Halloween 2022

He Lives!

And he’s not.

He just plays one in his latest movie, Christmas Craft Fair Massacre

It’s a wacky, no-budget horror film that will be available from Wild Eye Releasing on DVD and Tubi in mid-December. In fact, it’s so low-budget, it actually cost him more to rent the Bedford Movie Tavern for the premiere than it did to actually complete the production.

But here’s the difference.

Remember when you were a twenty something sitting around on a crappy couch in a crappy apartment, watching a crappy direct-to-video monster muddle? You were momentarily inspired, and you thought, “Hell, I could do that!” And then, praise the Lord and pass the corndogs, you actually went out and did it?

Of course not.

You may have had the crappy couch in the crappy apartment and been suscep tible to the almost obligatory viewing of crappy direct-to-video monster shows, be cause these are the easy half of the equation. Watching movies and laughing at their in adequacies requires no exertion, little time, and even less talent.

Some of us, however, have seen the 1986 schlock horror classic The Abomination. And the who is the why of the how.

BY E.R. BILLS

Peoplewho work day-to-day,

blue-collar, service jobs intersect most of our lives all the time, but we don’t give many if any of them a second thought. The pseudo-cheery teen ager handing us our order at the drive-thru window. The bedraggled serviceperson who came out to replace the worn-out element in our water heater. The Big Lebowski-look ing fella who painted all the exterior trim on our house for cheap. A delivery person for a chain sandwich shop, a waitperson, a landscaper, a maintenance employee, or a bartender. I’ve never confirmed the specif ics precisely, but I know that at one time or another Fort Worth native Bret McCormick has been at least half of these folks, so you wouldn’t think he was a disfigured serial killer butchering our unsuspecting neigh bors as a janitor at a Texas high school.

To be honest, it seems fitting in a way, for this previously, partially, and perhaps still part-time demented master of Texas schlock to reemerge from the shadows. A tall Timo thy Leary-looking figure of no small renown, McCormick is not exactly a Cowtown knockoff of Ed Wood. He’s more of a Roger Corman disciple, and his body of work is character ized by madcap low-budget zaniness, often produced by sheer force of will alone, when so many others might have quit. At his best, he was half-Stanley Kubrick, half-Mel Brooks, a Frankenfilmmaker, a celluloid dervish of stoic edge with sometimes trashy, sometimes eruditely hashy, blunt humor. After all, most of us weren’t put on this planet to be a big noise or make a big splash. And even if we were, many of us were disinclined to perform the pandering required to put our names up in the big bright lights. McCormick would humbly admit to said ranks. They Live. We live. He lives!

Otto is a directionless young punk whose parents watch religious TV all day and tell him they gave away his college money to help support a television evangelist doing the Lord’s work. Otto isn’t a character in The Abomination. Otto (played by Emilio Estevez) is the main character in the 1984 classic Repo Man, but what if the college money that Otto’s parents sent to that broadcast prophet had yielded a miracle in the clenched opposable-thumbless fingers of “The Monkey’s Paw”?

This — drumroll, please — is Bret Mc Cormick’s territory.

There were more than a few direction less young punks in rural Texas in those days, so McCormick introduces us to Cody (Scott Davis), who is aimlessly adrift, perhaps, but handsome in a redneck, quasi-mulleted sense and even possessed (initially) of a girlfriend. Cody, like Otto, competes with a televangelist for the attention of his mother Sarah, but she is obsessed with binge-watching the techni color savior Brother Fogg to secure spiritual deliverance. She has a terrible cough, sus pects a tumor, and wonders why her son Cody rejects the TV preacher’s delusional aplomb.

McCormick: “I realize my unconventional cinematic sensibilities aren’t for everyone, but if I can make a feature for less than $1,000 and immediately turn a profit, I find myself in a brave new world.”

