kid, you know, before you had a car and stuff.

So it would be like for us in Dayton, it would be in Cleveland usually or near Detroit. They would say like, oh, there's a haunted house there, and like if you it's got it's in an abandoned hospital and it's got ten floors and nobody's ever made it to the tenth floor because it's so scary, and if you do, they give you a thousand dollars. No one's ever succeeded. And there have been haunts that have done gags like that, like if you make it all the way through, you win all this money. I think they even talk to one in this Yeah they say like nobody makes it through the end because there's like no way to Yeah, like it's just a it's just a gag.

But that was the thing growing up, this idea that there were these haunts so scary no one could ever finish them, which I always found awesome because that's pure imagination fuel. Yeah, that you're just thinking like whoa, like nothing can stop you know, nobody could get through it. It'll stop everybody in their tracks. It's so scary. But then you never hear what is scary about it necessarily, so you go, oh, well, then it must be fill in the blank of all the things you find the scariest in the world. Yeah, which is hilarious. And there are, you know, as times gone on, there are extreme haunts, very extreme haunts out there.

They even talk a little bit. They talk about who goes to this one where they like simulate a suicide and stuff in front of everybody. I've never been to one of those that's like that, like crazy, like gored out. I've been to some odd ones, and I've been to some nastier ones of course, Land of Illusion. I always think of, oh, gosh, what was his name? The doctor? I was going to ask you if you could remember his name, because I love him. Doctor. It's not like doctor Satan, but it's something like doctor Satan. But he recognized me the first time I went through, called me out as a as a filmmaker, and then I really wish I could remember his name because it's not doctor Satan.

That's a character from Oh doctor Psycho is his name? Because doctor Satan is from House of a thousand corpses. He his big gag, I love the Carny. I love I mean, I worked in professional wrestling. I've traveled the country selling things. I love the Carnival. He does a geek act at the end. So for those who don't know, the difference be a freak and a geek in the context of the Carnival is freaks are born and geeks are made. So a freak would be somebody who has like a deformity or a birth defect that people would pay to see.

And I know this sounds barbaric. We're talking about a long time ago, But a geek was somebody who learned to do something shocking or disgusting for money, things like biting off chicken heads, which is actually the original term for geek was people who bite chicken. Hands off the original Geek show. Yeah, but then also, I mean like people covered in tattoos, like completely covered in tattoos, like that look really kind of scary. That's a geek act. Nailing boards to your nose, yeah, that's a geek act. Hanging things from piercings or hanging yourself from your piercings, that's geek act.

And he would eat. He eats live worms, which is a very old geek act. And because he recognized me, he did it right next to my head. And I am actually horrified of earthworms. I don't like touching them. I ever since I was a little kid going fishing. I could never handle being close to the worms. And he slurped the worm right and because that's and that's the thing is he sells it. You know, he puts the worm in his mouth that you see it wriggle, and then he slaps it up really fast like it's you know, linguini.

He did it right next to my face, and I remember you were laughing until we got out of there, and I pulled my glass off and showed you there was worm you on my glasses, not on my face. It was just a little like a little bit on my glasses. But that was enough to make me go like, oh, I felt really nauseous. But it was awesome. And you can't do that to just anybody, because you know, you could get in trouble. And that was the other thing is he did that to me, really close to me, in front of a bunch of teenage girls, and it made them mortified because they thought he was going to do it to them too, and he can't because that's a whole other thing about touch passes and stuff.

There are haunts where you're where you could pay extra, which is hilarious. Pay extra and the haunt actors are allowed to touch you. Yes, well they've got that. They've got that. At Terror Town they. Do and well, I think they're trying to push the idea that they do extreme horror stuff. I mean, when we were there, it did. I the reason I didn't want to touch passes. It looked like all they did was like, throw fake blood on you a lot, and I was like, I don't want to stain my clothes. Yeah, but we've got fake blood at home.

We can. But I'm sure that there's other stuff. And they built it up a bit. But like, what was it the Hotel of Terror. I can't think of the full name of it. It's gonna drive me crazy. It's like Face your Fears, the Hotel of Terror. That's one of the scariest ones around here. It's a one attraction. We went there on time. We went in the middle of the night because they close it like two so often we'd hit an attraction that had like five haunts and then run there and catch that one right at the end of the night.

But they have touch passes and they're basically a necklace, a glow necklace, so that they know where you are and they can touch you and stuff. But my favorite thing about that is not the fact that they could touch you or whatever, because I haven't done it. It's that they put glow passes all over the floor and they put them on like the corpses on the walls. They put them around their neck and stuff to make it look at people are just throwing them down and running away or whatever, and I really doubt they are.

