The Horror Returns - THR Bonus - Episode: Haunts - Interview With Bobby Roe & Zack Andrews From The Houses October Built 1& 2 (Re-upload)

Episode Date: May 30, 2022

We interview director and writer, Bobby Roe and Zack Andrews, of The Houses October Built, and visit Creepy Hollow. Thanks for listening! The Horror Returns Website: https://thehorrorreturns.com THR Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thehorrorreturns THR Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thehorrorreturns/ Join THR Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1056143707851246 THR Twitter: https://twitter.com/horror_returns?s=21&t=XKcrrOBZ7mzjwJY0ZJWrGA THR Instagram: https://instagram.com/thehorrorreturns?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y= SK8ER Nez Podcast Network: https://www.podbean.com/pu/pbblog-p3n57-c4166 ESP Anchor Feed: https://anchor.fm/mac-nez E Society YouTube Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UCliC6x_a7p3kTV_0LC4S10A Music By: Steve Carleton Of The Geekz

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in horror all right so here we are here we are a creepy hollow haunted house we met a couple of the inmates here what's your name I am William Vodka Valley aka Willie Vodka and who are you my friend

I am creepy hollows dribbles the clown Oh that's creepy Well we got a couple of questions for you if you don't mind I might have some answers What are some of the most fun up things you've seen here. Oh, man. You take this one, dribbles.

We made somebody crapped their pants and saw a pitch black. That was a good one. Like literally crept their pants? Literally crap their pants. Last year there was a... That's going to be some questions. There was somebody passed out in one of the...

I think it's scared of the woods. Yeah. Let me ask you this. Has an ambulance ever had been called out here? Yes, they have. We also have our own ambulance. It's here, but it's not for covering. I'm taking a question.

So tell me the story behind that. We had a lady in the woods who collapsed, and we had to call the ambulance. Yeah. I mean, some people can't handle it. Some people just can't handle it. We do our thing. They don't party. We like to party.

I party. But, I mean, some people really can't handle it. I made some people start panicking in the voodoo lounge. I made people run into fences and walls. It's fun. For us, at least. How long have you guys been doing this? I have been doing this for six years now.

Always at creepy hollow? Always at creepy hollow. So you guys have some charities that you help out, right? Yes, we do. We do the Lions Club. Yeah. And what else do we do? We do a zombie walk.

We help out the Houston Zombie Walk a lot. We do the Lake Jackson Zombie Run. We do zombie charge. We help them out. Do you? Yes, we do a lot of kind of cool stuff out. We help kids at Christmas time. Zombie charts.

So what do you give them like a head that somebody's chopped off and give it to them in their stocking or what? We do some different things. We give them PlayStation and things that they can't actually afford themselves and we help them out with stuff like that. That's bad ass, man. As a matter of fact, last year, if you go on YouTube, search out creepy hollow haunted house. You can see what Relic and Molly and Skeet did last year for needy families that have lost basically everything. Right? And this year, I think a lot of our money that we make out here is going to go to the Harvey victims. Oh, yeah. No shit. You guys got flooded here, right?

Oh, yeah. So tell us about that. I mean, what kind of challenges were there after the flood? There was a lot of challenges. Yeah. It was like a fucking water park, wasn't it? Or something like that. It was like a river. Oh, man. I mean, after the hurricane, you know, we're all volunteers. Right? So we all came together and put this place back in the spot. The heart of Creepie Hollow is in his volunteers. And that's what makes it run.

And because of the heart of the volunteers, you are here today, basically. I mean, there was a lot of damage. I didn't know that. Yes. Yeah, I saw the videos on Facebook. Yeah, it was pretty crazy. It was fucked up, man. But we got it back together and we're going to kick ass this year.

Yeah. Yeah. All right, good talking to you guys, man. You too. Thank you. Take care. We're going to be around for a little bit. Oh, yeah, yeah.

I'll find you guys later again. Thank you, sir. All right, take care. Greetings, listeners, you have found the horror returns for all of you have found the horror returns for all of you who delight in dread. Fantasize about fear and glorify gore. Welcome home. This is a podcast that proves the horror never ends.

Welcome to a special bonus episode dealing with haunts, and we've got a, we've got a, we got a real treat for you listeners this week. We've actually spoken with the writer and director of a couple of films that we enjoy, Houses October Belt 1 and 2. So we're going to play that interview for you guys here in just a minute. But, I know, first, Brian, you thought it'd be a good idea if we kind of went around the table here and sort of shared our thoughts on the two films. You want to go first?

Yeah. I'm going to speak about these movies as a whole because, you know, this one. one, the second one picks up where the farthest one leaves off. Right. And I, I really, really enjoyed both of these movies. They felt real gritty. They felt real, you know.

And I thought the actors, an actress that were in the movie was great. You know, they, you really felt like they were friends and they were going on these trips, you know. And it just, it felt real to me. And I love the, the costumes and the mass of, of what was it, the blue skeleton, especially, which to me, I might, I don't know, I might be just speaking ahead, but I think that the porcelain character, the girl, porcelain, the mask, I think that's going to be an iconic look here when people talk about creepy mask and stuff, because I thought that was just one of the creepiest characters in a movie, because didn't even really need to speak or anything. You, you know, you could just walk around the corner and she could just be there looking at you.

and creeped me out. Yeah, that's on like the cover of the movie on Netflix, and that's part of what got me to watch the damn thing. Yeah, definitely gives you an insight on these haunted houses, especially these extreme haunts, and how far some of them are willing to go. And when you listen to our interview, they got some pretty good stories on

how far some of these will go. What did you guys think about the movie? Yeah, I really... Yeah, like I was saying, it's probably my favorite found footage movie since the Blair Witch, just because it was so realistic. You guys know I'm not a big found footage guy at all

because it's like you get a really slickly produced movie where you got 17 different camera angles and then they shift from camera to camera to camera. And it just... For my life, the life of me, I don't understand how they call that a found footage movie. You know, when it's that slickly produced and it looks like a, you know, big budget

Hollywood film and yet they, you know, they say, oh, we found this videotape, you know, bullshit. Give me a fucking break. And the thing about this one is I, you felt like it was a real documentary because they are going around talking to real haunt workers. So pretty cool how they intertwined the story in there and made it work with, with actually going around to real places. I envy these guys, man.

