What: Twin Cities Horror Festival
When: Thursday through Nov. 3
Where: Southern Theater, 1420 S. Washington Ave., Minneapolis
Cost: $15 general admission; $13 students, seniors and Fringe-button holders; $70 unlimited festival pass
Ages: Parental discretion
Haunted houses are too conventional for the organizers of the Twin Cities Horror Festival. They have turned to the theater to scare crowds.
“The first question is if this is going to be freak-out horror or comedy horror,” Southern Theater manager Damon Runnals said. “They all kind of thought there’s a fine line between laughing and being creeped out.”
So the festival organizers opted for both. Seven groups will be presenting their theatrical takes on the horror genre, blending gore and comedy in an eclectic bill of fare.
They cover territory from RawRedMeat’s Japanese-inspired horror production to Mike Fotis’ parody of Syfy’s “Ghost Hunters.”
“I think I believe in ghosts,” Fotis said. “I’m not afraid to admit that, even if that makes me uncool.”
The 102-year history of the Southern Theater includes time as a restaurant and an adults-only cinema, making it a fitting location for a festival that draws on ambiance.
“Sometimes it feels haunted when I’m there by myself,” Runnals said.
Halloween evening features The Poor Nobodys’ score for the classic horror film “Night of the Living Dead,” which they will be performing live.
“We have this pump organ, a little electric organ and this tiny little battery powered amp, so it’s really distorted and atonal sounding,” the Poor Nobodys’ piano player Chris Hepola said. “We use that theme over and over again.”
The $6,660 fundraising goal that the festival hit last week on Kickstarter allowed performers to know ahead of time that there is interest and support for this experiment in horror.
While succeeding in getting the ball rolling, groups have struggled with how to best present the material.
“The main thing is that everything in a theater show is real time,” said Tyler Olsen of RawRedMeat Productions. “[Blood effects] are never super complicated, but it involves having pretty good control of what your hands are doing and where your eyes are. They’re happening at the most intense point of the show. “
The Four Humors Theater group provided the impetus for the project and will be performing “Harold,” a tale of cabin fever and a scarecrow coming to life.
“We’re walking this knife’s edge of bring to audience to a certain feeling,” Four Humor’s Ryan Lear said. “If you lose everyone’s focus, you lose your momentum. In horror film you have control of where the audience is looking.”
Some of the solutions the groups have found are the incorporation of other multi-media, playing with minimal lighting and incorporating blood cleanup into the production.
“Comedy and horror are really close bedfellows,” Olsen said. “[They] do a lot for each other and are very complementary.”