Although when I went to Louisbourg Haunted Cave, which was amazing and I really would love to go again. When I went to Louisbourg Haunted Cave, they were just selling well, they weren't touch passes, they were just selling glowy things. And I got one because I just, you know me, I like when I'm having a fun time, I spend money. I I you know, I got it. And then about about I think it was like we were like three minutes into the to the tour into the caves, and I was like, oh my god, this just makes every Gaunt actor able to see me.

Ah, so darn yeah. So I mean they get you, they get you. And doctor Psycho if you're listening to this, because he actually might be cool, dude, I can't wait to see you again at landa The of Illusion. Although man, last time we went and did all six in one night. We were so tired. But that was so much fun. You remember, see, I loved the girl that was the access Exorcist girl and chasing. Around Reagan in a like so like Reagan laying in bed and the bed moves around to chase after people like Reagan and the Exorcist when her head's up in the bed.

Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. So so at Land of Illusion, we just heard someone screaming and then just this beep beep, and we look and there's Reagan's bed just floating along chasing someone. I was like, ah, that's great. Well she saw me yeah, and made a beeline and like would not relent, And I was like, I was having a great time running away. Like oh no, I'm good. I'm a good partner for you at haunts because number one, I get very scared, but number two I feed you to them. Oh yeah, like. That one guy when I said like, I was like, oh man, you're really afraid of chain saw us and that guy just would not live out alone.

Yeah. Yeah, and you are afraid of change. I wasn't even like, I wasn't even tall. I was just telling the truth out loud to them. But I remember that one of my favorite moments of that Exorcist girl chasing you was that I was curious as she was zooming around and that thing was curious how it worked. So I waited and kind of looked till I could see kind of through it. And that was, honestly the most incredible thing for me was realizing that bed frame with the little wheels on it was built around her wheelchair.

Yeah, she's a paraplegic, and what an awesome way to let her be a part of this, To let her be a part of the haunting and the scaring and and in a way that I mean, they couldn't afford to build that thing. Yeah, as effective as it is there, they couldn't have built it they had. The only reason that it can be that way is because of her chair, because those chairs are expensive. Yeah. That really moved me and touched me a lot to see that that's so awesome that she gets to have that experience every weekend and scare people and be the Reagan in a bed floating around thing.

I love that. That was such a cool thing. Yeah, no, I agree, but I'm not crying. Crying. We're gonna take a quick break and when we get back, things aren't going to be so sweet. Leave me. You kind of answered this before the break, but I wanted to ask you, since you have gone to maybe not a ton more, but more haunts than me. What is a ton more? What's the most scary haunt you personally have visited and what made it so scary to you? The most scary? Yeah, it might be Louisbourg Haunted Cave because there's a there's a part where you're running through the cave and it's it's kind of what you'd expect.

I mean, the light gags and the weird and the railing things and like the things you walk on it and it dips suddenly and makes a loud sound. But there's a part where, literally as you're going along, a pickup truck drives through and there's a fifty caliber turret gun on the back of it and a skeleton is holding it and it fires real fifty I'm sure they're blanks, but it fires rounds and it's so loud that you can't you can't help but feel like a mammalion lizard brain sphere, like you can't help it. It's scared me so bad you could not I mean your ears ring.

I mean it's so loud. So that one's up there for me, because and that was after like twenty because that's I think it takes you forty five minutes to get through the whole cave. It's only one attraction, so it's all through it. So that might be. But then again, I mean that's almost kind of cheap, that kind of scare. I hate claustrophobic stuff definitely gets to me a little bit. Pure darkness definitely gets to me. And I love the use of that because that's brilliant. I mean, you barely need anything to scare people, just their own lack of sense.

I remember when they did the blackout when we were at Land of Illusion last year, they had you walk into this room. It was brilliant. You the little gazebo before you go in the maze is just a white room and the lights are all super bright, and then he just talks. He talks nonsense. He basically like, don't touch anybody, They won't touch you. Da da da da da da da da da. Watch where you're going da da da da da da. And he really I saw him look at his watch at one point, I think he was literally counting.

He was like making sure he had us for thirty seconds or eyes it adjusted to how bright it was, because then they kill the lights and put you in a room where everything's painted black and there's no lights. Yeah, and it was I mean insanely dark. I mean you're like peeling your eyes open as wide as you can and seeing nothing. Yeah. That stuff's really fun and scary too, So I guess like it's hard because like, on one hand, one was you know, some of its imagination, but then like the fifty BMG gun going off, that's just legitimate fear.

There was also the first time I went through one of the Land of Illusion things, they had a thing that made it look like a semi truck was going to hit you, and it was really sudden you saw it. Yeah, yeah, I said that that. Happened when I didn't know it was coming. That really scared me. Like that shook me up a little bit, Yeah for a while. Yeah, So, I mean there there are a lot of things because like the gore and stuff. You know, it's just too hard, it's too easy to feel like it's to know it's fake.

