Connect with us

Editorials

I Have A New Favorite Haunt (And You Can Too!)

Published

on

October has made its way back to us, just as it always has around this time of year. You can tell it’s arrived when the local Dollar Stores you barely noticed before look as if they’ve been possessed by the spirit of Halloween itself — or whatever the commercial equivalent of that might be.

Enduring the hilariously bad music that fills every goddamn one of these stores despite having absolutely nothing to do with the holiday that summoned them is as much of a tradition as groaning at the cheesy posters that plaster their windows. You know, the ones that show goofy-looking people who are clearly only half-committed to pretending to be okay with the fact that they’re a full-grown adult dressed like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

We live in a world where the frightening majority of haunted attractions will suck for everyone over the age of six and that’s why finding a great one feels like you’ve just been given a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup in a neighborhood where everyone exclusively hands out Necco wafers.

Anyone can take a stranger’s money before dragging them into a dark room to make them scream. It takes more than a superficial understanding of what’s scary to make something special, and that’s exactly what the folks behind Hysteria at Connor’s Farm have achieved with their sprawling rural tribute to the best of the major holidays — that qualifier is there now that I’ve discovered Bolas de Fuego, in which the citizens of El Salvador celebrate volcanoes by hurling balls of fire into the sky.

Located just north of Danvers, Massachusetts, Connor’s Farm is another of those increasingly common “scream parks” where multiple Halloween-themed attractions accumulate in one place in order to reap maximum monetary gain from our shattered psyches.

Unlike the vast majority of the scream parks I’ve visited, Connor’s Farm offers more variety in their attractions. I got there at 9pm, leaving just enough time to conquer the flashlight maze and haunted farm. Skipping the zombie paintball was a tough decision, but it’s a sacrifice I had to make so that I could become who I was always meant to be.

For thirty glorious minutes, I was the indigenous man-fiend of the Connor’s corn maze.

The maze is meant to be more of a family affair, but I was far too busy hunting innocent maze-dwellers like a famished Velociraptor to care. It’s not lit so as to encourage you to navigate its strategically paved paths with the flashlight you’re given at its entrance. I shed those societal guidelines the moment I became the new me, eschewing lighted paths for darkness and a predator’s instinct.

Sure, I took a few cobs of corn to the face. Am I okay with that? Fuck yeah I am. Next question?

Also, the maze itself is themed, apparently, though I didn’t learn that until after the fact.

Now about that haunted farm. For starters, as haunt aficionados may already be aware, the average haunt tends to house roughly 15 minutes of scares. Connor’s Farm doubles that.

The last thing I’d want to do is go into specifics, as that would ruin the surprise. However, I will say that this haunt may have a set or two that will look familiar if you’ve seen any of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre flicks or that one good Silent Hill movie.

That’s not to say Connor’s Farm rips its sets right out of the movies, it’s more subtle than that.

Continuing that comparison to movies is the general quality of the sets, several of which I could easily picture recreated on a Hollywood sound stage. They’re aided by the genuine 17th century cemetery and swamp that border the farm, as well as the general feeling of unease that settles in if you’ve spent far too much of your life in loud, busy cities. There’s something sinister about corn stalks, like every one of them is hiding a secret. Corn secrets.

Growing up in Kansas City, MO, I was always a short drive from some of the best haunts in the country. I spent a not-insignificant portion of my childhood inside The Beast’s disorienting rooms and roaming the five-stories that make up the now 40 year-old behemoth that is The Edge of Hell.

I didn’t know it at the time, but these dazzling haunts were ruining me. The bar had been raised high enough that could only be reached by a dozen or so haunts scattered all across the country. So when I say I found a stellar haunted house in a sea of pumpkins and corn bathed in spooky lighting and Rob Zombie tunes, you know I’m saying that with a very serious look on my face.

Seriously, if you live anywhere near Danvers, Massachusetts, make the trip. It’ll be worth it.

You can learn more about Hysteria at Connor’s Farm by visiting its website.

YTSUBHUB2015

Gamer, writer, terrible dancer, longtime toast enthusiast. Legend has it Adam was born with a controller in one hand and the Kraken's left eye in the other. Legends are often wrong.

Editorials

‘The Company of Wolves’ at 40: One of the Most Underrated Werewolf Movies Ever Made

Published

on

There’s a compelling idea in anthropology that many ancient werewolf legends are derived from our species’ need to rationalize the more animalistic side of humanity – which is why lycanthropy has historically been used to explain everything from medieval serial killers to cannibalism. While I personally think there’s a lot more to unpack when it comes to tales of wolfmen and women, this is still a great example of why so many of our most enduring fairy tales involve big bad wolves.

And in the world of film, I think there’s only one feature that really nails the folkloric origins of werewolf stories, namely Neil Jordan’s 1984 fairy-tale horror classic, The Company of Wolves. Even four decades later, there’s no other genre flick that comes close to capturing the dreamlike ambience behind this strange anthology, and that’s why I’d like to take this opportunity to look back on one of the most underrated werewolf flicks ever made.