Ariel hangs out with her crazy redneck friends, pulling dumb stunts like doing the splits between two trucks racing down a country road, her feet precariously balanced on the open-window doors of the two vehi cles. But as played by Lori Singer, Ariel isn’t a character in The Abomination. McCormick’s budget for The Abomination was 1/1,170th that of the cheesy 1984 classic Footloose ($8.2 million), which starred Singer and, as Ren McCormack, Kevin Bacon.

So, what’s an aspiring filmmaker who sprang from a crappy couch in a crappy apartment to do?

It’s simple, really. And more realistic. Cody and girlfriend Kelly (Blue Thompson) race their friends down a country road, driv ing close enough to pass beers back and forth between their truck cabs. It’s certainly more realistic than Singer’s Footloose stunt and practically a rite of passage in Texas anyway.

Meanwhile, Sarah’s cough worsens, and she desperately prays to Brother Fogg for a continued on page 5

The former “oneman Fort Worth film industry” is back.

Courtesy the artist

remedy, divine intervention, and salvation. And that’s where the weird salivating begins. Cody’s mother coughs up a bloody lung tu mor and, feeling better, tosses it in the trash can. Then, she goes to bed and sleeps the sleep of the damned — sorry, I meant “dim.”

After a day of provincially rambunctious country road beer-swapping, Cody comes home loaded and passes out. The heaven-castout (or hell-cast-forth) bloody lung tumor begins to pulsate. If this sounds wacky or farfetched, remember the parallel points in Repo Man and Footloose. Otto is fetching cars and chasing a space alien stashed in the trunk of a missing 1964 Chevy Malibu. And Ren and the quite fetching Ariel are — as Peter “Starlord” Quill in Guardians of the Galaxy so eloquently puts it — challenging a towering prig (played by John Lithgow) to a “dance-off.”

This is where McCormick really demonstrates his knowledge of the materi al and his meager budget. The bloody, bur geoning, heaven-sprung lung tumor can’t hide in cars (yet), and a dance-off is out of

the question. So, the bloody, pulsating tu mor hits the linoleum and oozes its way to comatose Cody’s bedroom.

Here, instead of discussing how said pulsating, bloody lung tumor scales Cody’s bed, we must examine the influence of Fran kenstein. Victor Frankenstein’s goal is to use science to stave off death, an arguably no ble intention, but his efforts backfire. He creates a monster. Defying science, Cody’s mother attempts to prolong her demise by praying to and paying Brother Fogg, clear ly an ambassador of the Lord. She implores Fogg for a miracle cure and receives one. It’s alive! But unlike Mary Shelley’s mon ster, it doesn’t flee from human beings — it wants to devour them. It’s way more bent on world domination than the Evil Plank ton in SpongeBob SquarePants and arguably as gross and otherworldly as the creature in John Carpenter’s 1982 version of The Thing (whose production and special effects costs were a thousand times higher).

The throbbing, bloody lung blessing is actually a curse, and it crawls into the sleep ing Cody’s mouth, where it plants its seeds.

Later, Cody regurgitates the tumor, or one of its brothers, and tucks it under his bed, where it grows into a voracious eating ma chine, eager to be fed.

Here, we must comment on McCor mick’s Alien turn. Ridley Scott also has his extraterrestrial creature impregnate a male character orally, but that fecundated male’s pregnancy results in a nasty newborn-per formed Caesarean. As The Abomination’s budget was 1/13,956th of Alien’s ($11 mil lion), McCormick remains frugally faithful to The Abomination’s theme of oral deliver ance. Cody repeats his mother’s regurgita tive labor, producing another living, bloody offspring from his kisser.

Cody soon begats another tumorous off spring, and, in a matter of days, the growing clan of tumors are hangry.

In Repo Man, Otto never repossesses the 1964 Chevy Malibu and misses out on the alien in tow. Cody gets possessed by his mom’s bloody, coughed-up tumor and feeds his growing litter of abominations any hu mans he can manage to kill: friends, strang ers, his boss, and the tumor’s original progen itor, his own dear mother. In Footloose, Ren and Ariel win their dance-off against the local preacher, but McCormick does them one bet

ter. Cody places one of his offspring in the toi let of the sinister televangelist. Unfortunately for Brother Fogg, the aperture of a toilet bowl is much wider than the eye of a needle.