Yeah, and the jump scares are great. I mean I love a good jump scare, but like if it was just off of a single scare or off of like the concept all around us, it's probably like Louisbourg or that blackout experience were pretty pretty solid. I know that. Although see, this is a tough one because every time face your fears Hotel of Terror, every time I think about it, though, I think that's the scariest haunt around here. Though I don't. But I don't know if it's because like it one thing scares where if it's just because every section of that hotel is really scary, like is generally more intense than everywhere else, because that's an intense one like that, Really they warn you, the haunt actors swear and stuff that tells you you're in a real a real you know place that's like geared not towards children.

Yeah, so I don't know, that's a tough one. I wish I had, Like I wish I could just go, oh man this one time. But I've been to a few. And I went to a haunt, an incredible haunt. It was called something man Or like Grimly Manor or something up by columb or Cleveland. I was at Cinema Wasteland when you're in October, and so I had worked on a movie earlier. I was probably nineteen or not known as seventeen, and I'd worked on a movie and all the effects artists were from that haunt, so they gave us passes.

So we all went, and I was scared. The guest haunt i'd been to before that was the Psycho Path at Yellowjacket where Yellowjacket is right out by spring I think it's out by a springfield or something, but it's like a Native American camp area. And they used to do a thing my buddy Tommy Gunn used to run called the Psycho Path and it was a haunted path and that was scary, Like when I was fourteen fifteen years old, that scared the heck out of me. But then it's like I didn't do another haunt because they were too expensive.

Growing up, I didn't do another Haunt until I went to that one in Cleveland, and that one was massive and tons of actors and lots of like weird story driven things like this. One lady started following the girl ahead of me around, asking her to give her a stone from outside, and like making it sound like it was super super important, like give me a stone, give me a stone from outside, which I found really eerie. I was also stuck between two women that were probably in their twenties that I knew from that movie. So I ended up being like the person that they were.

Like each took my hands and they were screaming in my face the whole time, which was very amusing. Oh I'm sure so that one was pretty scary too, But yeah, I don't know. Every now and then a Haunt actor like look at you and like really pull off the like dead eye and and really get you. Yeah, And I'm I'm just a sucker for jump scares. Jump scares get me. I can't. I can't help it, you know, something suddenly comes at me. Because don't forget I filmed it was It wasn't my movie. I was working on a friend's movie, Steve Radzinski's caris Hell four out now.

I believe I was working on that and that shot at a haunted schoolhouse. That's a it's a haunt. Oh yeah. They literally just let us film there, and they told us like specifically where you can't get blood and where they don't care, like blood is just a bonus. And we were allowed to film in all of their set pieces. They hadn't This was a couple months back. They hadn't even started doing the major upgrades yet, so no one was there. Oh nice, It was just us, And it was kind of weird because you had thembo of the liminal nightmare of being in an empty school combined with being in literal like having to walk through haunted houses and everything would take forever because it's a literally it's not amazed, but it literally you know, makes you walk the longest amount in each room by having the walls the way they are.

But at one point when we were filling there, I never got like super creeped out. I did notice that it kind of smelled, and then Steve's wife, who was a Haunt actor for years, was like, oh, let me find it, and she found they had like literally it was like a glade that's cat pie and I don't know if that's for something else or if they make that just for haunts, but it makes it smell dirty. Well yeah, so, but at one point we were trying to figure out how to run an extension cord somewhere because there are like windows and doors in secret passages that you can find, like usually a curtain is where you know, the Haunt actors would pass through.

And at one point I was looking at this little door and I was trying to figure out how to open it because I was like, oh, I could run the cable through here maybe, And there was a little latch on it. So I pulled the latch and it just slid and dropped down really fast and made a loud sound, and I realized, oh, that's the Haunt actors flipped that and through gravity and the two by fours just hit the concrete and it makes it insanely loud sound. But everybody else was They weren't filming, but they were like walking around quietly trying to find where to put lights.

It's all like damn, like this loud, incredibly loud boom, and I was like, sorry, I guess that's what that does. It's pretty funny. So but things aren't going to be funny when we come back, because while we're enjoying reminiscing about haunts and such, our intrepid crew not so much as they get closer and closer to the Blue Skeleton right after this, So. After a day of having or an evening of having fun at the haunts and talking to other hauntgoers and finding out more information about the Blue Skeleton and kind of getting excited about the new direction that their filming could take, our group of friends goes back to their camper to sleep, and then someone starts filming them while they're all asleep.