I'd love to be able to spend to spend a couple of months doing something like this. Oh, absolutely. It looked fun. And get paid for it? Yeah. Yeah, man, I really enjoyed it too. I mean, if you've listed to the show, you know, I'm kind of a sucker for these found footage movies. And this one does it right.

And I don't want to sound like, you know, we're kissing these guys' asses because we had them on the show. but it's a really kick-ass movie man it is it actually is real until it's not he said that in the interview and it's it totally applies and it feels like that when you're watching it I thought the first one was more of first one was a little creepier you know

go through the haunted houses and then they intertwined the door line and stuff and then the second one was it was almost just fun to watch, especially that first half where they're just going through the haunted houses and all of it is 100% real. And they've got, you know, they're running through the zombie run thing. And it's, it looked like a whole lot of fun, man. It was just exciting to watch.

And it was almost a travel show. Yeah. And as our listeners know, if they've been listening to us for a while, make no mistake. If we fucking hate something, we're going to say we hate it, regardless of whether people that made the movie are listening to the show or not. And for one thing is for sure with this one, we actually reached out to them because that's how much we enjoy these two movies. And once we saw, actually I think I reached out to Bobby the director right after we had rewatched the first one again. And I'm like, shit, let's just see if these guys will be on our show. And damn, we appreciate you guys being on here.

It's a pretty cool interview, which you guys are about to hear in just a little bit. But yeah, no, it's a lot of fun, man. It's the right time of the year to be to be. getting into this kind of stuff too. And we were actually inspired after this to go out and do our own little haunt event.

Philip and I went out to creepy hollow and we met the guys out there and we got a couple of interviews with you guys, Harold, who's the guy who has everything set up, just a super cool dude, man, and we're going to get some stories about what it's like to run a haunt and you guys will get to hear a little

bit about what we heard when we were out there, but, you know, Harold, we can't thank you enough for the invite. We had a blast. I probably hadn't been to one in about 10 years, but we'll start making an annual event now, for sure. Oh, definitely, man. That was a, it was a whole lot of fun. It's been forever.

And the extreme haunts are starting to sound kind of fun, too, man. Jump scares are a whole lot of fun when they're happening right in your face, you know? Like when you're watching them on a movie, it's different, but when they're there, it's fun. yeah bryan do you guys have haunts up there in alaska are they all like themed like the movie uh the thing or something you know what um that would be a lot better than what we have up here oh no honestly yeah they're the typical run of the mill like you go in and people jump out of course you know there has to be that that one character with the chainsaw type deal and yeah it's it's my kids don't even go because it's not even worth it.

Oh, no. Well, we all had a fun at Creepialo. That's cool. Yeah, it was like a theme part. They had a bunch of different little haunts and then, how big is it?

Pretty good size, man. Oh, yeah, yeah, they've got, I don't know how much land they sit on, but it's,

it's quite a bit. And, uh, it's, it's like a small, for theme theme park. Cool. Yeah.

And it's, and it's expanding. they're adding a couple of new attractions next year or so i think it's only going to get bigger that's really cool yeah and unfortunately these guys like if you follow them on facebook at all you'll see that they got really badly flooded after the hurricane oh yeah they opened right on schedule you know we we couldn't tell there had been any damage from what we saw so you know they they did what they had to do it was a little hard to get harold to do the interviews a couple of times because they had so many people coming up to him

You'll hear a couple of breaks in our interview, but I think it went really well, man. It gave us a lot of time. And hopefully if you're in the Houston area, you'll head down to Roch-Sherin and check it out. Definitely. All right, so guys, without any further ado, you guys ready for the interview? Yeah. All right, cool. All right, listeners, as promised, we have a treat for you guys this week.

We are joined by the creative team behind the Houses October Built, Parts 1 and 2. and hopefully more. We'll get into that later. Director Bobby Rowe as well as writer and co-creator, Zach Andrews. How's it going, guys? Doing good. Doing good.

Appreciate you having us on, Lance. Cool, man. Hey, guys. Hey, Zach. We appreciate you guys being here, man. We really dug the movies, so it's good to have you guys on. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we'll jump into it here.

I know you guys get a lot going on with the second movie just out. So where did you guys come? up with this incredibly original idea to actually combine, you know, real interviews with haunt workers and, you know, kind of come up with a narrative that tells a found footage story within that context. Well, we, um, Zach and I grew up together. We've been best friends for about 20, 25 years. And, uh, we really did when we were younger. We would, we grew up in Dallas, Texas, and we would go to haunts. Uh, we would go to a horror movie and then go to a haunted house

afterwards all through October, you know, and funny. enough Dallas has become the haunt capital of the world, or at least it was, I'm sure it changes every year. But we started figuring out why somebody hadn't really put that on the big screen. You know, there's fun house and there's carnival-like, fun houses like that that have been used in the past. But nobody really using Halloween haunted houses, especially at the time when we were doing this, which was the butt of everything was around 2009. And the word extreme Haunt really wasn't even known. And then we started digging deeper

and about 35 million people a year ago to haunted houses and you know, just Halloween alone as Americans, we spent $8 billion. So it just seemed like it would have an audience if we could figure out the right story to tell around it. And that being said,

we wanted to make sure it felt real. You know, the supernatural stuff, some of the possession movies has kind of run its course. We were trying to figure out what scares us and it's usually human beings something grounded um and uh we kind of worked backwards we we thought of an idea we said well what's the version of does a tree make a sound in the forest when it falls if no one's around to hear it well our Halloween version of that question is have you

ever seen a dead body in a haunted house you can't definitively tell me that you haven't so we we wanted to be able to i mean look the smells then the special everything has gotten so amazing lately like you really wouldn't know we thought well that's a really creepy idea to kind of explore and so we just it kind of started to snowball and we thought of it in a feature format at first and then we said well it's just there's a way to make this very very believable and i know there's a lot of comparisons to blair witch style and and you know uh falling under that category but at the end of the day we took a page out of sasha baron's born at and brandy you know with stripped away the comedy and put it in a horror setting and that's

why we used brandy for and brandy was great at doing it she's very disarming and we were putting ourselves in live situations secretly telling the story not everybody that we were so it just started to get uh it started to take form and that was the plan and we you know we scripted it all out and when you make a movie like this you better be ready to call audibles And so that was the beginning. And hopefully, you know, the biggest compliment we can get is how real it feels and what to a lot of people. And I, you know, I hope you can continue to keep that alive. How was the process going from the original 2011 idea to the first full-link movie to now the sequel?