In bizarre, lean ways, The Abomination is cleverer and more pointed than Repo Man, and some of its $2.68 special effects may be better (though created in the same playful vein). The shoestring-budgeted indie is also more relevant than Footloose, whose smalltown characters seem based on rural Texans. In fact, to be snidely candid, The Abomination doesn’t borrow from Footloose so much as per form a twisted, irreverent response to it.

Can’t say too much more without giv ing up the entire plot, but the film was shot mostly in Poolville, Texas, in 10 days in September 1986. Bret McCormick did the most with what he had and accomplished what many of us thought we could do sitting around on a crappy couch in a crappy apart ment if we just got the chance.

Clearly, McCormick didn’t wait for chance.

In 1983, a screenplay McCormick wrote with Lon Bixby was optioned by Hollywood legend Peter Fonda for $1. Paltry, yes, but it still gave McCormick showbiz cred.

Then, from 1985 to 1998, the budding filmmaker produced more than 20 low-budget features, including Tabloid (1985, a collection

An

coked-up Dan Haggerty of Grizzly Adams fame starred in McCormick’s 1990

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of shorts that includes McCormick’s clever “Barbecue of the Dead”), the afore-discussed Abomination (1986), Ozone: Attack of the Red neck Mutants (1986), Macon County War (1990, a.k.a. One Man War and starring unruly, cokedup Grizzly Adams star Dan Haggerty), Highway to Hell (1990, starring screen legend Richard Harrison, who appeared in more than 100 motion pictures from 1955 to 2000), Armed for Action (1990, starring Martin Sheen’s younger brother, Joe Estevez, uncle to Repo Man star Emilio), and Blood on the Badge (1992, also featuring Joe Estevez). In 1992, McCormick also produced both Redneck County Fever and Reanimator Academy (which included a small role for Sarah Paxton, who would go on to appear in Last House on the Left in 2009 and the 2022 Marylin Monroe biopic Blonde) after one-weekend shoots. He was also an associate producer on Night Trap (1993, starring future Hollywood mainstays like John Amos, Robert Davi, Lesley Ann-Down, Michael Ironside, and Mike Starr), and then he produced the 1994 documentary Children of Dracula (a fangin-cheek nod to a genre that would eventually evolve into comedy-reality features like What We Do in the Shadows two decades later). Mc Cormick would also go on to write the screen play for Fatal Justice (also starring Joe Estevez) that year.

From there, McCormick produced Cy berstalker (1995, starring former Re-animator star Jeffrey Combs), Striking Point (1995, star ring Robert Mitchum’s second son, Christo

pher Mitchum, who appeared in more than 60 films, including three with John Wayne), Space Varmints (1995), Takedown (1995, star ring Richard Lynch, a stalwart Hollywood villain of The Sword and the Sorcerer fame), Bio-Tech Warrior (1996), Rumble in the Streets (1997), Time Trap (1997, starring Jeffrey Combs), and the inimitable Repligator (1998, starring Gunnar Hanson).

In the 1995 book Sleaze Merchants: Ad ventures in Exploitation Filmmaking, author John McCarty calls Tabloid “a cross between The Rocky Horror Picture Show and the per verse early works of John Waters.” Pop-art icon Andy Warhol even gave it an endorse ment, describing it as a contemporary Nor man Rockwellian vision of “Americana.”

The Confluence of Cult website calls Mc Cormick’s “visceral Super 8 indie” The Abom ination a “messy tangle of glorious splatter and existential absurdity” that stands out as a “worthwhile curio, a sort of 8-track [David] Cronenberg demo.” And the subsequent, non-McCormick-produced 1992 version of Highway to Hell — starring Rob Lowe’s younger brother Chad Lowe, Ben Stiller, Jer ry Stiller, Patrick Bergen, Kristy Swanson, and rockstar Lita Ford — was produced for a budget of $7.5 million and grossed only $26,055 at the box office. Juxtapose that data with the fact that McCormick put together the 1990 version for $20,000 and recouped his budget and then some.