Very creepy, and I love that that they're all asleep and all of a sudden, the camera they've been using is just up and films everybody laying sleeping, including the person who usually holds the camera. It's a solid, a solid little move to kind of build suspense. And I found it very unknown. It was. It was very un gave me chills when I was watching it. And I can't remember it because it's not Bobby who found it. I think it's or no, Bobby does find it. Yeah, when he's on like forums about haunted houses trying to find information about the Blue Skeleton.

He finds this video and hides it from everyone because he knows that if they knew that they are actually being like this proves that they're being pursued. He knew that they would all want to call it quits. But that's not the only thing. Because while that person was in there filming them, they put like a cow heart and organs inside the refrigerator. So even though like Brandy and Zach and Jeff and everybody, they don't know about the footage, they still know like something's going on. Well, Zach is the one who tells Bobby to keep it a secret.

That's right, Yeah, yeah, because because he even says, like, I know Brandy, she wouldn't want to keep doing this if she knew what's happening. So now everybody's like the infighting is getting a little more intense because Bobby really really really wants to find the Blue Skeleton, and Brandy's kind of like, we have a perfectly good documentary right here. We don't have to go chasing, you know, like this isn't even what like before our documentary was just supposed to be like all the different haunts in America, And now you're trying to find the most extreme haunt, like why are we doing this?

And so Like, I think that's what's interesting watching the thesis movie, the twenty ten, twenty eleven film, and then watching this one is in the original film it was very much less like it felt much less like Bobby was pushing everyone as hard. It was just more like, oh, we just kind of fell into discovering this, whereas with this one, it feels much more like Bobby refuses to drop something that anyone in their right mind would have understood, like this is really dangerous. You shouldn't keep pursuing this. I think it's kind of interesting those two differences.

What do you think about that? I mean, I would agree, But the big to me, the big element is like the combination of or none of the combination is the addition of the fact that they want to do a make a really good film, they want to make a memorable film, they want to make money, they want to be creative, and about two thirds of the crew is fine with good enough. Yeah, And I think that that's what makes it compelling, is that all he wants to do is find something nobody else has found, because everybody and their brother can run around with a camcorder and just film the haunt actors between scares, or film people waiting in line to see something scary.

Anybody can do that, but if they could find something like that, that's what's up. And at one point I think it was Bobby. I'm having trouble remembering which one's Bobby and which one's Zach in my memory, but he even says like, I want this to be scary, like when we were kids, like it was like really scary and we like wondered if there was this. So there's that element too of like kind of chasing nostalgia, chasing your childhood, chasing like things that may have never existed. Yeah, you know, which is in my opinion, a huge part of nostalgia as chasing things that don't exist or never did.

There's a song by Jello Biafra called Nostalgia for an Age that Never existed, and I love that song because it's basically just about the perfect fifties that everybody would imagine about in the eighties and nineties that literally didn't exist. Yeah it was a TV show, not a documentary. Leave It to Beaver, you know. Yeah, So that's an element that I think really grabs me is the idea that they're trying to do something better than okay, and they're trying to capture like a spirit and a feeling to do that, which is something that takes them back to being kids.

Yeah, so that's kind of my take. I like that take. I like that take a lot good. Oh no. So it does start getting even more intense in the movie though, because they have found Bobby, or Bobby found through you know, scouring these forums and these websites, that they can get information from somebody at a bar about where the Blue Skeleton is going to finally be this. Yeah, they're told that that's part of the process, is like go to this bar. Yeah, so down in I believe it's in Louisiana. So they end up driving all the way there through the night, and I think they even keep it a secret from half the group like that when they wake up there just in Louisiana.

Yeah, but when they go to this bar, things get pretty creepy pretty quickly, as there are guys who appear to be Haunt actors that are drinking there that start pushing them around and why you can't be recording here and yeah, or why are you recording? Yeah, and all this, but then when they go to hopefully talk to somebody, they ends up leaving Brandy alone with these guys, and it's it's one of the more tense parts of the film because they just start bullying her because she's in the bathroom and they get the camera and they go and like wait for her, and when she comes out, she's just like, what are you doing?

And that's our camera, Like stop it, Like this isn't funny, and they're just having a good old time scaring her. And that's another element of the film that I feel like, I think is sometimes lost on people because it's not for the kind of people who love horror movies. It's not really a very appropriate thought to have. And that's why I'm not going to say it until after this break, but I'll have my hot take right after this. Okay, all teasing aside. My hot take is, and again, like this wouldn't be popular with a lot of the horror loving world, but it's the idea like who are these people and what kind of people are attracted to this kind of work?

