It’s that time of year again. For SoCal Halloween fans, the annual haunt season begins in August. While outsiders from our creepy little community may ask if getting our spook on throughout the month of October isn’t enough, we respond: “Surely, you jest.” Extended throughout September? “You’re getting closer, brother.”
It’s hard to overstate the impact that MIDSUMMER SCREAM has had on the Golden State’s horror community. Not only have its organizers been providing horror fans with a mecca for all things genre-adjacent for thirteen years – except for two years when the modern plague had shuttered most large events – but there is so much more than a spooky marketplace with spectacular photo ops going on here.
Reliably, attendees are going to experience a dark zone with a half dozen mini haunted mazes; a vending area of around 225,000 square feet with several hundred vendors of masks, make-up supplies and demos, t-shirts, books, movies, toys and other goodies; several dozen celebrities; a film festival; presentations and installations from the major haunted theme parks and film studios; spooky entertainment and crafts for the little ones; and workshops and seminars for home haunters and wannabe pro haunters.
Additionally, this year’s featured guests and programming highlights included horror musicals such as Re-Animator: The Musical, Repo! The Genetic Opera and The Rocky Horror Picture Show; a 30th anniversary Scream panel; and John Carpenter’s debut graphic novel, Cathedral, and its accompanying soundtrack. However, what has coalesced amid all of the above is a community of creators and fans that keeps coming back and reinforcing the spirited fabric of the event.
Hence, after selectively curating my itinerary for the one day that I was able to attend the three-day event – and making many programming sacrifices in the process – I became aware of a theme. That is: the horror genre is a free spirit whose facets may be adapted to suit a dynamic range of purposes. Naturally, the horror lens has been used for such purposes throughout the arts for ages, but to experience fresh instances of this via a centralized event is invigorating.
My first stop was the Hall of Shadows, where I navigated several mazes of varying production levels, each with its own charms. One of my favorite veneers was that of Fear Farm, which featured a Victorian house facade with an enormous set of fangs coming down from the porch awning – and another set coming up from the ground. Outside the maze, guests tried their luck at a customized claw machine game filled with monstrous plushies.
Elsewhere in the shadowy realm, there was a multi-booth installation representing Universal Horror Unleashed, the year-round Las Vegas attraction. Within this setup, there were several booths – each attended by a different horrific character who engaged guests with satirical variations on travel agency sales pitches; plus, there were decorative veneers for photo ops.
The Hall of Shadows experiences also included the Haunted Car Wash, Eulogy Collective’s “Descent into Darkness” vignettes, Sid’s Twisted Cinema and the Decayed Brigade Slider Exhibition, among others.
After getting my haunt fix, I headed to the “Scoring Fear” seminar, where composer Chris Thomas discussed his methodology for scoring films, video games and haunted attractions. The session was entertaining and informative, and it featured several film and video game clips with alternating scores to illustrate the ways in which music can affect its visual accompaniments. Thomas also used the session to promote his upcoming Frankenstein: Resurrection musical, with book and lyrics by Justin Meyer.
Next, I headed to “Celebrating the Legacy of Horror.” Presented by Nicholas Barlow, the assistant curator at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, this presentation provided a preview of the museum’s upcoming horror exhibition, which will run Sept. 26 – July 25. The exhibit will be quite extensive, occupying 11,000 square feet and comprising six immersive galleries with varying themes. Those themes and designs include a gallery resembling a castle and a crypt, which will showcase gothic-themed artifacts; a gallery resembling a killer’s lair for a slasher-themed showcase; etc. The exhibition features 300 objects, including wardrobe, props and special effects pieces – all of which were lent to the museum by 60 private collectors and accumulated over the course of two years. Additionally, the event will include a family-friendly zombie exhibit. The museum will host special events, including film screenings of classic horror films throughout the exhibition’s run. They will also issue an accompanying book, called The Horror Show, in October, which will include essays about the importance of the genre and photos of the exhibition pieces. After the initial presentation, Bela Lugosi’s granddaughter, Lynne Lugosi Sparks, joined Barlow on stage to share stories about her grandfather and his legacy.
