It's a dead man's party: The A.V. Club's Halloween events guide
Dance Of The Dead: Zombies will ruin your prom quicker than a broken condom
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Halloween has long belonged to the dead. No, not that Dead, despite what the hippies at Halloween night’s Widespread Panic concert might tell you. We mean ghosts, spirits, mummies, animated skeletons, Frankenstein's monster, or any other ghoulish entity that's found a (non-religious) path to life after death. But looking at the many Halloween events lined up in Austin this year, the walking dead seem to have the city backed into the corner of a pub basement. Be they the reanimated corpses of the famous or obscure, mocked or revered, this year's All Hallows Eve is a dead man's (or woman's) party. You could probably ask for more, but why squabble?
Night Of The Living DeadZombies. Why'd it have to be zombies?
The prophecies of George A. Romero, Lucio Fulci, and Edgar Wright have finally been realized: The zombie apocalypse is now. The flesh-eating, lumbering masses have claimed genre film festivals and weekend box-office championships, and now they're setting their drooping, reanimated sights on our beloved holidays. Patient Zero of this zombie outbreak is most definitely the Alamo Drafthouse, and it continues to revel in its culpability this year: The Alamo Lake Creek kicks off its third-annual Dismember The Alamo zombie film festival with the "Valley Girls vs. irradiated dead" classic, Night Of The Comet, while mad movie scientists Owen Egerton and Zack Carlson try to reanimate the oft-overlooked Halloween 4: The Return Of Michael Myers by promising both “bobbing for beer” and that someone will actually die in the theater at their Halloween Eve Extravaganza. On the day proper, co-owners Tim and Karrie League gleefully oversee a screening of Dance Of The Dead (as well as a Graham Reynolds-assisted presentation of the classic, non-zombie Lon Chaney Phantom Of The Opera) at the Alamo Lamar before adjourning to a recreation of the film's zombie-infested prom at The Highball.
Just like the living dead, the "zombie dance party" trend is seemingly unstoppable. Perhaps it's best to just make like Barbara in Night Of The Living Dead (screening with a P. Kellach Waddle-composed "music and a movie" program at Dismember The Alamo, by the way) and just zone out, stand by the window, and get sucked in. California DJ Mochipet recently earned his torn-and-distressed stripes with a glitchy remix of "Thriller," which you can expect to hear during his set at the Zombie Earth Party at The Parish. Considering much of the garage, surf, and R&B DJ Sue spins predates Romero's reinvention of the zombie archetype, a zombified take on her monthly Fuzz Club rave-ups seem like an odd fit. But consider this as well: What are Zombie Fuzz Club-featured bands The Thunderchiefs and The Texreys if not the reanimated corpses of the bands contained within DJ Sue's platters? Not even musical theater is safe from the dead this time of year, and while the milky-eyed terrors of Evil Dead: The Musical aren't "zombies" per se, they're still dispatched in the same messy, fake-blood-splattering ways. Another similarity: The damn things just won't go away.
Bill HicksWhen there's no more room in hell, the famous will walk the Earth
The dirt is still fresh on Patrick Swayze's grave, making it even easier for stand-up Nick Mullen to exhume the body and make it do the dance from the Saturday Night Live Chippendales sketch—or at least drop a nugget like "Nobody puts baby in a coffin." Mullen is one several comedians irreverently mocking the newly and long-deceased as part of the Beerland's annual Comedy Séance, where the likes of Bill Hicks, John Belushi, and, uh, Albert Einstein will live onstage once more under the watchful eye of host and emcee Satan. The names being batted around for the Hideout Theatre's Celebrity Maestro haven't included too many dead people, though there remains the possibility that Christopher Walken or Sarah Palin may die during the show's randomly assigned improv scenes and games.
Meanwhile, Austinites revive dead musicians and dead bands alike, from the not-quite Zeppelin of Whole Lotta Led (playing Mixx with Black Sabbath tribute War Pigs and the Judas Priest-aping Sad Wings Of Destiny) the faux old-fashioned lover boys of Magnifico, who guarantee to blow your mind on both a boat and land on Halloween weekend. And while Lux Interior writhes and grunts away somewhere in the great beyond, his spirit will be channeled by Cramps tribute The Belgraves at Emo's Ghoul's Night Out. He can't go "buzz, buzz, buzz" himself any more, so someone—preferably a living someone—ought to do it for him, right?