Go ahead, Zach. Yeah, so we made the original original in 2011, like you said, and then that's when Stephen Schneider called me after he had seen it and said, you know, this is a really fresh take on this genre because this is the first movie that I've seen that is real until it isn't. And I can't really tell you where that line is. And so, you know, then with him coming aboard, we got to go into the studio and have them put up some money to call it a remake of that movie just with, better cameras, better sound, and just a little bit more of a kind of a scare type attitude, reshooting that. So it was a great experience to be able to make a movie completely on your own dime and, you know, super independent and then be able to make a movie kind of within the studio system to learn the ropes of that as well.

So that kind of, that got us to part one. And then, you know, we always wanted to complete this story. we felt like part one was half of the story we wanted to tell and that's why we chose to kind of make part two pick up exactly where part one left off and we're just fortunate enough that part one

got you know the kind of the following that it did in order to justify the sequel cool how long did it take to film each movie and how much of what was film was made it or what made it to the movie I'm sorry it took

about three weeks on the road and then you do your more contained finalities take a little bit more time you know maybe an extra week with that but you are you're shooting in in different cities events haunts where you're not able to if you mess up there is no tomorrow

like when we shot at the zombie pub crawl you know you got to make sure you get your scene in that night because it's not going to take place on Sunday right So, yeah, so that was really, it's, you know, it's an experiment in throwing the actors in the fire. And I think by three movies that we've done now with the same actors, they've just gotten better and better. And, you know, they're on their toes at all moments.

So, yeah, but it's about three weeks or so. And then a shit ton of posts because there's so much footage and kind of molding it that way is a pretty long process. That's awesome. Good scene. It seems pretty rare these days that you guys, you keep the same core group that sticks together, and you said you'd been friends since you were kids. You guys obviously spent a lot of time together in super close quarters, the whole tour van RV thing. What was the dynamic like? I mean, were you guys like ready to slit each other's throats or was the chemistry routine you really good and everybody got along?

How did that work? The chemistry is great. I mean, even on our days off, we ended up hanging out together. You know, there's, yeah, you try to bring in him, and Mikey's really my brother, but I wanted that dynamic for even if we have to argue on screen, you need that to kind of seep out and help with the believability factor. So everything was kind of calculated on who we used and why we used them. But when you really, really just take a simple look at it, it's about chemistry. and I think a lot of especially found footage, they don't do that.

They don't let their characters breathe. And it's unfortunate because you shouldn't root for somebody to die, but you find yourself doing that. You find yourself doing that a lot in horror. And some of these actors just met each other, probably a week before rehearsals. And that's just not something we wanted to explore. We wanted to set ourselves apart from what we thought is a mistake

in a lot of found footage movie. because the root of the word is supposed to be real footage that somebody found. You're going to lose that feeling at five minutes if the people are cardboard cutouts. Yeah, and I came across a lot more real because of that, I think. Cool. With you guys coming up with the blue skeleton idea and researching haunts, what were some of the craziest things you've seen? Well, we've heard of, so one happened to us, we did the, we did a press tour for,

for part one. And so we started in Los Angeles, went all the way through Austin up to Telleride, all an RV. And so we had like a wrapped RV. Quas, I liked the movie, but we just,

we did it in real life and went and talked to scare actors and went to different haunts and did like signings and stuff like that. And it was really, really, really fun at eye opening and cooler to see a lot of these scare actors, they don't, nobody put them on screen before. You know what I mean? Like,

and a lot of people didn't even know about, things outside universal horror nights are not scary farms. But it's the Mon Pard guys that, one, Bolzac and I find the most creative. But then we end up in New Mexico a little bit off the beaten path, and it was almost like it was a little too meta and weird. You know, this guy was telling us, you've got to try this haunt.

And so our dumbasses went and did it. And we left the outskirts of Albuquerque and went to this haunt. and it turned out that all of a sudden we had bags over our heads both zach and i had shotguns pressed against our back up under our shirts and mike got separated and they blindfolded him and kicked him off about a 15 foot cliff and yeah into so it turns out it's into a foam pit for him but he he was his he was his mind was just gone in he he said it felt like a hundred feet when you didn't know what was going on they locked me, I'm a big guy, they locked me in a small box with holes in it, and then all of a sudden

you were getting sprayed with water. It smelled like piss, and I'm getting thrown down the hallway that's going back and forth. I'm just going up against the walls. And then I end up finding Mikey, who's almost the point of tears in this like cave going, we got to get the fuck out of here. And so we end up, we end up making it through, but they, it turns out there's a, they had 120 piss outs that year. where people pissed their pants and had to leave. Okay, that was my next question.

Have you guys ever been to the House of Shock in New Orleans? I hear it's kind of insane. Is that true? Well, what's funny is so we first learned about it. Have you guys seen the original doc? No, I haven't seen it.

I knew Pantara was involved in it, though. Right. Yeah, well, no, but no, the original doc of House of Octoberville, part of the 2010. Yeah. We want to, man. Yeah.

It's on the Blu-ray, but anyway, there's a scene where this guy introduces us and tells us we have to go to House of Shock. Okay. Yeah, and so that was our first introduction to it. We had not been there. We had planned on doing part of the sequel there, but we had kind of already done New Orleans, and that's where, you know, the finale of part one is. So, and they were closing down. They had like a Kickstarter campaign.

And we tried to help them out to try to make sure they kept their doors open. So I'm not sure the status of House is shock right now. But I know that they were losing their lease or something. But, yes, we've heard there's crazy stuff happening down there, but we've never personally done it yet. Well, listen, one thing we really liked about the sequel was the way you guys expanded out. You're talking about like ending up in New Orleans in the first one. You know, it's pretty much like Texas and Louisiana in the first movie. and then, of course, you know, the next one takes us to haunts and events in different states.