Night Trap earned McCormick his first Joe Bob Briggs review and rating: “Nine dead bodies. Twelve breasts. Blood-drink ing. Wrist-slitting. Two bodies flung through plate-glass windows. Hooker tor

ture. Exploding house. Four motor vehicle chases, with four crashes, explosion and fire ball. Drive-In Academy Award nominations for Michael Ironside, as the you-know-who, for saying, ‘Whose body would you like to hold next to you in bed while the other lies rotting in a grave?’ Two and a half stars. Joe Bob says check it out.”

Rumble in the Streets, which McCormick produced for horror legend Roger Corman, received a second, particularly expository Joe Bob write up:

Bret has always been the one-man Fort Worth film industry, but I remember the ole boy when he was making monster flicks for 30 bucks in his cellar.

Seven dead bodies. Six breasts. Face-clawing. Dirt clod to the eyes. Bloody scotch-glass crunch ing. Hand-slicing. Hand-burning. Hand-crushing. Close-up heroin in jections. Guy executed by gunshot in a place where … naw, we’re just not going into it.

Leg-stabbing. Flaming cop. One motor vehicle chase, with crash. One mugging. Aardvarking. Electrocution.

Drive-In Academy Award nomina tions for Peggy Ann Mitchell, for writing and singing the main theme song, “She Tries to Fly,” a great song in a genre that usually thrives on bad songs.

Kimberly Rowe, as the hooker who says, “I keep thinking I know you from somewhere — I always remember guys on bikes,” and, “I don’t do that much heroin — just enough to stay straight.”

Mike Nicole, as the scruffy, wise cracking drug connection who says, “My name’s Bob, but I spell it backwards.”

David Courtemarche, as the love struck, homeless singing cowboy.

Patrick Defazio, as the sick, pervert ed, twisted street cop.

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B-movie legend Joe Bob Briggs gave 1997’s Rumble in the Streets three and a half stars. “Joe Bob says check it out.”

And Bret McCormick, the director, co-writer, and producer, for doing things the drive-in way, Three and a half stars.

Joe Bob says check it out.

In a review of Time Trap, The Terror from Beyond the Daves website claims, “The best way I can describe Time Trap is Star Trek meets Land of The Lost” and rates it “7/10 stun blasters!!”

And Repligator, ranked the 1,096th best film of 1998, received the following review from Triskaidekafiles: “Things could stand to get a little cheesier, but I love the ludicrous ness of every damned thing in this movie. It’s like watching a terrible Doctor Who story from the classic series but with more boobs. I’d almost say watch this just for the enter tainment value alone, because, damn, if it isn’t something unique.”

A nod from Andy Warhol? Compar isons to John Waters, David Cronenberg, Star Trek, Land of the Lost, and Dr. Who? And a fricking Academy Award nomination from Joe Bob Briggs, the all-time, undisputed master of B-movie horror pictures?

Who is this masked, creeping cinephile, and what happened to him?

As McCormick notes in his recent book, Tex as Schlock: B-Movie Sci-Fi and Horror from the Lone Star State, he became obsessed with Edgar Allan Poe when he was not much more than a toddler and fell straight into the suspenseful, buttery-popcorn embrace of B-Movie horror titillation as he approached pubescence.

“Who had time for sports when The Green Slime was playing at the Poly Theater just down the road on Vaughn Boulevard?” McCormick writes. “Who wanted to attend a church or a school function when Dracula Has Risen from the Grave?”

