Once Upon a Nightmare
Zombie Joe’s Underground Theatre Group
4850 Lankershim Boulevard, North Hollywood
Fridays and Saturdays at 8:30 pm through March 6
Tickets $15, reserve by phone at (818) 202-4120
Once Upon a Nightmare is the seventh installment in ZJU’s ongoing Urban Death series of theatrical frights (past production titles include Valentine’s Massacre, Blood Transfusion, Tortured Abyss, and A New Darkness.) The evening’s 42 scenes of torture, murder, twisted sexual fantasy, childhood fears come to life, paranormal catastrophe, and monsters previously unknown to man are generally linked by the thematic implication of a foreboding dreamscape, although each is self-contained and culminates in its own individual payoff. Several moments of comic relief break up the tension, but even these are macabre and charismatically cringe-inducing (you may never want to wait in a rest room line again, just saying)
Oh and they lock the exit doors so you can’t escape.
(I’m going to piss in my pants. I just know it.)
Not fun nor creepy. Actually more camp than I expected and the horror scenes were contrived.
I expected more play with light, black outs, and creepy imagery. The actors are more than capable of the acting, but the scenes itself were less than horrifying… in fact, they seemed to rely on visual punchlines, inducing inappropriate laughter from the audience.
have to give it to the laist for his writing skills and talking this up. If anything, it did feel like a scary, but more along the lines of a low budget traveling county fair haunted house rather than a conceptually frightening show… expect nothing more than that.
Laist Review