Thursday 31 October 2013

Dunbar Haunted House and Kitty "Frights" Halloween Show

Well something tragic has happened to Halloween here in Vancouver, it was announced that this year would be the last year of the Dunbar Haunted House. Having conquered six haunted houses already this year I took my friends up on an offer to go to it this past Sunday. The theme for this year was horror throughout the ages (they billed it as "The Terror of History" and it did not disappoint. The rooms were packed full of props, animatronics, mannequins and actors displaying everything from the horrors of Egypt up to Asylums and slashers. While my insider knowledge allowed me to predict where most of the actors were I was still surprised by some of them and had a sense of impending doom & panic the entire time. Here are the few photos we were able to take, they are all outside since of course there's no photography inside the house.

Prior to Topher learning the rites of succession in the kingdom.

But Anubis, you were always my favourite Egyptian deity!

Enough to make any parent proud.

Is that a canon or are you just happy to see me?

Topher is reunited with his mummy.
Now after we went to the haunted house we decided to attend the Kitty Nights Halloween burlesque show at The Biltmore. As you recall the last burlesque show I went to, The Rock Apocalypse, was rather short on burlesque (to be fair it wasn't supposed to be entirely a burlesque show). Well Kitty Nights didn't disappoint, while it wasn't big on the blood the dancing itself was the best burlesque dancing I've seen so far in Vancouver. The routines had a lot of thought put into them and were clearly well rehearsed. There was also a costume contest, but due to lack of preparedness I was not in costume so I could not enter. The winners of the contest were awesome though. The pair were dressed as Edina and Patsy from Absolutely Fabulous, and none of my friends understood their costumes.... The staff at the bar were all dressed as Scooby Doo characters and the host of the show was great in his Eddie costume from Rocky Horror. That show was definitely worth the low price of $7 we each had to pay to get in.

And with that I have to start prepping my costume for this year, which you will see photos of very very soon.

Wednesday 30 October 2013

Treacherous Tea Time in Fort Langley

Seriously creepy teapot.

Well one of the seasonal activities I did this year was get a group of girlfriends to go to Treacherous Tea Time at The Little White House & Co. in Fort Langley. For those who don't know where Fort Langley is, it's a picturesque small town within the township of Langley that also has a national historic site where you can learn about the history of the fort and the fur trading industry.

The town even has it's own graveyard.
Now the building that the Treacherous Tea Time was in was apparently the most haunted building in Fort Langley. And I'm sure you're all wondering what exactly a Treacherous Tea Time is, well it's a Victorian tea with Halloween themed desserts and a reading of both tarot cards and tea leaves. Our group's reader used a bird themed deck and two of the cards which I got were a peacock and a vulture. I thought those were very fitting for me. I totally forgot to take pictures of our lovely food until we were almost already done so here is the sole photo I have to commemorate our creepy comestibles.
To fit in with our activities our group did our best to dress completely in shades of black and grey, I was completely inspired for this idea by the first episode of American Horror Story: Coven. We were even asked several times if we were some sort of club.
Seriously want to get a variety of black dresses now.
And here is a look at the Salon.

We also took some time to explore the town which felt like it was a movie set. In fact the last time I was there I was convinced that it was where they had filmed Trick 'r Treat. I was mistaken. But here is a look at some highlights of the town for those who haven't had a chance to be there.





Tuesday 22 October 2013

The Frightening Friday: Netherworld Collectibles and Fright Nights


So back on the 11th my friend Christopher Graham (he took all the photos) and I decided to go to the opening night of Fright Nights and since we were going to be in the area we went to Netherworld Collectibles beforehand. As soon as we got into the store we were greeted by an adorable little fellow named Ladder.
I really like snakes.

I mean REALLY like snakes.
Ladder was on loan from http://www.snakeinthegrass.org/ a local snake rescue. After a little quality reptilian time we got to looking around the store which had a great assortment of movie props, posters, books, comics, movies, board games, action figures and more. Things that caught my eye were the Forbidden Planet poster and the wearable Right Hand of Doom (from Hellboy if you're not in the know).

I fell in love at Netherworld Collectibles.

Now I figured since I was in the commercial, I might as well go to Fright Nights. Speaking of Fright Nights here is the 60 second version of the commercial:



Thursday 17 October 2013

Fright Nights Commercial Creepiness

Who says you can't make money doing what you love? Well I certainly don't. Back in September I had an awesome opportunity to be on set doing what I do best, being creepy. I was working on this year's commercial for Fright Nights at the local amusement park called Playland. The commercial is now airing on some Canadian tv channels, so I suppose this is the first time folks will get to see me on their television sets in character.