Because they talk to a couple of Haunt actors who kind of suggest that this is their opportunity to kind of rip loose and kind of let themselves be a psycho, take their frustrations of life out on unwitting strangers. There's nothing wrong with that. It's consensual. The people that you're doing that too are probably you know, they're having a good time with it too, like it's a win win win. But it does make you kind of if you really think about it, it makes you kind of nervous. Yeah, like why would they want to do this?

Why would they want to go so psycho? And they even talk to some people who say like, oh, I have to hold back a lot, and da da da dah. It's like that's weird too. So again, because horror fans are generally pretty docile kind people. I've found that my entire life. They're friendly and helpful. The idea that there could be a contingency of them who are just psychopaths and that's why they're attracted to this work because they want to hurt people. It's not a very flattering way to look at haunts and haunt actors and stuff, but it isn't unreasonable to wonder.

And I have a friend who she's told me she won't go to haunts because she's afraid that they're really Psycho's there. Of course I told her, I was like, that is super silly, Like, why, like, you're gonna be the one person ever that actually gets murdered by a haunt actor in the entire world. It'll be you. You'll be the first. It's a little silly. Yeah, yeah, it's a little silly. I mean, don't get me wrong, Like, you, dude, go to the carnival. I mean a lot of those people are ex cons and drugs and stuff like that, and it can make you nervous, so like you don't know who's there.

But that's kind of the point, is you are going there for a vacation and fear. Yeah. Yeah, so I don't know. But that's kind of my takeaway though, is that one of the elements of this is just the idea who are these people? To quote Jerry Seinfeld, but you know, who are these people? And why are they like this? Why would they want this to be their lives? And we're getting a big fat taste of this in this sequence where they're harassing Brandy and they've got her camera and the tables have turned. They're getting to ask her questions and YadA, YadA, YadA, and of course you know before you know at the group of guys she's with all come back and it's very clear that I can never remember the he set brother character's name, but he's I actually like the way that depict his character because he's funny, but he's also a bit of a womanizer, but he's also tough.

Yeah. Yeah. There's a part where when one guy's wanting to throw it at he's like, dude, you really, like, do you really want to throw down? Because I freaking will like and everybody's like, don't because I get that sense. I'm like, I have a feeling this dude has pummeled people when he's mad. So they kind of break that up. They get their camera back, and it's kind of the way you'd expect, though it's like, just give me my camera back. It's expensive and like, this is ridiculous. So it's a great scene. It seemed to lead up to where we're almost to our our big you know, the thrilling part of the third act.

Yeah, no, it's I I think it's great. And what I liked about the scene was it played into the thesis of the film or one of the thesises of the film that you just mentioned, which is these haunt acts could be anyone. They really could be anyone, And they say it several times in this movie. They say it several times in the twenty ten one. But this kind of also reminds you that, like the haunts, they're scary because it's fun because we want it to be. But there is that world outside of the haunts that we're trying to escape from that's way scarier.

Yeah, and this was that dose of reality of like, yeah, haunts are scary, but reality is scarier. For sure, for sure. And that's kind of the thing. I need to show you that Haunt documentary on Hulu where they talk to like the guy with PTSD who goes to these extreme haunts for Catharsis. It's really fascinating. That does sound fascinating. Because the human fear reaction, and I mean just Catharsis in general, is very odd. How it works, how experiencing things similar to what hurt you can help you heal. It's a very interesting part of the human psyche.

But I also want to mention after they get out of that bar, they one of the best elements of this film is the RV because it gives you all these cool extra gags. I mean, they live in the car. It has all these lights and cameras built into the RV because you have to be able to see around you. It's a very big recreational vehicle. And I love the sequence where after they have left the bar and everything, they go back to the RV and they find themselves surrounded by dozens of Haunt actors, yeah, all around them.

But then the lights cut out and when the lights come back on, they're all gone. And that's another great moment too, super scary. And I want to mention there was a Haunts actor seen earlier that also got me really well. They were having it. They were just camping, not far from one of the big haunts, and this guy who just looks completely insane comes out through the woods and just he's like spoken a say or something, and they start talking to him and he sits by the fire and they and at one point he's clearly he is a Haunt actor and it's not.

The twist is not there's no twist. He is a Haunt actor. But I love how when they say, like, oh, are you from the from the uh, the Haunt or whatever over there. He's like, oh yeah, yeah, he's messing with them by acting like because he's so clearly a han actor, he has a makeup on his stuff. So he goes, oh yeah, yeah that one. Like that's that's how Haunt actors will be though. They'll be like, oh yeah, yeah, this is for the Haunt. I'm just I'm not just a crazy person anything to get your goat.

