DUNGEONS OF DELHI: Welcome To Monster Mart!
After leaving the Dungeons Of Delhi*s new Vortex Zone (complete with entrance graphics that make it look like a Kings Island ride), we were greeted by a cheery voice-"Welcome to Monster Mart-what can we do for you today?" Well, everyone knows that the HOD!!! loves rooms that mix the macabre with a dose of humor, and it looked like this would be one of the best. The Mart had a counter, register, and shopping carts-the zombie running the register wasted no time in giving us a sales pitch. When it turned out I wasn*t buying, they pushed aside a shopping cart to allow me to speak with the manager-who was in the Monster Garage. The Garage is a true work of twisted genius-first glimpsed underneath a half shut corrugated steel overhead door, it looks like something out of a nightmare. Shadowy shapes move back and forth through the fog inside. Wrecked cars are combined with parts of humans for a truly surreal effect, intensified by various sickly sources of purple and red lighting. Built on the site of the building*s loading dock and complete with garage doors, it has welders attaching skeletons to car doors, some guy trying to give you a deal on tires (and it ain*t Chip Wood), and event organizer "Chainsaw" Cecil Rouse trying to make sense out of an absurdly thick tech manual. Seems he*s having a hard time trying to reinstall a set of intestines into Buddy The Bum...
Cecil and his son Jake, along with Joe Middendorf and John Coletta Jr., are some of the folks behind this season*s version of the Dungeons Of Delhi. John states that "We were finally able to expand to the second floor this year, and it*s taken a lot of work in a very short period of time. We didn*t get to start until late August and we were working on scenes right until we opened at seven tonight." Cecil emerged from his spot in the Monster Garage long enough to confirm this. "There were a LOT of 14 to 16 hours days going on getting the place ready. It wasn*t just the upstairs, but all the changes we made on the 1st floor. There*s more we want to do but haven*t had time for-we wanted to install an outdoor graveyard people could walk through out front next to the hearse, but there hasn*t been time." They also proudly point out the new artwork on the sides of the building (complementing the artwork for the Dungeons in the front windows of the old Thriftway store out front). It*s colorful, garish, attention grabbing-and two stories tall. "People have been saying for years we haven*t had any curb appeal and couldn*t be spotted from the street. I don*t think they*ll say that anymore!" laughed John. There*s also a booth being staffed by radio station 97.3 The Wolf to add to the atmosphere. It seems to be doing the trick-the line*s much longer than the HOD!!! has seen it here in recent years.
Of course, these guys couldn*t do it without the rest of their support team and the actors. Don McGinnis tells us that he stopped by to drop off his son to work at the Dungeons, became intrigued, and asked them if there was anything he could help with. "Before I knew it, they had me doing all sorts of things. I was installing emergency lights up on the second floor right up until the fire department came through to inspect us at ten till seven. There*s still one more we need to put up, but the fire department was lenient enough to just require that the actor in there carry a flashlight for tonight." We also ran into Cortney and Jourdan (and I hope I got the names spelled right, ladies!) at the front door, who informed us that they had worked on the makeup for the characters-their work was so hideous that it looked great! There*s no shortage of talented and helpful people here-and that*s not even including the 50 or so actors in the house! The age limit for acting was raised for certain parts this year, resulting in an older and more threatening cast-the Delhi Police Officers moonlighting as Specters in the Graveyard towered over the HOD!!!, making us think for a moment that they were on drywall stilts.