Are there, I mean, are there any plans in the future? I don't know what you guys can and can't talk about, but, you know, I don't know if you guys have plans to keep this thing going. I mean, it seems to me it would make a great weekly TV show. Especially around October. Yeah, we'll say that the haunt community is way bigger than us, and there's a lot more places to explore. All right. Fair enough. The zombie one was the one that I, the zombie run was one that I was really interested in.

And you guys had a really cool scene in the second movie with your zombie run in Georgia. It looked like it was on the set of like a big budget movie. It kind of speaks volumes to the organizers that are so passionate and they're willing to set something up like this. How realistic was that? Well, that's actually a military training facility. So they do, like for, you know, disaster training, you can see that there's cars in water and, you know, swing sets on, you know, submerged. And so that's, they actually do the training there. It's a billion dollar facility.

And I don't know how they got access to it. And I'm just thankful that they gave us access to their, their zombie 5K because that production values just was pretty amazing. We could have shot an entire movie there. I mean, it's, it, with the. with the subways, the high school in there. I mean, it was phenomenal. It was just an amazing setting. And that's why we didn't want it.

We wanted to make sure it was tough in that scene to, like there are scenes that are cut from there because it was more important to explore the grounds. And that two-minute scene kind of plays like a music video. But I just thought it was just such an amazing place that we needed to show the audience as much of it as we could. Yeah, very, very well done. Very well done. That was probably one of our favorite parts of the second movie. I want to go do it now.

Fuck, yeah, we want to go do it, man. I'll talk about that earlier. You guys should. It's awesome. Hey, which films or filmmakers would you guys say were the biggest influences on the two films? On the two films? Like I said, the Borat thing story-wise is something that we really looked at. I've always enjoyed Hitchcock.

and it's really tough because when you say found footage, when you say found footage and you look at these movies, you're like, well, how does Hitchcock have? Look, there's a lot of ways to dissect something in a story. Like even the opening shot over the water was kind of our homage to lost boys a little bit with that flying over the water, over Santa Cruz, you know. So there's just, there's so many influences in there. It's kind of a melting pot.

Some of the, some of the music, the compositions are very, Bernard Herman, you know, who Hitchcock always used, like, looking at that style and not copying it in any way, just being influenced by it. So there was a little bit of that because it shouldn't fit in found footage, and hopefully we found a way a loophole in to do that because it was important to just have a sequel, have a little bit of a different feel, but still play by the rules. Well, for the first movie, you guys kind of cleaned up at the Macawb Fair Film Festival. I mean, what was that experience? like was that expected at all or a big surprise um we didn't we didn't get to fortunately go to that we uh you know the brandy winning best actress that was awesome and then we best poster there was a bunch of stuff that was it was great um we were shooting at the time so we weren't able to go um but we were able to go the edinburgh film festival which was the uk premiere which was really a great experience because

that's filled with like oscar bait movies and we kind of had no business there in some way You know, but we had this, the director of the festival was the movie Terrified her, and she really enjoyed it. And they flew us over there and we spoke. And that was a really cool experience going to Scotland. And with that, we were flown over to London to speak to all the haunt owners in the UK. That was really, really cool because secretly we were just wanted to talk to them and see how they were doing things different than we were, you know, over in the States. Nice. Bobby, I have a question for you.

I noticed you had a background in baseball. How did you get into acting? Was it just right place, right time, or did you have an agent seeking rolls out for you? It actually went. I've always wanted to do film, and UCLA came in at the last second to offer a scholarship. I was going to the University of Texas, but I always wanted to do film. And then I figured at the last second, and Texas, that was a nice film, program, but UCLA or USC was number one and number two at the time.

And I felt like this was a way to kill two birds because I always, I always enjoyed film over baseball. Baseball is a huge part of my life, but it was a lot of work. And I just, it was such a different part of my life. But film, since I was five, has been my passion. and so when I had finished, when I'd finished playing ball, I decided to go to grad school instead of continue playing baseball. But I got a better education on set playing, doing sports stunts and being, Zach Snyder gave me my sag card, you know,

and watching guys like that work back right, you know, right after he got out of Donna the Dead, and they needed a double for Roger Clemens. And so I told them, I said, well, I'm pretty sure that Clemens can do it better than I can. And they're like, well, he has to pitch the next day. So, and I'm a lefty. So they had to flop the entire shot.

And so write his name backwards and do everything. So I just pitch left-handed and they flopped the shot. But being on set like that to watch those directors at the time work, it was so educational. And I just tried to soak it all in. And so that doing a lot of the stunt work. And I had acted in high school and throughout school, but that was my kind of in just being a sports specialist with that. And so I was able to be part of really big movies and even commercials, but with big directors today. So that was a nice, that was honestly better schooling than film school is.

Man, that's strong words there. So I've got a question for Zach. Hey, Zach, man, from your perspective, how did you enjoy acting in this film? I mean, do you have any interest in getting into any other acting roles moving forward? Are you more interested in the development side of things? Yeah, no, it's an interesting question because we're doing so many roles in the film that you do have to put on one hat and then take it off and put the other one on. And it would both, Bobby and I have laughed that to do one job would feel, you know, so interesting on a film because we've just been so immersed in doing three things. things for this and and sometimes even more than that uncredited. So I enjoy the acting in this,

I enjoy the acting in this movie because of Bobby and I knowing where we want to go with the story. And so that's why we originally put ourselves in it is so that when we were on set and had to, you know, kind of adapt to what was being thrown our way, we still knew where we had to go. And so we could throw out a line of dialogue, you know, maybe off script that kept us, kept the story moving in the area that we wanted it to go. And because we didn't want Brandy and Jeff and Mikey to know exactly what we were doing the whole time, especially Brandy, you know, when we send her through the haunts, she goes, we are rolling for her first walkthrough, even though Bobby and I have walked through several times.

Okay. So being able to have a character that is in the movie that kind of knows a little bit more and can manipulate things a little bit is very helpful. So, so yeah, as far as the acting, I think. I think that services the story. And I think both Bobby and I would say we, you know, our development and writing and producing and directing is kind of more where our head is at. That's awesome.