Here is the 30 second version of the finished product:

It was my second night shoot and resulted in spending over 40 hours being awake with about 1.5 hours sleep, turns out I can function rather well without much sleep. The set was one of the actual haunted houses at the park as well as some outdoor parts that were more on the sinister side.

There was also a blow torch on set to "distress" some of the set dec brought in for the production. I had to keep telling myself "fire bad". Of course I ended up spending quite some time in the make-up chair and loved every minute of it.
They didn't even get my good side.
I was so happy with how I looked I even took a few selfies to show all boys just how pretty I was.
Wanna date?
Of course I wasn't the only one to get all dolled up for the camera.
He's a vegan, because there's no cruelty to animals in cannibalism.
Then it was time to get my tree witch on for my second character in the commercial. Tree Witch twerks ensued, but this was before a certain celebrity made it uncool.
Forget #SplitsOnTrees now it's #SplitsOnMees
Then of course the evening ended with clowns, because no one likes clowns except for their fear inducing qualities. My parents were convinced I was one of the clowns in the commercial. They were wrong.
Ya want a balloon animal?
As more photos from behind the scenes come I'll be adding them to this post, so look forward to more!

Wednesday 9 October 2013

VIFF 2013: A Field In England


Five men, a hole and some hallucinogens. The latest creation from the mind of Ben Wheatley, known best for Kill List and Sightseers, A Field In England is a period piece with very authentic costume design from what I could tell. The men actually looked grubby, as if they didn't own very much clothing in the first place. The movie grabs your interest from the very beginning with a battle leading to violence and gore within the first ten minutes.
"This is so much fun!" Yes, following what appears to be a possessed person on a leash is always fun!
The film truly illustrates the things people will do for beer. The plot starts with men abandoning the battle to escape to a tavern. Except for our protagonist, the rest of the motley crew are very crude men especially in their rude form of humour. That just adds to the feeling of accuracy the film has. The plot can be rather confusing at points, with alchemists and buried treasure and what not.
Please, please, just one pint good sir.
A few times a rather artsy technique was used where the actors held still as if they were the people in a painting. Just when I thought that that looked cool things really got into the artsy trippy realm. There was actually a disclaimer before the movie telling people to not watch the film if they might suffer from seizures. Good thing they had that disclaimer, it really did get that trippy. For a while I just thought the movie was weird for the sake of being weird, but then I remembered, most of the characters are high on a certain type of a hallucinogen that you might find in a field in england. If you enjoy strange movies, definitely check this out, less confusing than Eraserhead and with some great comedic moments.

Monday 7 October 2013

VIFF 2013: Willow Creek


Now here is the case of me buying a ticket for something that I really had no idea what it was about except for one word "Sasquatch" and yes I call it Sasquatch not Bigfoot because I'm Canadian yo. When I sat down in the theatre I had forgotten that it was a found footage film which was an unpleasant surprise until the film actually started, but I'll get into that later. Even the director's identity eluded me, Bobcat Goldthwait, I wasn't sure if he was who I thought he was or not. Turned out it was.
This is the role I know him the best for, I feel less bad about my lack of certainty.
Turned out Willow Creek focussed on a couple first exploring the Bigfoot-centric community of Willow Creek, then heading to the sight of the Patterson-Gimli "Bigfoot" footage. Of course they ignore the warnings of locals and as the classic adage goes, bad things happen to good people, well, stupid good people. The chemistry between the two leads felt honest and I was happy to see my second favourite officer from Death Valley get some more work. As well in the beginning of the film it seemed that they were actually using real locals to play the locals rather than actors who may have judged the characters. For instance did you know that there are more songs about Bigfoot than just the one by Tenacious D? I certainly didn't.
I used to be worried about aliens when camping, now I have to worry about Sasquatch too?
Watching this film felt very reminiscent of The Blair Witch Project, except this time I actually cared about what happened to the characters. They took the original found footage movie, learned from it and improved on it. In his introduction Bobcat was very proud of the limited amount of edits they used in the film and when it gets to the tent sequence it pays off. The tension in that scene was enough to put even a horror hound such as myself on the edge of my seat. I can honestly say that this is one of the best found footage movies I've seen, so if it comes to your town I would highly recommend getting yourself a ticket.

Wednesday 2 October 2013

The World's End: Cornetto Completion


Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg & Nick Frost, can you make a better combination then that. Yes, by adding Martin Freeman, not to be confused with Morgan Freeman, although that would be pretty epic. For those who don't know what the "cornetto trilogy" is, it is a trio of Edgar Wright's take on three movie genres, Horror (Shaun of the Dead), Action (Hot Fuzz) and Sci-fi (The World's End), all starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. This trilogy has propelled them all to international fame so read on to learn how it ended.