Reviews
Thrillpeddlers’ Shocktoberfest: A Seasonal Feast for the Senses
Linda Ayres-Frederick, S.F. Bay Times – Nov 1, 2007
Not every theatre serves its audience free home-made cookies before curtain, and by its Artistic Director. Such a welcoming gesture is typical of the open-hearted and open-minded atmosphere that Impresario Russell Blackwood creates to introduce the latest version of Shocktoberfest at The Hypnodrome. Also fitting to this show are the four short plays chosen from the “not for the faint of heart” repertoire of Le Theatre du Grand Guignol for which Thrillpeddlers is well known.
… It’s no wonder that Thrillpeddler’s must-see annual terror theatre tribute Shocktoberfest is now celebrating its eighth outrageous year. Who could pass it up!
V. Vale on S.F.’s Hypnodrome
V. Vale, RE/Search Blog – October 16, 2007
Without wishing to give away plots, or give “spoilers” (we hate spoilers so much that we never, ever read a movie review until AFTER seeing the film), let us rhapsodize that all the plays were instantly memorable – no doubt thanks to the shock imagery and theatrics – and that the 1929 “The Maker of Monsters” has not dated a day – in fact, if anything it’s more relevant, several hundred or thousand serial killers later. The Thrillpeddler original “The Colossus” will deeply disturb anyone who has ever been a parent, and “The Bloody Con” is electrifying, indeed. The three Mel Gordon-penned “Google: Fet-ish” episodes are up-to-the-minute illuminating and wryly amusing – see for yourself. The acting is so good you’d swear it was “real” – and gorgeous women act out their roles with a kind of fervor and attention to detail rarely seen…probably because the material is so good, besides being outrageous. Best of all, these are real living humans performing in real time just for you, the audience. This is a genuinely “human” scale experience. Live performance will always trump a “canned” film or DVD or CD – don’t be fooled…
A Grand Time at Grand Guignol
Linda Ayres-Frederick, San Francisco Bay Times – March 29, 2007
Tucked under the 101 freeway on-ramp at Tenth Street is the Hypnodrome, one of the secret hideaways of San Francisco alternative theatre and home of the Thrillpeddlers’ show Head Trips, which includes Orgy in the Lighthouse. With high technical production values, Thrillpeddlers lives up to their name, delivering thrills that stimulate the mind and other portions of the anatomy. The theater itself has a rear section reminiscent of an intimate Parisian casbah with softly draped, velveteen cushioned private “shock boxes” that are literally electrifying. The safer seats above the stage afford unobstructed viewing and are high enough to escape the liquids that might emerge from the stage.
Shocktoberfest 2006: Laboratory of Hallucinations
Nicole Gluckstern, SF Bay Guardian – October 25, 2006
Le Theatre du Grand Guignol, which literally means “big puppet show,” was a Parisian innovation most popular just before and during the decadent 1920s. It emphasized graphically depicted acts of necrophilia, mutilation, and homicide – plus the occasional sex farce for variety – in an uncomfortably intimate space. Alternating between moments of yuk-yuk humor and yuck-yuck horror, the Thrillpeddlers’ Shocktoberfest holds to this emphasis with a bloody grip. Starting on a light note, First Day opens with shopgirl Tess (Heidi Wolff) being shown around her new job, in which she’ll be vending scarves, shawls… and guillotines. “These things practically sell themselves!” deadpans Sadie (Frannie Pope). The Taxidermist’s Revenge serves up a hearty dram of chem-lab serum and an unexpected twist that had me literally cringing in my seat. The showpiece, though, is The Laboratory of Hallucinations, an adaptation from the original Grand Guignol’s most acclaimed playwright, Andre de Lorde. Playing on what may be a universal mistrust of medical experimentation, Laboratory oozes neuroses. Emotionally distressed wife Chantal (Alice Louise), superstitious housemaid Melanie (Heidi Wolff), and lobotomized homicidal maniac Stitch (Gary Dailey) are trapped in claustrophobic orbit around Dr. Gorlitz (Yusef Lambert) and his secret operating room. Deciding which one is the most insane is not the only cerebral struggle in evidence before the company’s signature lights-out finale. Read More…
Big, Bloody Puppet Show: Shocktoberfest 2006 Elicits Uncanny Glee
Erin Blackwell, Bay Area Reporter – October 19, 2006
Under a high-arched ceiling in the beautiful wooden-raftered space that is Thrillpeddlers’ permanent home, I watched Shocktoberfest 2006, a triple bill of one-acts presented in ascending order of gruesomeness. Here’s what you’ll enjoy: blood flow. The more obviously mechanical, the less motivated the spurt, the better. Gleefully, I watched one bright red arc after another issue from a line of victims’ arteries in Rob Keefe’s Taxidermist’s Revenge. Also creepily fun is seeing blood issue from a spigot or wiggly rubber tube, some into its intended basin, some onto the floor. Messiness is its own transgressive thrill. Read More…
Stage Fog: Horror and Blood
Karen McKevitt, SFist – October 17, 2006
Halloween wouldn’t be Halloween without a Thrillpeddlers Shocktoberfest!!, which features enough camp, sexual overtones and awesome makeup and special effects to rival the Castro Street shenanigans. Based on France’s now-defunct Le Theatre du Grand Guignol, Shocktoberfest!! features skits about a delusional taxidermist and a buxom chemist, a salesman who takes “rule of thumb” too literally and more. The stuff just writes itself, really. If you go, we highly recommend The Hypnodrome’s “shock boxes,” where you’re treated to some interactivity–or a private place to get down with your date in the dark. Read More…
Thrillpeddlers Warn ‘Sissies Stay Home’ Shock And Aw, Gross!