By the time he was old enough to get a job, McCormick — reminiscent of a young Quentin Tarantino — says he was unfit for anything outside a movie theatre. In 1975, he began work as an usher at Cineworld, Fort Worth’s first multiplex. And one day, at Eastern Hills High School, he met an in credibly talented kindred spirit. His name was Bob Camp. Bret and Bob and a small band of Eastern Hills amateur film aficiona dos began shooting Super 8 movies devoted to vampires rising from the grave, skate boarding werewolves, psychedelic halluci nations, and a Blob-esque stop-motion mon ster known as “Splot.”

After high school, McCormick briefly studied under filmmaker Andy Anderson (Interface, Positive I.D.) at UT-Arlington and then earned an associate’s degree from the Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, California.

McCormick’s buddy Camp would go on to co-found and become a director for Spümcø, the animation studio that created the wonder fully raucous Ren & Stimpy Show, a brilliant, groundbreaking forerunner of so many of the animation series we see and love today. Mc Cormick himself would chase the delightful

B-Movie dreams that so enchanted his youth.

At the end of the day or, in fact, the sec ond millennium, McCormick was burned out and frequently burned by double-dealing, middling movie distributors and ruthless, bot tom-feeding con artists. He walked away from showbiz and didn’t reemerge in the filmic sense until Christmas Craft Fair Massacre.

“Rob Hauschild of Wild Eye Releasing sent a crew down to interview me for a spe cial feature on the upcoming re-release of The Abomination,” McCormick said, “and I had a bizarre reawakening. I was excited to learn that their camera guy, Mark Polonia, had made over 80 features! … Somehow that meeting sparked my interest in learning how super low-budget movies were being made today. I found out that you could make fea ture films for practically nothing with your cellphone and edit your footage with free soft ware available online. For the second time in my life, I was bitten by the movie bug.”

McCormick admits that Christmas Craft Fair Massacre was a test project, and the en tire experience was positive.

“I’ve already earned more money from the movie than I spent making it,” he said with a laugh. “If that had been the case the first time around, I never would have stopped making movies. I realize my uncon ventional cinematic sensibilities aren’t for everyone, but if I can make a feature for less than $1,000 and immediately turn a profit, I find myself in a brave new world.”

Look for Christmas Craft Fair Massacre this Christmas season and an upcoming pro duction with a working title of Attack of the Killer Cow Patties sometime next year.

McCormick can be reached at BretAn thonyMcCormick@gmail.com.

From 1985 to 1998, McCormick produced more than 20 low-budget features, including 1985’s Tabloid, a collection of shorts that includes McCormick’s clever “Barbecue of the Dead.”

Courtesy the artist

Music Awards are back!

Along with the Black Dog Jam at Scat Jazz Lounge and the jam nights at Lazy Daisy Coffee Bar, McFly’s Pub, and Pinky’s Champagne Room & Velvet Jazz Lounge, the Playtown Blues Jam at Lola’s Fort Worth (2000 W Berry St, @LolasFort Worth) is nominated for best open-mic at FWWeekly.com/music-awards-ballot-2022. Check out Playtown from 8pm to 11pm with special guest Johnny Mack. There is no cost to attend.

The Pink Cactus DFW, the Keller-based charcuterie and upscale picnic experts, will be at Panther Island Brewing (501 N Main St, 817-882-8121) at 6pm, hosting the Charcuterie Workshop Halloween Edition. Attendees will learn how to style and arrange a well-balanced board, learn styling techniques, build sala mi roses and a salami river, and add spooky final touches. A screening of Beetlejuice fol lows the workshop. All needed ingredients and materials, an hour of instruction, and your first beer are provided. Tickets are $65 at The-Pink-Cactus-DFW-LLC.Tick etleap.com.

As all Amigo Guitar Shows are buy-sell-trade events, you are encouraged to bring all the music-related items that you can carry to GuitArlington 10am-5pm Sat-Sun at the Esports Stadium & Expo Center (1200 Ballpark Way, 817459-5000). “By getting bids from several exhibitors, you can quickly establish the market value of your item and proceed to sell or trade with confidence.” You may see everything from guitars and amps to re cords and memorabilia from individuals, online companies, retailers, and more, and you may also even get in a bit of celebrity people-watching. Tickets are $20 at Amigo GuitarShows.com/GuitArlington.

