Nightmare - New York's Original Haunted House

The production is billed "Nightmare - New York's Original Haunted House." I don't know about that. The web site is decent enough. The score is a mix of sounds (The soundtrack from Murder On The Orient Express, a heart beat, etc.) that sounds spooky enough although it becomes headache inducing after a short time. Which leads me to my complaint about most of these types of shows. They always seem like they're going to be more fun than they really end up being. Even when they're scary enough at first, the music is almost always too loud, the strobe lights become annoying, and the production values, even when professionally done, tend to be wasted because often little attention is paid to creating an interactive story for the audience. In other words, they're just noisier, gaudier version of the haunted house ride at the fairgrounds. Yet somehow they never capture the fun for me of the haunted house rides. Here's Newsday's review of Nightmare:

"Nightmare" was created on a $200,000 budget by the Psycho Clan _ four producers working with a group of young visual and theater artists who play off human fears with an edgy downtown twist. Each artist assaults viewers' senses in one room _ not with Halloween cliches like Frankenstein's monster or the werewolf, but with scenes that are all too real. Without giving away the gag, it all starts with something wet, warm and fleshy, flying at you in the dark. Ever been buried alive? Here's a chance to try. How about the ferocious barking dog that's about to bite your ankle _ but you don't know where it is. snip More David Lynch than John Carpenter _ that is, more witty and weird than straight-on shock _ the 30-minute "Nightmare" is staged on an entire rented 9,000-square-foot floor of the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center on Manhattan's Lower East Side.

What these Halloween spectacles need is more James Whale rather than David Lynch or John Carpenter.