The Curse Of The Crying WomanThe Day Of The Dead that wasn't directed by Romero
Building on the Catholic holiday of All Saints' Day, the Mexican-originated Día de los Muertos is a celebration of the dead that doesn't invoke fear or hit singles you can catch on KLBJ any day of the week. In American public schools, that often translates to mind-numbing experiments in sugar-skull-sculpting and half-hearted altar-making, but the real thing is much cooler and more fun than that. (But still reverent.) To that effect, Central Market Lamar hosts the giant puppet parade of Las Monas De San Antonio along with music from the Austin Samba School and DJ Manolo Black, and "indie en Español" quintet Maneja Beto headlines Lucy The Poodle's Noches De Los Muertos. Supported by the supernaturally attuned psychedelia of The Hi Tones and Planet Rye Co, the show’s cadre of kids in angel, devil, and skeleton costumes are in for a better time than could have ever be had in a high school Spanish class. And just in case you think Mexico’s celebratory embrace of death precludes them from telling ghost stories, Cine Las Americas presents La Hora Fria: Classic Mexican Horror, a series of free screenings of gothic tales like The Black Pit Of Dr. M and The Curse Of The Crying Woman that prove cheap scares are a universal language.
The Velvet VampireWhat ever happened to my Transylvania Twist?
The sheer force of the shuffling, dancing, drunken dead of Halloween 2009 raises the question: Isn't this the year of the vampire? Most signs in Austin point to the vampire's new moon being on the wane. But, as the cheesy 1979 Judd Hirsch vehicle The Halloween That Almost Wasn't proves, you can't have a Halloween without the cooperation of all the archetypal monsters, and vampires are baring their fangs in some corners of the city. For instance, the Twilight-inspired comedic vampires of Dusk share the Salvage Vanguard Theater stage with werewolves and subtextual misogyny, whereas the less sexually repressed bloodsuckers of The Velvet Vampire wait to love you to death at the Alamo Downtown. Over at Scare For A Cure’s “Blood Ritual,” a mob of megalomaniacal vampires teams up with demons and assorted psychopaths to terrorize a group of paranormal researchers, plus whatever partygoers are willing to brave the “full contact” aggressiveness of an interactive haunted house—but even this is for charity, which means these vampires are less about bloody necks than bleeding hearts. In fact, vampires' stock has dropped so low this holiday season that you may have to go completely tangential to get your fanged fix: The Bat, while not necessarily about vampires, is an improv format named after an animal vampires some times turn into, not to mention that it's performed in the dark, an environment in which vampires often thrive. So if you leave ColdTowne Theater or The New Movement with a mysterious neck wound and an unquenchable urge to listen to Grizzly Bear-Beach House collaborations, you know who to blame.
Macbeth's witchesBraaaains! Braaaains!
Those who have succumbed to the thrall of the undead and suddenly find themselves peckish should head straight to Mister Tramps Sports Pub. The know-it-alls gathered there to throw down their trivial Wes Craven knowledge for Geeks Who Drink’s SPLAT!: A Pub Quiz Of Horror should have especially tender cerebrums, softened by the generous application of beer. There are probably also some deliciously juicy occipital lobes wandering through both the Ransom Center’s Poe Family Mystery Tours—where they’ll practice their cryptographs and muse on the symbolism of “The Purloined Letter,” the brain-cooking equivalent of a nice braising—and Spooky Shakespeare, where all of the Bard’s scariest creations (like the witches of Macbeth and the ghost of Hamlet’s father) come to life to creep out cognoscenti who probably “appreciate horror on a purely folkloric level” or something. Eat those people. And for dessert, nothing tastes sweeter than the brains of creative types. A feast of senses awaits at the Mixx Make Pre-Halloween Craftacular, where you can meet local artisans who will help you make your own Halloween masks and other decorations, eat clever delicacies like “coffin cake” and edible eyeballs, hear music from Panjoma, Focus Group, and Team Fabrication DJs, and enter a gummy-eating contest to win VIP passes to Flip Scene’s Halloween Bash. That show features the similarly brainy sounds of The Black And White Years, L.A.X., Bright Light Social Hour, Neiliyo, Zeale, and Learning Secrets, all of whom are just begging to have their meaty frontal lobes slathered in barbecue sauce.