You guys had some pretty heavy hitters on the production side. How did you guys get involved with Todd King? He's involved in some pretty high-end stuff. Yeah, no, Todd was great. The studio actually introduced us to him. and he you know having having a guy who's made the you know probably 30 plus movies that he has is it's great because you learn so much about you know there's a big there's a well there's a thin line between the business side and then the 12 year old and all of us that you know you're getting

to make a movie and you still love that and there's so much you know wonder and excitement on set and then there's a big business side where you got to wrangle in you know I I think that on houses two, or sorry, in Houses 1, there was over 100 crew members. And that's a lot to handle when you're shooting at live sets to pick up and leave. You know, that was when we did it in the 2010, you know, we're talking about six, seven people moving to and fro, going to another haunt shooting. That doesn't happen when you're basically picking up a small town and moving them to a new location. So having somebody really experienced in that was very helpful. What was the difference between making the first and second film?

Was it an easier experience? Did you make any mistakes from the first one that you were going to stay away from making the second? I think that there's pros and cons, I guess, to both. We wanted to expand the world, so we were really excited about the drone work. And so that was new to us. And then, you know, in the back of your head, you got to stick with your vision on stuff. But we also wanted to make sure we had a little bit more of a finale than kind of the ambiguous ending of part one. You know, to try to service everybody is just impossible.

It's, it really is impossible because, you know, some people are going to want part two to be, you know, much scarier. And to us, it's always been a Halloween adventure movie. If you get scared along the way or there's tension, cool. other than that, vicariously come experience Halloween with us, and I hope you enjoy the story. You know, we don't, if it has your jump scares and a little bit of over the top of us every six, seven minutes, like the formula says,

you're not going to have the same feeling that we want you to have of it being genuine and real. I want you to get caught up and thinking, am I just watching these guys travel along? And then we're going to keep going, and then we'll flip it on your head by the end. um so you you know you you definitely learn and you just hopefully hone your craft better and better each time but this was just a really really fun experience and especially getting to

shoot where we got to shoot all over the united states it was awesome you know except for eating fucking zombie brains in front of 30,000 were they as bad as y'all you know they were disgusting I literally debated. I could have for the movie, it would have been a funnier scene. I almost threw up on all the photographers on purpose, because I could have done it on cue. They were that nasty.

Oh, shit. Probably would have been. Yeah, what a crazy scene that would have been. And I'm about to do it in my head. I'm literally like, okay, I'm going to do this. And then I turned to my left when I see Mikey quit. And he quit the contest. And I went, damn it.

I was like, now the scene will be ruined. I got to still go. toe to toe and stay in the ring with Kobayashi, even though I'm getting smoked, it was more like, then it became this drive to, okay, the best of all time is right next to me. I'm going to finish the game, whether I lose or not. I'm just going to, I'm going to finish it. So, you know, we see it through. Yeah, so I saw it through. We said to throw up for later. There was a lot of really cool mask in this movie, especially the Porcelain Dawn mask, who I think is going to be an iconic look. creepy

what was the inspiration behind these masks and who made them it's a composite effects they're really an incredible company out of New Orleans

they do a lot of the custom fitting and high quality stuff and so they're behind that mask and I've heard there's a few other masks

that pop up you know throughout that they that we can you know give them credit for too, but then there's a, the blue skeleton kind of team is Dave Manzingo, who's also an incredible maskmaker, and we've gotten to work with him on the first and second movie. So it's, you know, and I like that that it's, you know, I like the diversity in all the,

you know, that some of the scare actors bring their own masks. And then we've making some masks with Dave and then porcelain is, is CFX. So it's, it really gives a different look and a feel. Right. A lot of detail, especially in the clown mask that we thought would be a lot of fun. And you probably don't get to see it as well with the one shot and the cameras in the, like I was with found footage. But, you know, we had never seen one of the guys has, you know, cotton candy or candy corn as teeth. And then we used the gag.

Yeah. And then we used the gag balls, like the gag sex balls as the red noses instead because we saw it. That looks really fucked up, and I just think I'm going to rape by a clown. Right. We just wanted to try to bring just small details of, we've seen clowns a thousand times, we've seen skulls. And part of the reason with the skull masks, the way they are, is they are generic, but kind of on purpose. So they can just blend in with a crowd that could be around you. And there's a couple shots in the movie in part two where they're there in the crowd, but you may not see them.

Yeah. We saw him. It was kind of a trip, man. All right, excellent. So the drone you guys added in the sequel was pretty prominent. We thought it was used very effectively. Better, I would dare say, than Wingard's Blurwich, and we're Wingard Fife's. Yeah, a little bit.

He's our number one reviewed director, actually, of our show. So we love you, Wingard, but I thought it was used more effectively in your movie. But, I mean, do you guys agree that affordable and accessible technology like this is really going to help indie filmmakers realize their vision and stay within budget? Well, that's a $60,000 helicopter shot, you know, in a normal feature 10 years ago. That's what we were thinking, man, when it was opening. Yeah, you know, yeah, so that's an impossible shot to get for indie filmmakers until now.

So I do, and I know that it was probably, you know, a no-no a couple years ago for found footage, but now, as long as that's why it was important, Zach and I wanted the drone to be a character. So even though as simple as that scene is with Jeff opening up his Halloween present, is that's now, we now have an excuse and why it's used. So those big wide establishings, those aerial shots above while we're driving, they're now, they now have a reason to be there and still fall under our found footage rules. Yeah, man, they were definitely great. So you guys talked about Kobayashi.

Does Mikey have any plans to do anything else like Feed the Beast or maybe a road trip show with Kobayashi? since you guys know him now, y'all are brothers? I love that idea. I wish he did. You know, Mike's really good at that. Feed the Beast was such a cool idea, too,

that it was just kind of man versus food, but everything after midnight. So wherever people go drunk to eat around every city, and we've all, you know, looked at places like, what's open at three, you know, in Chicago or Dallas or whatever.

