“HAPPY HAUNTING OF AMERICA” (2007)

Starring: Daniel Roebuck, Bob Burns, Robert Englund, Doug Bradley, Alice Cooper, Tom Savini, Jeff Burr, Angus Scrimm & a ton of haunted attractions
With Tony Todd, Chuck Williams, Christa Campbell, John Gulager & Don Coscarelli
Produced & Directed by Chuck Williams & Daniel Roebuck
Official Film Site
Chuck Williams Fan Club

Polly Staffle Rating: ****

For those that love October and the many haunted houses that pop up across the country during the month, Chuck Williams and Daniel Roebuck have a special treat for you. The duo, which has become known as The Bat Pack or The Boys of Halloween by some, recently released a must have two-disc tenth anniversary collector’s edition DVD titled “Halloween: The Happy Haunting of America.”

The DVD set is a three hour and 45-minute release with enough visual frights to satisfy even the most ravenous trick-or-treaters. Backed with the music of Midnight Syndicate, this entertaining look at All Hallows Eve takes us to more than 40 haunted attractions and shares interview clips from 30 or so celebrities, experts and horror filmmakers. “Halloween: The Happy Haunting of America” will go great with any family or gore hound’s October 31st festivities, so don your scariest vampire costume, serve up some zombie eyeball martinis, a few “Saw” and “Hostel” finger foods, pop these DVDs in, sit back and enjoy the sights and sounds of Halloween.

DISC ONE

The 1997 documentary “Halloween…The Happy Haunting of America!” is the centerpiece of the set. Produced and directed by Williams and Roebuck, it was the result of the duo traveling America in search of all things Halloween.

The fun begins with a faux black and white TV host and his “Shock Theater.” Roebuck, the character actor with a resume a mile long that has recently become a Rob Zombie regular, plays the role of Doctor Shocker. Williams, “Dark Walker” himself, and Halloween Godfather Bob Burns, of the television show “The Ghost Busters,” are his sidekicks Igor the gimp and Kogar the gorilla, respectively.

Once the real documentary kicks in, Roebuck visits Universal City Walk in California and its Chamber of Chills. Burns then tags along as numerous other haunted attractions are visited, starting with the Horror Hotel in Chatfield, Ohio, which Roebuck says is a favorite of his that he visits every year.

Other spooky places they visit are Don Post Studios (North Hollywood), the Haunted School House & the Haunted Laboratory (Akron, Ohio), MuckleBones Monster Museum (Marion, Ohio), a Halloween parade (Bethlehem, Pensyvania), Witch’s Dungeon Horror Museum (Bristol, Connecticut), Henry Alvarez’s Wax Models Studio (Long Beach, Calif.) and America’s Only Horror Theme Park - Spooky World (Berlin, Massachusets). Also included are clips from the elaborate Halloween shows put on by Bob Burns and his friends in his Burbank, California backyard. The extravaganzas were usually based on classic science fiction and horror films and featured actual props from movies such as “The Time Machine” from the George Pal classic with the same name.

Weaved in between the frightful sights and sounds are interviews about Halloween origins, nostalgia and mischief, as well as mask making, trick-or-treating, movie monsters, costumes and more. Robert Englund (Freddy Krueger of “A Nightmare on Elm Street”), Doug Bradley (Pinhead of “Hellraiser”), shock rocker Alice Cooper, special effects/makeup artist Tom Savini and Angus Scrimm (The Tall Man of “Phantasm”) are among the many celebrities featured.

But my favorite anecdote shared in the documentary comes from Jeff Burr, the director of “Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III,” “The Stepfather 2: Make Room for Daddy” and the excellent “Straight into Darkness.” One year when Burr was around nine years old, he dressed up using a tip he read in the monster magazine “Castle of Frankenstein.”

“Spread peanut butter over your face and it kind of looks like your face is melting,” said Burr of the article’s advice. “You have to slightly heat up the peanut butter. So, I actually did that. I actually coated my face. I put on a little bald wig… and went as Vincent Price melting in ‘The House of Wax.’”