The HOD!!! happened to come by at break time, allowing us to talk with many of the actors-in fact, many of them requested that we come inside to meet them. Unlike a lot of charity haunts, the Dungeons contains many actors who create individual characters that return year after year. First out of the gate was Madd Mark, the genial ghoul who greets all visitors to the Dungeons from his post at the front desk of the Bates Motel. Mark not only is the father of icon-in-training Madd Matt, but serves as the unofficial spokesman for the Dungeons online. When not bossing around his flunky Igor, Mark does his best to plaster more photos of local haunt actors (not just from the Dungeons but elsewhere) on the Bates Motel*s "Wall Of Fame," work up at the Dent Schoolhouse when the Dungeons isn*t open, and trying to prevent the Keeper from slipping out of the next room and attacking the queue line through the front door-good luck with that! His son Matt is manning the room that contains what he calls "Madd Matt*s Shock Therapy." We*d have run a photo of Matt, but he was a constant blur of motion and we couldn*t frame him long enough for the camera to focus! The demonic Gore, a disturbing site in midnight black, lurks in the dark recesses of a hallway where he*s virtually invisible. The Dark Lord holds court from his throne. There*s the world*s most confusing pair of clowns-you might know one of them as the Joker, of Joker and Fatso fame. He*s now going by the name of Ch33zd00dle-yeah, that*s how it spells it-or is he now going by Hector? Beats me. He*s also got his real-life twin working the clown area with him, and his name*s so hard to spell even Hector couldn*t tell me what it was. In any case, they*ve rejoined the Dungeons to track down leads on their brother Chester who disappeared from the event last year and they live up to their time-honored claim of being THE LOUDEST GUYS IN THE HAUNT! They have pals, too-lots of them. Heed their warning of *Watch Out For The Klown!* and keep your head down! Scruffy and friends are hanging out in the Asylum. Then, of course, there is the Keeper-last year he was the HOD!!!*s haunt actor of the year (when he was known as New Blood). This is the guy that just doesn*t enter a scene-he BURSTS upon it! His feral, snarling, and ferocious acting style makes one wonder how he can possibly keep it up for an entire evening. But not only does he do that, he*s also been known to leave his spot in the second room to slam open the front door from inside, give the crowd a taste of his performance, and duck back inside. And when Mad Matt came running out the front door in an attempt to *escape* shock therapy, who do you think came right out after him, chased him down, and wrestled him to the ground? Yep, the Keeper. It*s a good bet he*s the early favorite for haunt actor of the year again!
The rooms themselves follow the familiar Dungeons theme-that theme being "anything goes." You never know what you*ll run across next-it might be a room based on a movie, a room with a humorous slant, a gore room, a black maze, a moving hallway, or even the longtime favorite *classic monster* room featuring the Frankenstein Monster in a highly detailed lab complete with operating table, circuit boards, and medical monitors. Some of the redone rooms on the first floor we haven*t mentioned yet include the Funeral Parlor, a redone Graveyard, a guillotine room (look out below!), the Forest, Otis*s kitchen, and a bizarre nursery full of teenage girls that has to be seen to be appreciated. Perhaps the best of the changed rooms comes in the Funeral Home*s Crematorium-some poor schmuck who*s not quite dead yet gets fed into the crematorium furnace by an attendant who then slams the door shut on him. Oh well...who ever said life is fair?
The top floor this year is largely courtesy of a group of home haunters from Price Hill. They had put together an event so elaborate that traffic was being tied up and they were in effect forced to shut down by local authorities. They*ve brought some great looking, elaborate movie scenes to the Dungeons such as Camp Crystal Lake (with a Jason who actually unmasks), Halloween, Saw, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The backdrop and cabin used for the Friday The 13th scene was quite effective, and the Saw room was a wealth of grisly detail. We wandered around it for almost a minute, checking things out and waiting for the inevitable scare-which never happened. Figuring that someone had just abandoned their scene, we headed outside the room-only to find that death and taxes aren*t the only inevitable things in life!
A variety of character makeup and effects are used-some use standard wound makeup, some masks, some realistic, some expressionistic and over the top (the Specters in the Graveyard look fantastic under a black light). Check out how the guy in the toxic barrel room (which has green water pouring from the ceiling) has neon hair in strips that match the colors of the room.
The Dungeons has always been one of Cincinnati*s best charity haunts. This year, they*re easily on a par with the pro ones. At a ridiculously low $6 (and you can even save another dollar by donating a canned good), it*s the best haunt value in town, period. When you double the number of rooms, change most of the ones left from last year, have great looking sets with effective makeup, costuming, and then add one of the best and most original groups of haunt actors in Cincinnati, it*s almost like following the tech manual for an outrageously successful haunted house. Hey, that reminds us-maybe Chainsaw Cec at the Monster Garage could use this particular haunt manual-got to work better than what he*s been using. Buddy would probably appreciate the help, too-he*s probably cold being opened up all that time. I guess it*s time to go face the undead store greeter again and hear another chorus of "Welcome To Monster Mart!"
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