In search of a Halloween event to review for this column, I finally decided on 'Legends of Horror: 'Vampire Circus', presented by Captain Morgan at Casa Loma'.
While trying to summarize the experience, I kept coming back to my sister's review of Mamma Mia 2: "Do you want to see a movie musical titled 'Mamma Mia 2: Here We Go Again?' If yes, you're going to enjoy this movie."
Similarly: Do you want to go to 'Legends Of Horror: Vampire Circus, Presented By Captain Morgan at Casa Loma?' Do you want a fun horror romp without much history or fact? If you do, you will enjoy the experience.
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| My My, How Can I Resist Ya. Entrance to the experience. Photo courtesy of Samantha Kilpatrick. |
This experience was void of guides, in cloaks and hushed voices, speaking of grisly murders a hundred years past. It was not a tale of cold spots, and mysterious apparitions, and small objects going missing. It was a carnival haunted house. One of the groups in front of us included a man who brought a rubber chicken with us, who would squeak it at his companions when they were being 'chicken'. This set the mood. It's a fun group event; horror, like joy or a bottle of wine, is best enjoyed shared.
The horror maze itself was reasonably by-the-book. The maze included flashing lights, smoke machines, actors jumping out of bushes and from behind corners, hanging 'bodies' to push past, and animatronics rigged up to motion detectors to lunge at the visitor on their way past. Themes ranged all over the place. If you want a smorgasbord of horror, with everything from Phantom of The Opera, to werewolves, to cannibals, ghosts and demon children, Legends of Horror has you covered.
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| One of the performers in the haunted house, juggling flaming devil's sticks. Impressive, absolutely. Scary? The jury's out. Photo courtesy of Samantha Kilpatrick. |
There were also many acrobats, I'm entirely not sure why. They veered mostly away from the 'scary circus' theme, but still included a number of incredible acrobats, some on aerial devices and trampolines. I think I spotted only one murderous clown and no allusions to any of the other traditional horror elements of the circus. The acrobats felt included to simply bring credence to the subtitle of the show this year; contributing to the production value, but certainly not the fright of the experience.
After about forty-five minutes walking through various horror experiences in the grounds, you find yourself actually inside Casa Loma for the first time. Your first glimpse inside the castle itself is a bar.
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| In case you wanted a fortifying shot or a meal before going on to the rest of the Legends of Horror, or just to disrupt the mood. Photo courtesy of Samantha Kilpatrick. |
The second half of Legends of Horror takes place in Casa Loma rather than just on the grounds, and it is the piece of the experience I most wanted to talk about. The second half of the trip attempts to tap into the actual history of Toronto with the exact same level of tact and production value that the rest of the house had displayed.
That is to say: costumed actors, smoke machines, special effects and jump scares, set against the backdrop of actual historical events. It was so dark in the tunnel it was difficult to take photos, so please bear with me a moment while I talk about the exhibition on display, and how it was used in Legends of Horror.
"Toronto, The Dark Side" a permanent exhibition in the Casa Loma tunnels. The tunnel is covered on both sides by photos from The Toronto Archives, blown up and sorted into different 'Dark Sides' of Toronto's past, including fires, the depression, and Toronto's first plane crash Most notably was the photos titled 'the Plague Years', which were photos of real children treated for unnamed diseases at Sick Kids Hospital- given that the photos in question were from the 1920s, typhus? Cholera? Smallpox? Just getting vaccines?
Legends of Horror's Instagram post about Casa Loma, featuring their intervention in the tunnels.
Regardless of the facts of the photos, they served as the backdrop to the same sorts of effects that the rest of the experience featured. The photo was framed by a 'cage' of plastic bars, convincingly rusted. Between the photo and the viewer, was a bloody fake body on a bed which lurched at the visitor, and a mannequin of a girl in a bloody, old-timey dress covered in sores was lit by a menacing red light. Again, I emphasize: the backdrop was a blown-up black and white photo of a children's ward at a hospital circa 1920, and the foreground was 'look at how scary sick children are.'
Photos of the aftermath of the fires in Toronto's history were subject to their own genre-appropriate treatment. Red and yellow lights, crackling sound effects, a full-body replica of a man with horrible burns.
I spent the first half of the experience wishing that the Legends of Horror would engage more with the actual history of Casa Loma, and the second half deeply regretting my wish. I'm not sure if there is a tasteful way to plug into actual lived tragedy for the purposes of provoking titillating and exciting horror for the viewer, but I am certain that this isn't it. Perhaps it's unfair to demand a haunted house experience treat historical figures with the respect they deserve. In that case, I would vastly prefer they hung sheets over the photos and had an actor with a chainsaw chase us through the tunnel. I think this is the first time that I have found historical context detract from an experience rather than add to it.
Legends of Horror was exactly as advertised: a high quality, high budget, horror experience. But it certainly wasn't a historic experience, and it didn't tap into any ghosts that may have been haunting the premises. And it was weakest when it was trying to be.
