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The Tinder Box (This Fantastic Week!)

Posted on 29 October 2009

Tags: Battlestar Galactica, Halloween, haunted houses, The Tinder Box

Back again for another highly opinionated — some might even say downright cranky — look at the week in fantasy. You’ve been warned!

THIS IS HALLOWEEN, THIS IS HALLOWEEN!

If it wasn’t clear from all our Halloween coverage this week, I’m a real fan of the holiday.

And if it wasn’t clear from my article on how to make the “perfect” haunted house, I’m a real fan of haunted houses too.

In fact, I’m reminded of the very confounding dilemma I had every year as a kid on Halloween: do I want to create and control an elaborate Halloween display for the trick-or-treaters who come to my house, or do I want to go out trick-or-treating myself?

Experience the joy and satisfaction of creativity and self-expression — or eat candy?

It’s a dilemma I still find myself wrestling with today as editor of TheTorchOnline.com: Do I want to interview Lucy Lawless or Craig Horner or Anthony Stewart Head or Lynda Carter? Or do I want to eat candy?

The ideal solution? Eat candy while editing TheTorchOnline.com! Which I do.

THE WORST HALLOWEEN CANDY

Speaking of Halloween candy, does anyone really like Kit Kats? Or Heath bars?

Here are my choices for the very worst Halloween candy:

Raisins. Seriously? What do you not understand about the word “candy”?!
Wax anything.
Candy corn. Tastes as waxy as wax lips.
Dum dums. Honestly, how cheap can you be?
Chick-o-sticks. I don’t think anyone ever ate these. I think they’re putting us on.
Milk Duds. Impossible to eat without losing a filling.
Dots. See “Milk Duds.” Plus, they have no taste.

All this said, I’ve noticed my candy tastes are changing over the years. I used to say, “Don’t waste my valuable candy real estate on nuts or peanuts!” But the older I get, the more I realize that, hey, peanuts are pretty good in chocolate.

Which doesn’t mean that the inside of a Reese’s Peanut Butter cup doesn’t still taste like dog vomit to me.

THE “FEMINIZATION” OF SCI-FI, OH, MY!

Earlier this week, I linked to a horse’s ass upset that science fiction, which he terms “a very male form of fiction,” is becoming more inclusive:

There is an undeclared war on real science fiction on TV and in movies. The former Sci-Fi channel, now “Syfy,” is a good example of what has been happening to science fiction on television. In 1998 Bonnie Hammer took over the Sci-Fi channel and declared that “more female viewers were needed.” Over the next several years, the Sci-Fi channel became increasingly feminized, losing many of its traditional male viewers in an attempt to go after female viewers….The re-imagined re-delusioned Battlestar Galactica is a good example….While the original series had its problems, it was standard science fiction with men doing and accomplishing things. The new series instead had a lot of relationship drama and whiny men who were generally unable to find their way out of a wet paper bag.

Later, he goes on:

This season three gay characters will be added to various shows on “Syfy”, one of which will be part of a “communal marriage” with “heterosexual and homosexual couplings.” This will mean less programming where men actually get things done and more relationship drama, which will inevitably drive even more men away from the channel.

For the record, I still think this might be parody. But if it’s not, it goes way beyond sci-fi. It’s part of this infuriatingly stupid attitude that the world has somehow been “invaded” by women, racial minorities, and gay people, to the exclusion of white men.

News flash: women, racial minorities, and gays have always existed. They just weren’t allowed to fully participate in society until very recently. White men did control everything, but not because they were doing it better: it’s because they wrote the rules and refused to play fair!

Affirmative action, indeed.

But the greater picture is that full participation by minorities isn’t just good for minorities; it’s good for everyone! At the very, very least, it makes for better, more interesting, more realistic, much more sophisticated science fiction!

(Incidentally, anyone who thinks that the horrible, hackneyed Star Wars knock-off that was the original Battlestar Galactica is better than the sublime remake … well, wow, I’m not sure how to respond to that. That person is either (a) completely blinded by irrational prejudice, or (b) experiencing a different reality than the one I’m living in.)

The thing is, I hate to pit “white men” against “everyone else,” even rhetorically, because I absolutely believe that most white men can see that all these social changes are far and away a good thing. It’s only idiots like Glenn Beck and this writer who think otherwise.

And they sense that their sad, tired way of looking at the world is quickly ebbing away, which is why they’re so angry.

THE TINDER BOX TAKES ON THE IDIOT BOX

This upcoming week is all about V, the remake of the 80s mini-series and series. I’ve seen the pilot, and I’ll have a full review on Monday. But suffice to say: I loved it.

And we also have Sam and Dean getting stuck in TV hell in “Changing Channels,” this Thursday’s episode of Supernatural, in which the Trickster sends them into an alternate universe where they’re characters in various TV shows. This show does like their “gimmick” episodes, doesn’t it? But you know what? For the most part, they work.