For my next experience, I checked out Final Girl: The Musical. This production, which debuted at the 2024 Hollywood Fringe Festival, took a remarkable look at the final girl trope. The production was written, performed and produced by Callie Ott, with Tyler Hansen directing, and Tony Gonzalez as the musical director. When I took my seat, I was expecting a humorous take on the trope with lots of inside baseball references, puns and an overall whimsical experience. And while the production did include those things to varying extents, I did not expect the production to have gravity. Ott’s one-woman show utilized the trope as a lens through which to address toxic relationship trauma. The show consists of two characters: a woman who is being harassed by her latest psychopathic ex-boyfriend and an emotionally needy 911 dispatch operator, who just wants a friend to talk to. Through monologue, soliloquy numbers, and dialogue between the two characters, the show demonstrates how friendship and support can help break a cycle of abuse. It was quite brilliant.
After that, I attended the preview of another musical theater show, called Monsterville. Produced by puppeteer Jeff Heimbuch and musician LVCRFT, the production is sort of a spooky-themed Sesame Street with one puppet and a half dozen or so zany characters. The central puppet character, Barry Under Your Bed, offers advice and consolation to his fellow Monsterville community members, which include a werewolf, a zombie, a possessed girl, a slasher, etc. He joins their support group because he has trouble figuring out why he doesn’t feel like he, himself, fits in. At one point, he overhears the town mayor selling the town to a slimy developer, who intends to turn Monsterville into a freakshow for tourists, and – by golly – the townsfolk may be monsters, but they’re not freaks to be exploited! Through silly yet touching moments and some very catchy tunes, the monsters ultimately rally in defense of their beloved community; showing the world that while they are different, they still have value and are deserving of dignity, individually and collectively. The show is still in development, but the preview demonstrated a great use of the genre in the service of universal values in the form of family-friendly musical theater. Additionally, after the final number, which saw the cast parading through the aisles and much of the audience singing along, a couple of the production’s cosplaying friends were invited onstage, where one of them got down on his knee and proposed marriage. From the kiss and embrace he received, it seemed like his proposal was accepted. And all of the monsters approved of this union.
For my final bit of programming, I attended “Working the Fright Shift: Live Podcast with Guest David Bertolino.” This session consisted of host writer, producer and director Ted Dougherty interviewing the creator of Spookyworld, the world’s first horror theme park, which launched in Berlin, Massachusetts, in 1991, and which is now located in Litchfield, New Hampshire. Admittedly, I only caught the second half of this presentation due to the overlapping programming times, but what I heard of Bertolino’s story and anecdotes charmed me to the point of lining up immediately after the session and shelling out the cash to buy his new book, Behind the Screams at Spookyworld: The Secrets, Scares, and Stars of America’s Original Horror Theme Park, which includes forwards by Alice Cooper and Linda Blair.
After that, I headed to the showfloor to immerse myself in the hordes of cosplayers and horror fans and to explore the vendor booths. Here, I saw a lot of familiar faces. There was the gang over at Diabolik LLC., who were showcasing their Professor Dario Bava books and merch as well as some new cheeky beach towels. There was the Force of Nature production team, which had a mini-haunted theater production as well as its usual roving characters who, per tradition, interacted with the attendees throughout the convention center in a sort of roleplaying / scavenger hunt capacity, ultimately directing them back to their booth / mini theater space. At some point, I walked past one of the workshop zones on the show floor, where I witnessed the end of a class on how to craft a flickering light fixture. I visited the good folks at Peepshow Menagerie, who are currently preparing for their upcoming horror-themed shows, including a David Lynch-themed tribute and a collaboration with Richard and Anastasia Elfman, featuring a triple feature of Frankenhooker, Bloody Bridget and Forbidden Zone at the Frida Cinema, in Santa Ana, CA. I also stopped to chat with Naomi Grossman (American Horror Story), who is one of the instructors at the horror-themed Killer Fitness center in Los Angeles. Grossman is currently developing a zombie-themed scuba diving experience at Concierge Scuba.
My account barely scratches the surface of Midsummer Scream’s programming and experiences, but even so, it was a highly rewarding experience. The post-event stats reveal the ongoing success of the convention, as this was the fourth instance of it having sold out of all available tickets with a record attendance of 50,000. And while the Midsummer Scream team will return to the Long Beach Convention center, once again, for the Season’s Screamings holiday horror event, the flagship event will relocate next year to the Anaheim Convention Center, which has over 800,000 square feet of exhibit space, a 7,500-seat stadium-style arena, and whose entire plaza area – with additional buildings and showcase areas – occupies nearly two million square feet. Suffice it to say, the event continues to be a smashing success, and the bullhorn effect that Midsummer Scream has for the artists, artisans, producers and performers of the SoCal horror community keeps getting louder.