So that was a really cool show. And so hopefully they'll be able, he can explore some, more like that as well in the future because he's a foodie he's he's a chef he's you know that's kind of his kind of his deal and once he started doing that I thought he'd be a perfect addition to our group um when we did it in the beginning because he's ultimately making that same show just replace food with haunts and he's always very natural for him to make that transition except zombie brains quitter um are there any causes or charities you guys would like to talk about

that you're passionate about? Surprisingly enough, that it doesn't have anything to do with haunt or horror, Zach and I wrote a children's book in the off time to maybe find some levity, some lightness out of this, you know, getting stuck into the Halloween world

because I had had two babies, I guess, since part one. And so we just, we literally wanted to tell a story a different way, and it's about the ocean, it's using narwhals, because we never really seen that be a character. And so anyway, 10% of the proceeds from that goes to the ocean foundations

and preserving the ocean and stuff like that. It's not horror-based, but yeah, that's kind of what we've been working on on the side. I've also worked with kids in the autism community for the past 15 years. So special needs kids definitely have a place in my heart. Awesome. That's awesome. Well, hey, what else do you guys have coming up that you're able to? to talk about it this time?

We can be vague. We also, we spent the past eight months writing a script for some of the producers of Walking Dead, and hopefully that will be a production in March. So that'll be a normal feature. It'll still be in horror,

but it won't be found footage. So we're excited about that and kind of making a different foray into that world. So that's been a lot of work, but it was nice to kind of bounce around stories so you feel fresh, you know, so you're not kind of tunnel vision into one thing. So that was another big part of this year. Awesome.

Well, listen, I found houses, too. These guys will tell you I'm like the iTunes guy here. And that's where I found it, like right away. It's available for sale and rental. Where else can our listeners find these films, especially the new one that just came out? So you can see in theaters and 10 major cities. The list is on the Facebook site. for the movie and then

all the normal haunts for lack of better word voodoo voodoo Amazon you know direct TV any of your cable providers have it as VOD

so I think it's basically the worst Google Play they all have it awesome any other things you guys want to plug websites Facebook page group yeah you can find me a Bobby Rowan On Twitter, Zach is Zach Andrews 13.

But yeah, just basically enjoy Halloween. It's upon us. Go to your local haunts. Go see the movie. Go see any horror movie. But go support a bunch of the local haunts around your area because they do an amazing, amazing job. Outstanding.

We're hitting one up this week. Right on which one? Creepy Hollow. Creepy Hollow. That's right. Ah, creepy Hollow. They were in contact with us about wanting to be in the sequel. and we ended up doing more events stuff.

But yeah, oh, you guys are Texans. That's right. Like us. Yeah. I grew up in Dallas. Right on. Where? What high school?

Duncanville. Okay. We were both playing out. Oh, okay. We probably played you a few times. I didn't play baseball, but I had a lot of buddies that did. Right on. Cool.

Well, you guys enjoy this weekend. Enjoy the Halloween season and we'll talk soon. Yeah. I appreciate it, man. Thank you. Hey, thank you guys so much. All right. So here we are with Harold.

the grandmeister of the fucking creepy hollow haunted house what's going on man we're not swimming we're currently not having to swim around the property so that's good at one point we had to have boats and jet skis right so well I was going to ask you about that man I saw the Facebook post and shit like that where you guys were basically a water park for a little bit what happened well we got 51 inches of rain in about three days and the night that really hurt us bad one night we got over 20 inches and one night we got over 20 inches and one night, along with all the rain we had, which basically some places in the woods that you went through are under six feet of water. And yet here we are, getting our fucking nut scared off. Yeah, we had,

we had over 100 to 200 people come out, including our own people and people from the community. We worked 20 to 22-hour days, and we worked non-stop to get this place ready to be open. And this is after the hurricane, after you've already replaced everything. Yeah, yeah. To replace it again now. Yeah, we had, we had an electrical storm come through that fried everything, and we had to go back and replaced that all as well. So we got hit twice. And that storm didn't hit anywhere else. It was like a three-mile radius in our area. Centerpoint came out the next day and they said they got so many calls from this area because it just blew out of everybody's. Everything, every modem we had, all our internet was out. Everything was down. Like just unbelievable. All right. So we've been through the

three main attractions. Explain to our listeners what the fuck we just saw. Well, you know, in the woods, you came into contact with a bunch of backwoods, inbred hillbillies that probably tried to kiss you a little bit and do other things. Yeah, a little bit, actually. Yeah, yeah. A few unnameable creatures, unspeakable creatures out there that hang out in the woods. They're going to invade your personal space, I promise you. And a shitload of chainsaws.

Yeah. We like chainsaws. Yeah, we did too, man. Yeah, we like chainsaws a lot. And that's basically the woods. Chainsaws, heel, billy, zombies. All right, but we saw two other attractions, too, didn't we? Yeah, you got pitch black and 28th Care Factory.

I saw a shitload. the clowns. Pitch Black is a shitload of clowns and a lot of 3D popping out at you. I mean, we had Stewart come in from stewardism designs. He's one of the top 3D painters in the world, really, and he did a kick-ass job in pitch black. Like, that artwork is phenomenal. Yeah. So 3D glasses, you go through and everything pops out at you. It's kind of amazing and super trippy. Yeah, it was pretty great. Yeah, and the reason we call it pitch black is we have a special surprise for you at the end of pitch black. Yeah. We, wait. We went through it, but we want to talk about that.

What's the third attraction you have here? Third attraction is 288 Scare Factory. You know, we have a very big problem in this area with pigs, wild pigs and stuff. So we decided. I saw a few out there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We saw it do a little bit experiments on, you know, try to fix the flu, you know, swine flu and all that. Right.

Yeah, things kind of went wrong, you know, and you just have to go in the factory and figure out what happened. But things got a little out of control, so we had to cage some of them up. And some of them got loose and just make sure you get all your shots after you come out. Some of your doctors are a little off the reservation on that one. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They had some special training. All right, when we got here, we went into like a house of a freak show type thing or something like that, didn't we? Yeah, World of Audities.

What was that? It's our play on Ripley's Museum kind of, you know. I went to Ripley's in San Antonio, and I really liked the way the entertainment value. Because some people come to haunts, you know, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, Can't be scared, right? And that's the way I am. I go to haunts all over the world to do research and stuff, you know, and I can get entertained. I love to be entertained, but it's really hard to scare me, you know, because I'm just, I mean, I guess I'm desensitized.

So we try to make sure here, if you're a type of person that you're not going to get scared, we try to make damn sure you still leave and you've got your $30 worth because we've got so much you can do. We got the voodoo lounge. We got the World of Valleys. We got the freak show. We got dancers. We've got a voodoo ceremony that takes place. I mean, you get everything here by the back massage unless you're. you know, pay extra.