THE TINDER BOX AT THE BOX OFFICE

Opening in theaters this weekend, perfectly appropriate for Halloween weekend, is The House of the Devil, which is getting great reviews. Here’s the trailer:

Still playing in theaters is The Vampire’s Assistant and Where the Wild Things Are, both of which I hated (I couldn’t help but notice that Wild Things’ box office is down 56% from last week, as word-of-mouth gets out about how self-indulgent and over-rated it is).

Well, this week’s flame has sputtered out, but join me again next week when I promise I won’t be nearly so cranky.

Oh, who am I kidding?!

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How to Make the Perfect Haunted House

Posted on 23 October 2009

Tags: Halloween, haunted houses, theme parks

It’s the weekend before Halloween, so it might be too late to put together a haunted house of your own this year.

But if you’re like us, you’ll probably be attending at least one haunted house. And afterward, you’ll ask yourself and your friends: was it any good?

In other words, it’s never to late to ask: what makes a perfect haunted house?

Give it a Theme

The single biggest mistake that most haunted houses make is merely being a mish-mash of unrelated rooms and monsters. But human beings experience and make sense of the world by looking for patterns and designs. Your haunted house will make more sense, and have much of an impact, if you hang everything on some kind of theme.

In short, a haunted house is — or should be — more than the sum total of its disembodied parts.

And for the record? “Haunted Mansion” is just about the most boring, over-used theme imaginable — followed closely by “Insane Insane Asylum”, “Mad Scientists Lab,” and “Haunted Graveyard.”

Much better? “Attack of the Giant Spiders,” “Honey, I Shrunk the Haunted House,” or “Children of the Cornfield Maze.” And what haunted house enthusiast wouldn’t want to dare “The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb,” about adventurers who get stuck in an Egyptian pyramid?

Think of it as a Story

It’s not enough for a haunted house to have a theme. A haunted house should also have a structure: a “beginning,” a “middle,” and a satisfying “end.”

In other words, a fantastic haunted house tells a story with a set-up, which introduces the theme; rising tension as the visitors probe deeper and deeper into your set-up and confront increasingly impressive scenarios; and some sort of satisfying conclusion that sort of wraps it all up and maybe leaves people with something to think about.

For example, if you’re “theme” is “The Walk of the Executed,” you’ll probably be telling the story of someone — i.e. your visitor — who is condemned to die. The first part of the haunted house might include a ghostly judge in a courtroom who makes the sentence from his or her worm-infested bench. Next up, the visitor is sent to “prison” — where other condemned and howling prisoners wait to die. After that, there’s certainly room for an unorthodox “last meal” and a place where the evil priest can ask for “last words.” The culmination, of course, is the execution itself, where the visitor is to be put to death — until, perhaps, a last-second reprieve.

(Incidentally? There’s a reason why fireworks shows save their best explosions for last. Your last room should be the most spectacular too.)

Anyway, having your haunted house tell an actual story involves the visitor in two ways: first, by tying the individual rooms together, they’ll make more sense and have more impact. But second, since (unlike a movie) a haunted house is a “live” walk-through event, your visitors can literally be a character in the action.

The more you involve them in the story, the bigger the impact.

More is More (But Less is More Too)

It’s a haunted house — hey, blood and bodies are de rigueur! But it’s important to have “quieter” moments even in haunted houses — and not just in the hallways between the rooms.

On first glance, this might seem a little like wasted space, but it’s not. Every good storyteller knows that, while the overall structure means gradually rising tension, there are moments when the tension falls again. Why? If everything is the same level of intensity, soon everything starts to feel indistinguishable – and boring.

In short, varying the intensity will keep your guests off-guard and ironically end up making them more scared.

Play With Expectations

Anyone older than the age of six has already been to about 50,000 haunted houses in their life — and we’ve seen 50,000 more monster movies. So people come to each new haunted house with certain … expectations. But this is not a bad thing! In fact, it’s a perfect opportunity to screw with your visitors’ minds.

Example: as they enter a room, the coffin slowly begins to open. Naturally, everyone’s attention will be focused there, expecting the rising of a vampire.

Which means, of course, that this is the perfect moment to hit them with a giant spider from above!

It’s More Important to be Fun Than it is to be Scary

Who exactly is a haunted house ultimately made for? Hint: it’s not the creators.

Yes, it’s the visitors. After all, they’re the ones paying to get in, right? And if nothing else, you want good word-of-mouth. Always remember this.

Everyone comes to a haunted house to be scared, but no one comes to be splashed with water or hit in the face or lose their balance or get poked by a loose nail.

It’s also possible for a haunted house to be too scary, or at least too unpleasant. The gore can be a little too realistic, and the monsters can be too in-your-face.

If it’s a choice between between “cool” or “scary,” we say go with cool every time.

Pictures are from Spider Rider’s Halloween.