Bonuses on this disc include slide shows of production stills, promotional photo shoots and random Boys of Halloween images that are all set to music. There is also a “bootleg” behind the scenes feature from the “closed set” of “Shock Theater.”

DISC TWO

The 2007 documentary Chuck Williams Presents “Halloween: The Happy Haunting of America” offers ten more haunted attractions and various other spooky locations. Roebuck again hosts, but this time the former magician introduces clips from the Magic Castle in Hollywood.

Highlights include a 44-acre Haunted House Scream Park in Niles, Michigan; Robert Short’s Terrordome in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania’ the 4-story Pontiac, Michigan attraction Erebus, which is in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the world’s largest walk-through haunted attraction; Romania’s Bran Castle, otherwise known as Dracula’s Castle in Transylvania; and Hobb’s Grove, which is located in the Nation’s Christmas Tree City - Sanger, California – and is also the place the horror film “Dark Walker” was filmed.

Other frightful places visited are the Bates Motel and Haunted Hayride (Glen Mills, Pennsylvania), The Haunt (Walker, Michigan), Queen Mary’s Shipwreck (Long Beach, California), Rocky Point Haunted House (South Salt Lake, Utah), Nightfall at Old Tucson Studios (Tucson, Arizona), Reindeer Manor & 13th Street Morgue (Red Oak, Texas), and Make-up and Monsters Studios (Chatsworth, California). Kid friendly places featured are Fillmore & Western Railway’s Pumpkinliner in Fillmore, California and Screams Ice Cream from Hell and gift shop in Hell, Michigan.

This disc also features 14 bonus slide shows of various haunted attractions across the country, from Illinois to Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and more. These photo montages are set to scary music, feature a “play all” option and are great background visuals to have playing on your television on Halloween night.

Also highlighting the disc is a pilot for the entertaining Williams and Roebuck roundtable talk show “Raw Talk.” The duo jokes and casually chats about Halloween, comic books, horror movies, Bruce Campbell, Qunetin Tarantino, CGI, conventions and more with actor Tony Todd (“Candyman”), Scream Queen, or “Mean Queen” as the Bat Pack called her, Christa Campbell (“The Wicker Man,” “2001 Maniacs”) and filmmakers John Gulager (“Feast” trilogy) and Don Coscarelli (“Bubba Ho-tep,” “Phantasm,” “The Beastmaster”). I’m not sure if there are plans for this to be an actual TV show, if it is in the development stages or what exactly, but I’d definitely tune in to more Williams and Roebuck antics.

The always hardworking and amusing Williams, who served as an assistant director to Kathryn Bigelow on “Near Dark,” has produced 16 films and acted in close to 30, stays behind the camera most of “Halloween: The Happy Haunting of America.” So it was nice to hear him speak during the “Raw Talk” segment. Yes, even with the visual he puts in the audiences head of a Chuck Williams porno done with just himself in front of a green screen.

Other bonuses are a trailer for Nightmare at Pinehaven Farm (Wyoming), a Hacker House music video for the song “Comin’ to Kill Ya,” a spooky slideshow with artwork from Gris Grimly, Eric Pigors, Chad Savage and others, a Dr. Shocker and Igor blooper reel, Dr. Shocker’s live Spooktacular, a look at Dr. Shocker’s House of Horrors and more.

GHOST HOST REVIEW FOR THE LAZY MAN

RUN, don’t walk! So you can get your hands on IT! A SHOCKUMENTARY for the ages! But be WARNED! You will SEE the HORROR! FEEL the TERROR! HEAR the SCREAMS and SPOOKY sounds! STRUGGLE to look away! Attempt to HIDE! But no mere mortal can RESIST... “HALLOWEEN: THE HAPPY HAUNTING OF AMERICA!”

- CCF, October 2007