So what's up? I'm just saying. Let me ask you a question. We just walked out of a freak show, dude. What the fuck was that all about, man? That's some of the craziest shit. We have the only free show in Houston, Texas, and one of the only freak shows at a haunted house in Texas itself.

And we've got some of the top performers in the United States, and one of them just got featured on a national TV show. So they're really badass of what they do. The stuff they do I would never fucking do, ever try because I don't want to die or you don't have any knives thrown at you no I don't need knife stone at me stuck in me across me the side of me or I don't need to you know stick stuff up my nose and inhale weird things and you only you only saw part of it they have four or five different shows they do a night they do the one with the blades they do

the one with fire they do one and the last one we do at night is called the extreme show it's at 11 o'clock and it's called the extreme show and it's called the extreme show and it's called the show for a reason. And coming up soon, we're about to start at midnight and 18 and up after our show. Okay. I think we'll be here. Yeah. That one's going to be crazy. We haven't started that one yet because we got to still promote it. Right. But you're welcome to come back out when we start doing that. And that's going to be a special 18 and up after our show because these guys do crazy stuff. And a lot of the stuff they do, we can't really do at our freak show here because it's open to the family, you know, general public. But we are going to ID an 18 and up after our show.

That is nothing. It's so much more extreme than the extreme show. Like, it's super extreme. And I gave this dude a tip. He had me staple it with a staple gun to his face. Yeah, and partner what the Outta Hour show is, you get to staple it to his nuts. Yeah. Well, there you have it.

I mean, what else could you ask for? Yeah. You can get brisket and staple some shit to somebody's nuts. I mean, yeah. Let me ask you this. So, y'all, how long have you been doing this? Five years? We've been at this location for six years.

Okay. But we've been doing haunted houses for about 15 to 17 years. All right. So what's the craziest bullshit you've ever seen? Like, have you ever had an ambulance come up or somebody had to be taken in an ambulance? We had a lady last year going to shock in our hallway where those body bags are moving and stuff. They freaked her out so bad.

She went into shock and we had to, they had to come in with a stretch her and get her out of the hallway because she just would not move. She was paralyzed and come to find out she didn't take her medicine, whatever kind of medicine she needs to take to keep from going into shock. You probably need to take that before you come to a haunted house. Yeah, might be good. And then last year, one of the craziest things that happened last year, we had a lady come out running out of the woods.

And you know, we have that alleyway right there, Dead Man's Alley. Two cops were standing there. And she dropped all her clothes off right there in the middle of the alleyway and just started pissing all over the place. They probably thought it was part of the show. And she's like, I can't hold it. I can't.

They scared me so bad. I got to piss. So, and the cops, you know, they tried to, like, shield her and stuff. It was splashing. The cops got it splashed all over. Because we have cops for security. They had it splashed all over their legs. And they were like, we don't make enough for this.

Well, you're the one that jumped over there in it. Maybe you liked that. I don't know. She legit pissed herself. All over. I mean, we find, like, we sell diapers at the ticket booth. And a lot of people buy them because they know they're probably going to need them because they can't handle it.

But some people don't buy the diapers. And when we clean the next day, people have, shit down their legs on the floor and they get really yeah no way man no no seriously people people shit down their legs they get so scared they shit down and a lot of it is out in the woods where we can wash it off the sidewalk at the end you know where it gets a little crazy a lot of them shit down their legs right there but i went to the bathroom first yeah that's what we try to tell them you notice we have porta potty's right there where you buy your ticket so you can kind of relieve yourself one year we made a mistake right we didn't put them over there we

put them all on this side so nobody could use the restroom before they bought you know before they came in oh that was a huge mistake yeah everybody came out like I mean so many people pissed themselves so we put them over there as a courtesy to the customers so they wouldn't have to be embarrassed by pissing themselves what's awesome when they all piss themselves what's awesome when it starts getting cold which very rarely happens here but towards the end of October when they come out it's easy to spot them because the steam is coming off their pants so we call them steamers that's our name for them so we keep track how many steamers we get a night.

It's a new category in The Walking Den. Yeah. All right, so we're going to be probably recording this like Tuesday. We're going to put it on Tuesday with a couple of interviews we've had and stuff like that. How are you going to be open? What are your hours? I mean, how do we come out here and take advantage of this? We're open on Fridays and Saturdays for the most part from 7 till midnight.

We're open the last two Sundays of October from 7 to 10. We're open Halloween night, of course, and we're open the first weekend of November, and that's our blackout weekend. And it's really one of our more popular weekends because you have to go through all this with just a glow stick with the lights off. And the characters can take your glow stick. That sounds fun. Yeah. Yeah.

They can take your glow stick. So we keep track and we give awards. The characters end up with the most glow sticks. They won't like tackle you for them, but they will try their best to get it, you know. So after Halloween is almost the best show. Yeah, it's a crazy show. And that's also our Day of the Dead weekend as well. So we not only have the blackout going, but outside.

A lot of our characters flip over into all day of the dead makeup, you know, sugar skulls and all. And we have a sugar skull contest for our customers to get involved in, and they're allowed to come out here and get into the contest with their best sugar skull makeup. And on Halloween night, we open up early. We open up at five, and so the kids can come through and trick-a-treat. They trick-or-treat up and down Dead Man's Alley. And that's all free. There's no charge for that.

They can come out with their kids. Last year, we were packed with kids, and we give away candy, and that's all free to the community that wants to come out to a safe place. place and trick-a-tree. So you talk about the kids coming out. What is the youngest? We take anybody. Yeah? We just tell the parents, I get that phone call every day. Is there an age limit? I said, no, there's no age limit. We just don't pay for the therapy. Well, that's fair. Yeah, we don't pay for the therapy if they needed it. What's the youngest one you've had come out? We'd probably had, I would say, a four to five-year-old came out. Yeah? And she was freaky as hell because she just laughed at everything.

