Alone in the Dark

The conceptual forebear to the Resident Evil series. Alone in the Dark started you off as Edward Carnby, an investigator in a house full of zombies and monsters.

While the graphics are seriously dated now, the 3D gameplay and polygonal environments back then made for an awesome experience. Combine that with a forgivably clunky movement interface, and you end up getting into some pretty intense knee-jerk moments.

The 7th Guest

This game was the quintessential example of how to make a FMV video game. Admittedly, it was mostly puzzles and badly acted cutscenes, but the game did provide for a pretty creepy atmosphere when navigating through the mansion.

7th Guest was followed up some years later with The 11th Hour, which sadly, suffered some pretty horrible bugs, and was overall just as badly acted. One unintentionally funny part in 7th Guest that comes to mind is the magician looking for ‘MAGIC!’.

Thief Gold (small box version)

Just about every game in this series serves up some pretty creepy and atmospheric experiences. If it isn’t zombies and ghosts you’re running away from, just trying to sneak around castle guards can be severely sweat-inducing, especially once they find you!

Honorable mentions are The Haunted Cathedral in The Dark Project and Shalebridge Cradle in Thief: Deadly Shadows.

Clive Barker’s Undying

So, here’s an idea, what if you get Clive Barker to put together a story and put some of his bizarro visions into a video game? Undying was the result, and unlike a ton of examples where Hollywood types interact with the video game industry, this was not a big fail. In fact, it was probably one of the most atmospheric and downright creepy games to have graced a pc monitor in a long time.

The basic breakdown is that this was a mansion crawler, set on an island, with a mansion. The denizens of the mansion are a family of occult practicing psycho siblings, and it’s your job to stop them from unleashing ’some great evil’.

System Shock 2

In space, no one can hear you scream! System Shock 2 was put together by Irrational Games, the same studio that was later bought up by 2K Games and then more recently pumped out a little old game called Bioshock. This game is filled with an overwhelmingly delicious amount of atmosphere.

If the zombies don’t see you they just walk about their business moaning random things. Throughout the game you pick up digital notes and recordings of crew members who have ’succumbed’ to the entity known as Shodan. This game really pulls you in, this description doesn’t really give it justice, just get it.

So, that’s the list. What are you waiting for? Go try them out!

At the very least you’ll actually get to hear one or two lines from the movie uttered, everything else will be a garbled snowball of aural chaos.  If you’re really that interested in the story you should probably rent it, otherwise the main point of the experience is to see the performers and their ‘interpretations’ of the cult flick.

I had the chance to attend one of these screenings at the NuArt Theater in Los Angeles recently.  It was definitely an experience to be remembered, and for some attendants to attempt to forget.  While I’ll try not to get into the minutia of the show (and ruin things for everyone), I will say that initially I was apprehensive, not knowing what sort of extreme on-the-edge antics I would witness.

From the start of the film to the end, there was a designated crew of walk-by aisle screamers that would randomly blurt out lines from the film.  These same crew members would also provide their own on-the-spot q&a sessions between themselves and the film.  Imagine the worst back-row film viewer that you can think of, and multiply that by 100.  I had flashbacks to my mother screaming, “Run you stupid!  Run!” at the television while watching a horror movie as a kid.  Although, she was like Little League compared to this rough and ready crew of Majors.

Throughout the screening each film character had his or her own performer shadowing their actions on the stage.  Of course, the big attention-getter was the performer playing the role of Dr. Frank-N-Furter.  In keeping true to form, he was fully decked out in the same, or similar, garb as Tim Curry in the film.  He didn’t disappoint, but then again neither did any of the other cast members, they all came through with flying bizarro acid-stained colors.

After all was said and done, and danced, and sung, it’s definitely something everybody should check out at least once in their lives.

I looked around for screening places both LA and OC, here’s the list:

• Sins of the Flesh (Nuart Theater in Los Angeles)
• Midnight Insanity (Warner Grand in San Pedro)
• Maverick Theater in Fullerton
• Rocky OC (Yost Theater in Santa Ana)

Take a ghostly Coast tour of Orange County’s most haunted places… if you dare.- This was a cool article, published in 2008, on various haunts in Los Angeles.

According to the Horrorfest website, “Horrorfest is an annual celebration of the horror genre and showcase eight films that run the spectrum of horror to thriller to gore to supernatural. This unique film festival is the first of its kind on a national level. After Dark Films annually releases these films in a festival called “8 Films To Die For” in every major city in the United States.”  You can read more on their FAQ here.

Films featured will be:

• Dread
• Hidden
• Kill Theory
• Lake Mungo
• The Final
• The Graves
• The Reeds
• Zombies of Mass Destruction

I don’t remember how I found this site, but it offers a very thorough list of haunt spots throughout Los Angeles. It seems like they’re not that interested in spreading it beyond Los Angeles though, who knows maybe they will in the future.

CreepyLA’s Map of Haunted Los Angeles

• New images in nearly all sections, mainly Los Angeles, Orange County, and San Diego.
• Each story has its proper book reference, and it’s linked to Amazon in case you’re curious enough.
• Clicking on the link for ‘Location’ should take you to a google map view of it.

I’ve still got plenty of stories to upload, keep an eye out.

-David

The spirit of actor/director/writer Orson Welles can be seen at this swank Los Angeles restaurant. Known to frequent this spot in life, he comes back in death as if nothing happened.

Mr Welles’ figure can be seen wearing a black cape, smoking cigars and drinking his favorite brandy. Customers as well as waiters can atest to seeing puffs of smoke and smelling the scent of brandy coming from Mr. Welles’ favorite table in the restaurant.