Hollywood Gothique

With all the attention focused last week on opening of the Knotts Berry Farm Halloween Haunt and Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood, it was easy to overlook the other big Los Angeles Halloween event that opened its coffin lid on Friday: the Halloween Harvest Festival at Pierce College, including the Fright Fair Screampark. The daytime Harvest Fest runs continuously through October 31; the night-time Screampark runs on weekends and some weekdays in October (get full details here).

Fright Fair used to feature the Factory of Nightmares, a stand-alone walk-through that billed itself as “three haunts slammed into one.” Since expanding to include the Creatures from the Corn haunted trail, the Fright Fair Screampark has been a bit hit-or-miss – still good, but a little under-populated, as if the same number of monsters were trying to haunt a larger territory. Halloween 2009 saw Fright Fair regaining some of its former glory, as you can see from the embedded video. 2010 promises a new attraction, Insane Reaction.