Head to Granbury, winner of our Readers’ Choice for best day trip in Best Of 2022, for the final weekend of Little Shop of Horrors at the Granbury Opera House (133 E Pearl St, Granbury, 817-579-0952) as part of the Broadway on the Brazos series. Meek floral assistant Seymour Krelborn stumbles across a new breed of plant he names Audrey II after his co-worker crush. This foul-mouthed, R&B-singing carnivore promises fame

and fortune to the down-and-out Krelborn as long as he keeps feeding it blood. Over time, Seymour discovers Audrey II’s outof-this-world origin and plans for global domination. Tickets start at $30 at Gran buryTheatreCompany.org.

Hosted by Open Worship (@OpenDTX) and Mo saic Worship (@Mosaic FUMC), the October in stallment of the fall Pub Theology series at The Bearded Monk (122 E McKinney St, Denton, 940-999-7238) begins at 8pm. On the third Monday of the month thru Mon, Dec 19, drink beer and contemplate theo logical quandaries with masters-in-divinity scholar Jenny Bates and Pastor Laura Byrd, who both like “asking the hard questions with no Sunday school answers.”

Just in time for Halloween, Cowtown Movie Classics is hosting two screenings of the “ blood-soaked classics that turned Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing into icons.” See The Curse of Frankenstein tonight at 8pm, then the Horror of Dracula on Sun, Oct 23, at 8pm, both at Downtown Cowtown at The Isis Theater (2401 N Main St, 817-8086390). Admission is free with the purchase of a snack and drink. (For more spooky events, check out our Halloween 2022 sec tion starting on pg. 23.)

By Jennifer Bovee

Make a Halloween-themed charcuterie with Kellie from The Pink Cactus DFW Friday.

Halloween Shows & Parties in North Texas

FORT WORTH

Lola’s Fort Worth (2000 W Berry St, @ LolasFortWorth)

WED 10/19: Rocky Horror-themed painting class by Art:30tx featuring live music by The Matthew Show. (TIX @ PaintingAndMusicLolas.Eventbrite.com)

The Rail Club DFW (3101 Joyce Dr, 817-386-4309)

SAT 10/29: Halloween Party featuring costume contests and live music by Chris Cornell Experience, Man in the Box, and Rokken tributes. (TIX @ Prekindle.com)

Tulips FTW (112 St Louis Av, 817-367-9798)

SUN 10/30: Metalachi with Mad Mexicans. (TIX @ TulipsFTW.com.)

THE COLONY

Lava Cantina (5805 Grandscape Blvd, 214-618-6893)

SAT 10/29: Halloween Bash featuring live music on the roof, a DJ inside, and a screening of the Rocky Horror Picture Show out back. (TIX @ LavaCantina.com.)

DALLAS

Amplified Live (10261 Technology Blvd E, 214-350-1904)

SAT 10/28: Halloween Party featuring Champagne Yacht Club. (TIX @ Amplified-Live.com.)

Three Links (2704 Elm St, 214-484-6011)

MON 10/31: Psychedelic Halloween featuring Hooveriii and Psychic Love Child. (TIX @ ThreeLinksDeepEllum.com.)

GRAPEVINE

Farina’s Winery & Cafe (420 S Main St, 817-442-9095)

SAT 10/29: Farina’s Halloween Bash featuring a costume contest and live music by Chaz Marie. Call for reservations.

Glass Cactus (1501 Gaylord Trl, 817-778-2805)

SAT 10/29: Halloween Bash featuring costume contests, DJ Spider, and live music by KISS tribute band, Destroyer. (TIX @ GaylordTexan.com)

Harvest Hall (715 S Main St, 817-251-3050)

FRI 10/28: Grapevine Main LIVE! featuring Epic Unplugged: Top 80s Hits Cover Band.