Was that weird laugh? That's what we were wondering. Her eyes are real big, and she's like, I'm like, this is really weird. We were wondering who's the youngest kid that had the biggest balls and who's the biggest adult that was a pussy? Yeah, we've had, dude, we've had, I think, in my opinion, some of the biggest dudes, man, they wimp out fast,

grab the girlfriend, throw them at the character, they take off running. You know, that's cliche, right? They all do it. Like, they're so, oh, oh, I'm, I'm, I ain't scared of another. her and then that chainsaw comes out. Here, take her! I'm gone! They take her all running. Self-preservation. Yeah, survival of the quickest.

So what else are you involved in charity-wise? Because I know that you told me, when we met you guys at Comic Paloosa, y'all said you have some charities you're involved in and stuff like that. What are you involved in it? Yeah, we've been doing charity work every since we started. That's how we got into it. We were 100% non-profit working

with the Lions Club when we first started. The problem is we hit a barrier. And the barrier that we hit was we couldn't expand, we couldn't get any bigger unless we went professional. Because you can't put any money into it. You can't make any money. Everything we made went directly to charity. And we kept a very small percent for upgrades. Well, it's hard to get to the level that you want to get to that way.

So we had to change our marketing strategy and our whole business strategy and everything. And we went for profit. Charity is still up and foremost our main priority. They get a percentage of what we make before. anybody sees any money. As a matter of fact, we don't even handle our money. Lions Club International handles the ticket booth. They handle all our numbers. Everything is completely transparent parent. They know what we make before we even know what we make. And they get theirs off the top before bills, anything. They get theirs and then we pay the bills. We

pay to get everything done. We furnish actors with all their makeup, all their supplies, everything they need. We take our actors on a cruise or a big trip every year. Last year we took them to where we go last year? Now that was a small trip. Oh, we took them on a big two-story party bus to Six Flags in, uh, in Arlington is what we did. The year before that, we took everybody on the cruise to cause them on Mexico. That was such a, that was such a hit. This year, we're taking them again on a cruise to cause them on Mexico. Nice. And all they have to do is have perfect attendance. That's it. Just come every night because the thing is, without our actors, without our staff, this place

isn't nothing. So we know how important it is that they're here every night to entertain the crowd. So we give them that little carrot out there so that they come. We also do many trips for them. We take them like laser tag. Like he said, we do all kinds of stuff. We do four or five parties a year for our actors. We do a big Fourth of July party out here. We do a preseason party, end the season party.

Every night they get awards. We do end the season awards. Our people are the heart of this place. So we do every and anything for them, right, to keep them motivated and to let them know that they're a part of something bigger. Now, as far as the charities, we work with Lions Club International. All our funding goes through them as far as the charity money. and then we disperse it through them. We have a board that votes on different charities

based on the needs of the local community. All the money that we donate goes to the local community. It's not shipped off somewhere where some executive CEO is getting fat off of it. It all goes to help people in need here. Part of what we do for charities, all the local youth homes, they all come through here for free.

We take care of all them. We help the I-Class Fund organization that's through Brizori County, anybody that can't afford vision prescriptions or glasses or contacts or anything, that's all paid for them for free. We also do home delivery meals, which is like meals on wheels, all the elderly people in the county. We've kept that operation running by ourselves for several years

because they don't get donations from anybody else. And so we make sure the people that are old and they can't get out of their house to get food, we make sure they're fed every day. We also take care of Lions Camp. That's a camp for handicapped kids that can't get to a regular camp, summer camp that camp is specifically equipped so those kids can go have a good time at that camp because they've got all the equipment so they can still swim they can still run they can still bike

and climb and all that stuff um we work with so many other charities what other charities do we work with let's see nicest scary clowns i've ever seen in my life our motto is we scare because we care yeah there we go yeah we scare because we care and uh all of our people here if you talk to them individually, they're into it and they're here because they know they're making a difference. And we love to scare the hell out of people. I mean, you can't deny. A lot of us are here because we make a difference in the community, but at the same time, we get to make you piss yourself.

Right. I could tell when I was walking through when they got me, because they got me a few times, a bunch, actually. And every time they did, and they were like, ah, yeah, I got you. And I was like, mm, my, motherfucker. All right, so if I'm driving from Houston, how do I get here? All you do is take 288 south, Exa County Road 60. You can hit Beltway 610.

You know, all those 59, 45, they all connect with 288. So you can find 288, you can find us. We're out here just south of Highway 6, about 10 minutes south of Highway 6. We're 27 minutes from downtown. So whether you're coming from Sugar Land, downtown Houston, or you're coming from Clear Lake, you can get here from any of those places within 20, 25 minutes. All right, man, it's the best 30 bucks I've ever spent because I've gone through three amazing haunts for 30 bucks. I saw a freak show and all kinds of shit, man.

Yeah, and we went through like downtown traffic at rush hour to get here in an hour. Yeah, it wasn't bad. Yeah, and we're coming from the northside spring. So if you're Houston, man, took it out. We're getting a lot of recognition this year. I mean, last year we were so surprised Forbes magazine featured us as one of the top ten haunts in the nation. That's awesome. This year we got rated number one haunt in Texas on Scarefactor in Hauntworld.com and Scarefactor rate

as the top haunt in the nation. Yeah. Which is just unbelievable. You know, we've been here in this location for six years. We're getting recognized by our peers from all over the country and all over the world. We've had Glenn Hittrick here from Face Off. We've had so many celebrities coming through. We've had so many sports athletes coming through.

I mean, you name it. They're coming through here and they're having a great time. And we're really getting our name out worldwide. Yeah, we talked to the guys from the House's October built, the directors. And, I mean, they had, we told them we were coming out here this weekend. They had nothing but good things to say about you guys. Yeah, there's something that works with them. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. We can't say too much. Yeah. Yeah, there's something in the, you know, you know how it is. It's all good, man. Hey, we really appreciate it, man. Thank you so much for inviting us out here, dude.

Yeah. And one more time, yeah, give everybody the shout out, the name of the haunt, how to get here, how much it costs, and what you guys support. You can find us at creepy hollow haunted house.com. follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and you can follow our characters all up on that Snapchat. If you know all about Snapchat, you can call us at 1-800-357 dead. Make sure you come see us. We're open to the first weekend of November.

Lights out weekend. It's going to be a blast. We will scare the shit out of you, guarantee. All right, bad ayes. Thanks, man. All right.