Yeah, no, it's just it's stuff like that. Super fun. But after they all disappear, you know, it's a very scary scene. The next morning they get instructions on how to meet with their connection at the Blue Skeleton, which is the rendezvous is at a big Halloween festival, like this massive Halloween fest. Yeah, I got the feeling that it was somewhere in New Orleans. Oh no, what gave you that feeling? Was that the fact that it was basically Marty Gras Yes, okay, know it, which is like the only thing I know definitelynewhere. That's all you need to know about New Orleans.

That in like Beignets, which is a part of Marti Grattu. Yeah, man, don't talk about Bignets. Man, I'm so hungry. But yeah, So they go there to rendezvous with their Blue Skeleton person and almost immediately Jeff finds himself lured to an alley and cornered by a clown, including the weird one of the weird actors who seem to be following them around. And it's starting to get really creepy, and it looks like in order to sign up for the Blue Skeleton things, they get real kidnappy, real fast. And we'll talk all about it after this, before we get to the ultimate extreme haunt experience of our main characters.

And I do mean ultimate, Oh my, yes, I do want to mention because I didn't mention it earlier, that whole concept of the haunts so scary, nobody can finish it, and blah blah blah and all that. It got a bit of a revival about ten years ago when mccameye Manner became a big to do because there was like a documentary about it and people were making YouTube videos about it. Do you know much about MCKAMEI Manner. We've watched some videos about it. I've read a little bit about it. Most of what I know is that as Air quotes extreme as mccameye manner is a lot of it's probably like bullshit too.

Most of it is bullshit. Most of it is total course crap. So the claim is that mcamee manner is the most extreme terrifying haunt ever, so much so that it subjects you to torture. It's not just like a haunt, it's a it's a grueling, awful experience. It's like a twenty four hour thing too, right, like they're supposed to keep you for a full maybe. Or something they could be. I mean they change it too. That's the only thing is that it shifts. But Russ mccameey, who runs it, he's just this weird old guy and he seems to have a bit of a bit of a sadism twist to him.

But the whole thing is you win money if you can complete the haunt, and no one ever has. But the more I looked into it, and the more I saw how I watched other people look into it, the more it became clear there is no haunted house. Yeah yeah, I mean it doesn't exist because they make you go through all of these like horrific torments to get to the haunted house, and nobody ever completes it because they're literally like dunking you in water. In the one of the documentaries, I mean he hired ex convicts and stuff.

He you know, people who you know would be a little bit scary, but like it's funny too, because there's so much weirdness to the mccameye Manor thing, Like it's so dark and evil. But do you know what it costs to go to mcami Manor. No, you have to donate one bag of dog food to the local shelter. Yeah, yeah, so you know guy likes dogs. But yeah, so apparently there isn't really a haunt. For a while, he had like this little building, but supposedly that wasn't the house. That was the build up, and then you would be taken to the house if you could get through it, and nobody ever does because it's literal pain and torture and they'll tap you.

That's the other claim is that they'll say, I'm sorry, we can't keep you in here because like you're not doing well enough physically, and you could be sitting there like I'm I'm ready, like let's go. Because they had a few people. They had one guy going there who was like a I think he was like a military guy or something and he just sat through it. Yeah, and they were like, no, actually you're not okay, okay. Yeah. So it's literally, I mean, there was literally never a haunted house. He moved it from California to like North Carolina or something, and there was never a haunted house.

It was all sensation. He was harming people to some extent, and there was a lot of claims about the way he treated women he dated, and a lot of other weird stuff, but overall, the big thing is that that haunt simply did not exist. Yeah, And I was not surprised to find that out because again I am a fan of the Carnie and Bally, who is the term for talking something up to get people to spend their money, but in this case, the money was clout. He wanted internet fame, and there were a lot of reports that use that fame to like meet women and stuff like that, which fame is very good for.

So I don't know, but like that's like the big one. Now. The thing that I've been fascinated by lately has been this idea of like haunted camp outs and stuff where. I've seen like ads and stuff. Yeah, got they got a deal too, Yeah, where you like camp overnight and they terrorize you with different things. Part of me thinks that sounds awesome. The other part of me thinks that sounds awesome for others. Only, So it sounds so awesome. Yeah, I remember how you reacted when you heard that raccoon getting all wild fighting the other raccoon.

So I don't know. I don't know if you actually handle it that well. I've survived mostly that's. I mean, as the bare minimum, but so, but I don't know. I've heard that those experiences are really intense and scary. Yeah, so I don't know. My question to you, Rach would be this year, as Haunts season approaches, would you be willing to go to one of the more extreme haunts and get a touch pass? Would you be willing to go all in or would you rather not? I've I see, I've really I've been thinking about it a long time, and by a long time, I mean the whole five years that I've been going to haunts, and I think this might have to be the year because I was like, I I think it'd be fun to be that scared, and I'm I'm decently easy to scare, especially with chain sauce.