HALTOM CITY

The Haltom Theater (5601 E Belknap St, 817-677-8243)

SUN 10/23: The Haunted Haltom Bash featuring Whitney Peyton, UBI of ces cru, and Stoner. (TIX @ Facebook.com/HaltomTheater.)

MANSFIELD

Fat Daddy’s (781 W Debbie Ln, 817-453-0188)

SAT 10/29: Halloween Bash featuring costume contests, drink specials, and live music by The Velcro Pygmies with modern acoustic duo Love Is War. (TIX @ FatDaddysLive.com.)

To submit your Halloween Happenings, email Marketing@FWWeekly.com.

Trunk or Treat!

October 28th, 5:00pm

7:00pm

Also, from October 24thOctober 30th,

IKEA

IKEA Grand Prairie

Spooky Times Have Found Us

Halloween is here, and Día de los Muertos isn’t far behind.

Our weekend plans shift toward pump kin spice and scary nights out with the tem peratures dropping. North Texas is bounti ful with festivities this season. Here are a few to check out.

While the Rocky Horror Picture Show first hit theaters in 1975, it’s been a con sistent fan favorite ever since and rears its fabulous head around Halloween every year.

On Wednesday, Art:30tx hosts a Rocky Horror-themed painting class with a per formance by The Matthew Show at Lola’s Fort Worth (2000 W Berry St, @LolasFort Worth). Tickets are $30 at PaintingandMu sicLolas.EventBrite.com. All needed sup plies are included.

On Sat, Oct 29, you can do the Time Warp at two area hot spots. The Halloween Bash at Lava Cantina (5805 Grandscape Blvd, 214-618-6893) features live music on the roof, a DJ inside, and a screening of Rocky Horror out back. Tickets start at $5 at LavaCantina.com. Hosted by Los Bastar dos, Ridglea Theater (6025 Camp Bowie Blvd, 817-738-9500) is also screening the film and will have Rocky Horror-themed items for sale, including prop packs (#Au dienceParticipation). Tickets are $10-80 on Eventbrite.com.

Haunted houses are also still going strong, and I’m not talking about the hell house at your grandma’s church.

The No. 1 Haunted House in America, per USA Today, is right in our backyard and has been for 30 years. You can book time slots every half hour at Cutting Edge (1701 E Lancaster Av, 817-348-8444) Fri-Sun, then Thu-Mon, Oct 27-31, and Sat, Nov 5. Tickets are $45 at CuttingEdgeHaunted House.com.

Dark Hour Haunted House (701 Tay lor Dr, Plano, 469-298-0556) has a new theme every year, and for 2022, it’s The Co ven: The 13 Awaken. Dark Hour opens at 7pm Thu-Sun thru Sun, Oct 20, plus Mon, Oct 31. Tickets are $60 at DarkHourHaunt edHouse.com.

Located on the grounds of Scarbor ough Fair, each of the five haunted houses at Screams Halloween Park (I-24 at FM 66, Waxahachie, 972-938-3247) has a dif ferent theme. There’s also a haunted cem etery, games of skill, and live entertain ment throughout the park. Plus, you can drink beer and sing Scary-Oke at the pub. Screams is open every Friday and Saturday 7:30pm-1am thru Oct 29. Tickets are $42 at ScreamsPark.com.

On Sunday from 5pm to 10pm, the inau gural La Catrina Contest featuring culture, food, and music is happening in Sundance Square (425 Houston St, 817-222-1111), presented by Colección Mexicana, shopping headquarters for Mexican accessories, artis anal products, pottery, and more, and Paco’s Mexican Cuisine. The contest will showcase 20 contestants of all genders and cultural backgrounds from North Texas who will be judged based on dress, headpiece, and makeup. There is no cost to attend.

For live music happening for Hallow een, check out Crosstown Sounds at FW Weekly.com. To submit your events, email Marketing@FWWeeklycom. l

By Jennifer Bovee

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