The Music Box Theatre filled with people ready to get their, um, fill of horror goodness. Inside the stage was adorned with microphones while a live band rehearsed in front of it. As we stood outside in the lobby, one of the foley artists walked by with what looked to be a family-sized 3-pack of celery stalks. Somebody's bones were going to be broken.
WildClaw Theatre, the folks behind Deathscribe, put out the call for submissions months ago and the five finalists were to have their plays performed Monday night. They were:
Bags of Blood
Written by Daniel Caffrey, directed by Don Hall
The Most Beautiful Woman in the World
Written by Clint Sheffer, directed by Cecilie Keenan
The Dust Gods of Dr. Gaul
Written by Jude Mire, directed by Robert Breuler
The Skinny Man
Written by Scott T. Barsotti, directed by Katie McLean
Remembrance
Written by Chris Hainsworth, directed by Nic Dimond
As we took our seats, the band was playing a jazzy tune that wasn't far from the work of Angelo Badalamenti and so the night began with a David Lynch-like vibe. I went out for a smoke and ran into a bunch of my dorky gaming friends. It was hardly surprising to see these H.P. Lovecraft fans in attendance.
The show started a bit late but the emcee eventually got things going. First up was "The Most Beautiful Woman in the World". It took place in the 1910s. A doctor falls in love with a prostitute who is plagued by a very persistent madam who is reluctant to let her go. To free the woman from her bonds, the doctor performs some cosmetic surgery so that the woman can escape. Things go well until the couple believes they are being followed by the madam. Let's just say the woman takes her love of surgery a bit too far and ends up turning things inside out.
"Bags of Blood" followed. It brought some humor to the proceedings as two Floridian women in the present day sit on a porch and gripe about their kids. Mosquitoes are swarming and a truck which is to spray insecticide is nearing the neighborhood. The title refers to the human characters here who become the victims of some rather large blood suckers.
"The Dust Gods of Dr. Gaul" combined humor with a very Lovecraftian scenario. Again, one of the characters was a doctor. He is traveling with his wife to Africa to assist a friend of his who is also a doctor. The doc already in Africa is formulating a vaccine to help the natives who suffer from a dreadful disease. He describes the disease to his friend and shows him the vaccine under the microscope. This is followed by a dire warning. "It doesn't affect foreigners. I recommend you not take the vaccine. Don't take the vaccine." The vaccine turns out to be microscopic minions of a mad deity (Cthulhu?). He's infecting the locals to ensure the deity rises from its sleep. The end scene is classic with a crazed orgy of a ceremony bringing the god back to life and the doctor giving his best demonic laugh.
Outside during the intermission which followed, my friend Don, an experienced Call of Cthulhu RPG GM, noted that this play "…was something Tony (another CoC GM) and I would pull out of our asses for the Cthulhu Masters Tournament at GenCon."
One of the neat things about the festival was that, in addition to some music, there were radio "commercials" between the plays. For instance, three vampires shilled for the Four Moon Tavern while a couple English dandies and a zombie did the same for Deleece Restaurant, another sponsor of the fest. Our emcee thanked the horror/sci-fi memorabilia shop called Horrorbles out in Berwyn, a suburb of Chicago. Every time he mentioned Berwyn, those of old enough to remember the Son of Svengoolie repeated "Berwyn!" right back at him.
With the intermission over, the festival continued with "Remembrance". It had a novel way of telling its story, namely, via a series of audio diary entries from a doctor (I sense a pattern here) who discovered a way to treat Alzheimer's disease. As in Star Trek, the entries are dated. They begin with the doc noting the cure and how it regenerates the tissue in the brain. A kindly couple are introduced, with the wife suffering from the disease. The cure works – only too well. She recovers her memories only to relive the experiences all over again. For example, she gets angry at her husband for forgetting Valentine's Day – 1963. The woman continues to regress when it is discovered that her body is also reliving her past. When she recalls breaking a bone as a child, the same bone mysteriously breaks in the present. However, the worst news was that the "cure" has mutated and gone airborne.
Scott T. Barsotti, author of a previous WildClaw production, The Revenants closed out the night with his vaguely Blair Witchy "The Skinny Man". A seemingly abandoned house is the source of late night screams and a couple police officers investigate. They creep around the basement until a wall proves to have a space behind it. The wall is torn down to reveal a room with a bed in it. But the bed happens to be occupied by a very hungry guy. Let me tell ya, the foley artist did a lot of celery and lettuce crunching for this one.
An elite panel of judges did their thing and awarded the Bloody Axe to Chris Hainsworth for "Remembrance". Quite well-deserved.
Before the night was over, it was announced that WildClaw's next production would be William Peter Blatty's sequel to The Exoricst, Legion. Look for this play to open in March.
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