Oh yeah, and I like, like, I like having fun. So that's like, that's one of the things you taught me about haunts, like straight out of the Gate, is you're only going to have as much fun as you let yourself have. Yeah, and so like, the more you suspend your disbelief and play like you're scared, the more scared you're going to be, and the more fun you're gonna have. And like it, you know, I don't know, I think I think it could be fun to be that scared. Gonna start looking because we haven't done Dayton's Screen Park.

I've always wanted to do that one, but they don't have online ticketing and I'm I'm I'm a man of a certain age. Now I want to pay extra to not wait in line and stuff. I'm the worst I've passed the Dayton screen So. It's off seventy. I think roote four. No, you're right, yeah? Was it four or yeah? Four or thirty five? It is one of those. I think it's four. It's it's four right next to the connection for thirty five. Nobody knows what we're talking. About, so I know, and that's what matters. But I mean, I've heard Dayton screen parks parks pretty good.

I missed. I think they don't do slash Moraine anymore, which they used to do with. The Splash Yeah. I don't think Splash Marine like technically exists any. In decade in the decade so they were just doing it at the old water park Slash Marine, which was just a wonderful name. So yeah, but anyway, Uh, so, well, we'll see. Maybe we can find you one nearby that is intense. I mean, at the very least, we could take you to face your fears and get you the touch pass. Yeah, maybe we'll head out to terror Town. It's been a few years.

I'd like to see how it's grown. It's a bit of a dry but it'd be worth it, it would be So well, we'll see how that, how that goes, and we'll report back. I was gonna say we will be reporting. Oh yeah, we'll report back. I'll bring an audio recorder so you can some people can hear you scream and cry or whatever. Why not, right, Yeah, good time. Halloween is coming right up and it's the best. So we're going to take a quick break and then we'll get to the thrilling conclusion of the houses October built right after this.

So our now group of friends is only four. They can't find they can't find Was it Jeff who got kidnapped? Yeah, they can't find Jeff at all, which of course is super easy to do in New Orleans. I don't know why they would have so much of a trouble finding him in such a big Halloween party. But no, they can't find him. They try calling him, but they like they can't get through him through to him, and then they get a voicemail just giving them a location to meet, right, So they pile into the RV and they just park and it's like this is where it kind of lines up with the ending of the twenty ten version a little bit, but it, you know, kind of digresses, is they they pull up to like a big parking area behind like a warehouse, and then a school bus just slowly comes up and parks right in front of them, so like they can can't get out, and when the bus parks, they the door's open and they like push out Jeff and he's he's bound and gagged, and they the group, the group of people that's kidnaped Jeff they're all wearing hoods, and they say like, you either give us Brandy or we're killing Jeff.

Isn't that it? No, no, no. They send them a text telling you'll leave the r V or they'll kill Jeff. That's what it is. In the school bus. So they're they're like, come out and you know, or will kill Jeff. So Zach does it, but the rest of the group doesn't want to, and then they're all dragged out. Yeah, like by all these Haunt actors just burst in and pulled them out, and then they're they're put in hoods and bound and then put in the school bus to be driven off. So U and Zach is the only one that's like keeping the faith.

He's like, this is part of the experience they're selling. Yeah, this is it, this is it. This is it, guys, No one else believes him. I think what I got myself confused with is that's when since they're all separated though, that's when they throw Brandy in the trunk of the car. Well, that's after they arrive. Oh okay, yeah, yeah, that happens because they're all on the bus together. Yeah. Yeah. When they get to the location, the men are all dragged out and Brandy is driven to another location. She's given a camera and told to like film everything going on around her.

So after that, all the group end up in like a haunt that seems like kind of a traditional haunt, except that it's deadly, I suppose, and it's it's got a lot of good scares, a lot of classic haunt scares, creepy little girl character that's really you know, messes with you. This is stuff that like definitely gives you a strong payoff. Yeah, they do. They do bring back the glo stick gag. Yeah, the globstick gag was really effective in that first kind of trial movie they did. Yeah, and they do they bring it back a little bit.

But yeah, like Zach is putting like a pitch black room, he gets like bludgeoned to death. Yeah, and then everybody's terrorized until it's kind of revealed that the whole plan is to burn them alive in coffins, which is mortifying. But meanwhile Brandy's being buried alive in a coffin. Yeah, and she gets to sit there and film knowing that she's being buried alive, which is very, very scary, And I think she even referenced that being buried alive is terrifying, which I mean, what a weird fear? Who's afraid of that? Yeah? That's odd. Yeah, what. I like the ending.