The Company of Wolves was originally a short story contained in the 1979 anthology The Bloody Chamber, a collection of deconstructed fairy-tales intended for mature readers penned by English author Angela Carter. With the book quickly becoming a hit as readers became fascinated with its subversion of classic folk stories and (then) controversial feminist undertones, it was soon transformed into a duology of BBC radio-dramas which adapted both The Company of Wolves and Carter’s reimagining of Puss-in-Boots.

These radio-dramas soon attracted the attention of then up-and-coming Irish filmmaker Neil Jordan, who decided to meet with Carter to discuss expanding on her stories and bringing them to life on the big screen. The duo soon realized that a single short story wasn’t enough material for a feature-length film, so they decided to adapt all of Carter’s werewolf tales into a single anthology.

With a completed script and a $2.3 million budget, Jordan decided to tackle the project like a hybrid between a theatrical period drama and a schlocky monster movie. Effects-heavy creature features were a hot commodity back in the ’80s, with films like The Howling and An American Werewolf in London proving that there was an audience for horrific lycanthrope transformations, so the director soon recruited a team that could turn this odd collection of feminist folk stories into something commercially viable.

Not exactly a great pick for family movie night.

Shooting would eventually take place almost entirely within the England-based Shepperton Studios, with notable production designer Anton Furst (who would later be known for his work on Tim Burton’s Batman films) helping to bring Jordan’s vision of a darkly romantic fairy-tale world to life. Appropriately enough, production would also involve a real pack of trained wolves (as well as a collection of dyed dogs), though extensive puppetry and animatronics were also used to flesh out the more gruesome parts of the flick.

After a grueling nine-week shoot where budgetary constraints led to corners being cut on props and costumes, The Company of Wolves was finally released in September of 1984 – just in time for spooky season. In the finished film, we follow the strange dreams of a sulky teenage girl named Rosaleen (first-time actress Sarah Patterson) as the film unravels an Arabian-Nights-inspired tapestry of both familiar and not-so-familiar stories about big bad wolves.

From sexually charged cautionary tales to parables about female empowerment, this surreal collection of deranged bedtime stories is much more than the creature feature that the marketing initially suggested. Like a more horror-oriented version of Jim Henson’s Labyrinth, The Company of Wolves exudes that same kind of hormonal teenage energy that transports us back to a time when the world was both scary and exciting in equal measure.

That’s not to say that this is an entirely pleasant experience, however, and I’m not just talking about the film’s horror elements. A big portion of the flick’s overtly sexual moments involve the then 13-year-old Patterson coming to grips with her blossoming womanhood and the dangers of predatory men (usually marked with a humorous unibrow), something that naturally makes for some intentionally uncomfortable viewing – especially in the year of our lord 2024.

Obviously, I don’t think it’s my place to dissect (or even judge) the effectiveness of the film’s commentaries on being a young woman, but even as a man I can still appreciate the thought and care that went into crafting this Jungian cocktail of serious themes in a genre-movie package that almost certainly went on to inspire future werewolf movies like Ginger Snaps.

Not the worst wedding I’ve been to.

That being said, what really keeps me coming back to the film is the absurd amount of memorable imagery. From a wedding party being taken over by canines to lonely treks through snowy groves, this is exactly the gloomy world I imagined as a child when reading Grimms’ Fairy Tales – and the dreamy atmosphere is only enhanced by the movie’s overall theatricality.

This also extends to the effects, as it’s easy to forgive decapitated dummy heads and ripped rubber skin when everything is happening in a magical hyper-reality, with a great example of this is being the scene where Grandma’s head unexpectedly explodes like a porcelain doll when it’s knocked off by a wolfman. That’s not to say that the effects are bad, as several of these transformations are downright grisly and likely influenced future lycanthrope effects like those in Underworld and even Trick ‘r Treat (even if the wolf-dogs here often look more cute than scary).

Of course, these aren’t the only things that The Company of Wolves has going for it, as the main trio of Patterson, Micha Bergese and the late, great Angela Lansbury exceptionally bring these exaggerated caricatures to life and the orchestral score is an absolute delight. I also really get a kick out of that bizarre ending implying that the dangers of adult life have literally come crashing into Rosaleen’s bedroom.

The Company of Wolves may not be a perfect film, suffering from some wonky pacing and the classic anthology problem where some stories are clearly much more enjoyable than others, but I’d argue that the flick’s iconic visuals and powerful thematic throughline more than make up for any minor flaws. And while we’ve seen bigger and better werewolf films since then, when it comes to adult-oriented fairy-tales, this is one psycho-sexual journey that is still worth revisiting 40 years down the line.

The Company of Wolves

Continue Reading