GORGEOUS, OCT/NOV 04

CAUGHT BETWEEN HEAVEN AND HELL IN HOLLYWOOD
by Travis Michael Holder

Ooooooooooo, scary, kiddies! Demons and devils and right-wing Christians, oh my! Just in time for Halloween, The Real Live Brady Bunch producer Jill Soloway and her fearless producing partners have brought Hollywood Hell House, a warped spin-off of the traditional haunted house assembled annually in the gym of your local junior high, to the Steve Allen Theatre.

This blood-and-gore infused walk-through production lets you have a good fright from a freaky point of view. Suitably shocked patrons experience the Christian right’s newest conversion tool for confused children and teenagers, presented exactly as it was originally written and staged by the real-deal Abundant Life Christian Center. Touted by its creator Keenan Roberts as a wake-up call to “show young people they can go to hell for abortion, adultery, homosexuality, drinking and other things unless they repent” and advertised as an alternative to haunted houses, Hell House “portrays the devastation sin causes.” Every detail—the script, the staging, the costumes, the music—is executed according to detailed instructions from the Center’s Hell House Outreach kit. This is the most shocking haunted house ever, offering a frightening eight-room journey into a twisted born-again vision of fundamentalist fire-and-brimstone, and it’s surprisingly performed with Roberts’ permission. I doubt if he realized when licensing his kit to Soloway that it would be recreated, though true to the original concept and script, to emphasize through humor the hypocrisy and stupidity it promotes. Obviously, the guy can’t be too bright. Pray for him.

Guests witness a messy abortion, are caught in the middle of a school shooting inspired by rock music, and observe an Ecstasy-induced gang schtupp that ends up in an untidy suicide. If that weren’t enough to start impressionable kids thinking horrible thoughts, guests then descend into Hell itself, complete with wanton women being pulverized into ground round for eternity, as well as Politically Incorrect and Reel Times’ Bill Maher appearing as the devil. Perched regally on a glistening meat-and-carnage throne, his Satan decrees us to join him, accompanied on opening night by the falling off of his demonic horns as he read his lines from cue cards taped on the wall behind our heads. Catching me noticing this, Maher glared at me for a moment, then quipped, “Hey, I’m evil, I’m not off-book, okay?”

It begins as groups of 20 are led past a trio of black-lipped Goth chickadees who moan in unison, as they get ready to slice ‘n dice a human sacrifice, “Enter our bodies like a flood / As I drink this human blood.” Their screaming victim is Six Feet Under’s Justina Machado and our ghoulish guide, Bob Dassie (admired by Maher as “very Dennis Hopper”), explains that the girl’s downfall began by reading Goosebumps and Harry Potter. Next comes an Andy Warhol film-like abortion clinic, where the doctor’s diploma on the blood-splattered wall reads “Beth Al B’Nai University”—it’s a given in Hell House that the abortionist is a Jew, right? The group rape at a rave leads to our heroine eating the barrel of a gun in a bedroom covered with centerfolds of male celebrities and heavy metal musicians pulled directly from teen magazines.

Of course, there’s the obligatory AIDS patient covered in sores and screaming in agony in a hospital bed, who is grabbed by the hairy arms of a demon who pops up from his mattress and pulls him into the fiery depths when he refuses to atone for his homosexuality. Now remember all this, including the plans needed to create the tricked-out bed, is covered in the official Hell House kit. Finally, after a beneficent look at Conan O’Brien’s former sidekick Andy Richter reclining on a light blue plush cross as the crucified Jesus, accompanied by a choir of angels (led by comic and School of Rock star Sarah Silverman), we are ultimately offered an opportunity to repent our own earthly transgressions.

The earliest version of Hell House was created by the uber-terrifying Rev. Jerry Falwell in the late 70’s, picked up in 1992 by Roberts and presented as part of a teenage outreach program. Roberts now sells his Hell House kits nationwide, including its 263-page manual covering everything from casting to instructions on how to make hamburger meat look like a fetus. In the first three years, Roberts sold 300 kits and, since then, approximately 3,000 Hell Houses have put the bejesus into young’uns across the country. See, I told you it was scary. At Hollywood Hell House, prepare for a truly sick vision of the afterlife, presented just as it is to thousands of impressionable kids each year.