I like how it kind of tied the tension together because you've got the start of the movie where you know that shit hits the fan, but you don't know how, and so kind of like seeing how it all plays out. I really, I really really like that. And yeah, I feel that of of all of the found footage films that we've been watching this summer, I feel like this one does have one of the strongest reasons why they would keep filming, oh, even even when things like going sideways. Well, especially since then they're being forced to film once they Yeah, yeah that helps.

That helps a lot. You're being forced to film. But I think that it's definitely a strong, uh found footage film, and I think that being found footage definitely makes it a little bit scarier than it would have been if it would have been just like a straight narrative film. But I also think that this one blurs the line a little bit more between found footage and narrative film, just because it does have that that sequence at the beginning kind of showing you what happens. Okay, yeah, I mean technically it's still not a narrative film, I guess, yeah, But I mean having that like cold open kind of tease.

There's a filmmaking term for it. I'm trying to remember. It's called like in media stress in midas res, medias res. In medias res. Yeah, that's what Wikipedia says. Which in the middle of things, or in the start of things or in the yeah, in the middle, so which is yeah, showing like something from later at the beginning, which is a very common, you know, way to kind of get people excited about what's going to happen later on in a story. No, I think the characters sell it really well. I think the scares are really well done.

It's unlike next week's film Hell House LLC. This one is entirely about humans causing causing danger for humans. No ghosts, no supernatural, it's people, which I think keeps it makes it scarier. It does absolutely agree. Well, It's like I said, you know, during the bar scene, it's like, sometimes you have to remember that reality is much scarier than than the fantasy of horror movies or haunts or you know what have you. Yeah, humans are the scariest monsters. I mean, at least they're the ones you actually encounter, you know, day and day out. Yeah, I'd be much more afraid of what people would do than anything because people are real.

Yeah it helps, Yeah, that does help. So but I mean in the realm of found footage, because you know you've been going through this like found footage education. Where does it stand to you as a as a scary movie? Hmmm, I'm gonna say on a scale of one to ten, this was a seven. It's definitely definitely up there. I'd say that it definitely wasn't wasn't quite as scary as reck that one. I thin think like scared me more, but I definitely think that, Yeah, it's up there. I'm trying to think what it would But what else I could compare it to that we've that we've watched recently, you know, because I don't want to say like, oh, it's so much better than so much better than Cloverfield, but Cloverfield's one of my favorites.

So I mean, you don't have to if you don't think that, I don't know why you would have to. What about what about you I mean, I think it's. A solid it's solidly kind of in the middle. I would consider it, you know, memorable. It didn't scare the hell out of me, but I had a really fun time watching it. I thought overall it made sense. It didn't break too many logical rules, which I always appreciate in a found footage movie. So, I mean, I think it's worth watching if you like Halloween time horror movies.

Regardless of its found footage element. I agree, it'll definitely get you in the mood for Halloween. Yeah, without a doubt. So in speaking of our next show, we're going to be covering hell House LLC, a film that came out a year after they basically came out, like seven or eight months apart, but it's very similar except in concept. This one is about a group of people who are opening a brand new haunt in a real haunted location just outside of New York City. I love the title Hellhouse LLC. I think that's just a perfect way to represent it.

It's available to watch with ads on YouTube, two b TV, Pluto TV, the Roku, Channel Plex, all those places have it available to watch free with ads, or you can watch it on Shutter or AMC Plus with your subscription, so it's very easy to get a hold of and give it a watch if you've never seen it. It's a lot of fun. It's very different they have they're in a similar vein, but they're really not similar at all. Yeah, hell ELSLC has all kinds of mind trickery and haunting stuff that I think works pretty damn well.

And Hellous All See has like five sequels to Houses October Bilts one sequel. So there you go. So that's what we'll be covering next time. So is there anything else you got. Rach uh No, I'm just really getting I'm really getting excited for spooky season now. Like now I'm thinking, like, oh, we got to like get the decorations ready and go to. A haunt that closes at eight thirty pm, so you can make it. I'll just drink a ton of coffee. There you go. Well, thank you all so much for joining us on cutting deep into horror.

I hope you enjoyed our little conversation about haunts and the films about them. If you want to send us an email, you could do so at Weekly Spooky at gmail dot com. We would love to hear from you, whether it's about our opinions on the films, recommending a film, whatever you want at Weeklyspooky at gmail dot com. And if you love what we're doing here, please consider leaving us a five star rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It really helps other spookies discover the show. And while you're at ahead to Weeklyspooky dot com slash join to find out how you can support the show directly.

Get two bonus shows every month and over five years of creepypasta readings and audiobooks. That's Weeklyspooky dot Com slash Join. But now we'll leave you with our music by Ray Maddis and we'll see you next time with hell House LLC.