Chad Jones, Oakland Tribune – October 31, 2005
Tucked away under a freeway in San Francisco’s South of Market District, The Hypnodrome is home to the Thrillpeddlers, a troupe dedicated to spilling blood – stage blood – in the name of preserving and promoting the art form known as Grand Guignol. Read more…
Marvel At The Macabre at Shocktoberfest 2005: “Sissies Stay Home!”
Michael Leaverton, SF Weekly – October 26, 2005
Although the title of Shocktoberfest 2005: “Sissies Stay Home!” contains a command that can be safely ignored (Hellraiser it ain’t), there’s bawdy wickedness and a good quart of fake blood in these satisfying short plays. Here, bar wenches writhe on the stage and receive proper spankings; Blackwood, dressed as a schoolboy, flogs himself while reciting an anonymous ode (reportedly from Algernon Charles Swinburne) concerning the pleasures of teacher-student flagellation; autoeroticism is taught, demonstrated, and almost completed in a classroom; and a man dies by hanging, causing his sizable wang to rise to the occasion, resulting in a rousing bout of post-consciousness copulation with a formerly chaste lady beset by a limp. But the night’s real fake-blood extravaganza, A Slight Tingling, mocks the era’s medical nutters, with various metals (dental fillings, bullets) and a lady’s entombed penis (!) being ripped through flesh by “electro-magnetism.” It will definitely turn your stomach, as will the sight of Blackwood covered in gore, wearing women’s clothes, and hysterically killing everyone in sight. Read more…
Best Live Onstage Bloodbath
SF Bay Guardian “Best of the Bay 2005″, July 27, 2005
You’d have to take a time machine back to Paris, circa 1920, to get the kind of theatrical experience presented by the Thrillpeddlers. Company founders Russell Blackwood and Daniel Zilber worship at the altar of the Grand Guignol, the legendary, bawdy French horror theater known for its mastery of gruesome special effects: decapitations, scalpings, leprosy sores, and the like.With the battle cry of “Sissies stay home!” Thrillpeddlers routinely sell out their annual “Shocktoberfest” shows, held around Halloween for maximum spooky effect. Last year’s program featured a trio of plays, bringing forth a thing living in an old dark house, a saucy bearded lady, a desperate suicide, a surreal skeleton dance, and a special audience section equipped with William Castle style tingling seats. And since the company owns its own theater – the cozy South of Market Hypnodrome – there’s no need to worry about splattering on the walls.
Blood Bucket Ballyhoo
Karen McKevitt, SFist – August 17, 2005
Blood Bucket Ballyhoo is a damned good evening of gore, flirtation and expert special effects. The blood flowed and spurted in a satisfying bright hue, met with groans, hoots and laughs from the audience. In the show’s final climax, where a crossdressed Blackwood went ballistic, the effects were so thrilling that some audience members jumped across the aisle to hold onto their friends. It was the sort of ending that makes you want to see the next show.
Blood Bucket Ballyhoo
Chloe Veltman, SF Bay Guardian – August 3, 2005
“Blood Bucket Ballyhoo,” a triptych of Grand Guignol shorts adapted for schlock-horror impresarios Thrillpeddlers by Rob Keefe and Eddie Muller, explores the twilight zone of 19th-century French taste with the help of some of the most elaborate props you’re ever likely to stumble across outside of a dominatrix convention. A rat-infested Museum of Horrors — equipped with a real, working guillotine and a coffin for those unfortunate enough to be buried alive — is the setting for Lips of the Damned, a story about a cuckolded husband’s revenge upon his wayward wife and her lover, suggested by the 1906 French comedy La Veuve by Eugene Heros and Leon Abric. In The Drug (adapted from Rene Berton’s La Drouge, first performed in 1930), a bored, high-class lady is forced to confront a hideously disfigured ex-lover one night in a seedy Oriental opium den. Blood splatters and prosthetic body parts fly, but the lady — quite literally — cannot keep her eyes off the man she once destroyed. And in A Slight Tingling (inspired by the 1907 comedy Les Operations du Professeur Verdier by Elie de Bassan), a surgeon’s daughter attempts to find a pair of lost surgical scissors in the bodies of three of her father’s patients with the aid of an amazing magnetic contraption. Director Russell Blackwood and his cast of dedicatedly damned souls present a danse macabre of ketchup-red theatrics. “Blood Bucket Ballyhoo” is in the best of the worst of all possible tastes.
Welcome to the Hypnodrome
Chloe Veltman, SF Bay Guardian – October, 2004
Tucked away under a dark overpass in the nether regions of SoMa, the theater at 575 10th St. is the perfect setting for Welcome to the Hypnodrome, a gleefully unhinged evening of early 20th-century French kitsch.
Horror With A Touch Of Kink
Delfin Vigil, SF Cronicle – October 24, 2004
“There’s nothing more exhilarating than being murdered onstage,” swears actress Delfina Hasiwar. Her latest role: a bearded lady with coveted buttocks in the Grand Guignol-inspired performance of “Bearded Assets,” one of the three unique, antique one-act plays presented by San Francisco’s Thrillpeddlers troupe in its Shocktoberfest season, playing through Nov. 20 at the Hypnodrome Theater in San Francisco.
Shocktoberfest!! 2002
Amir Shadi, THEATREWORLD – November 4, 2002
There are times, we admit, when, weary of the virtuous boredom of the serious theater, and oppressed by the shrillness of new voices on the fringe ? which, like all newly born voices, seem capable only of screaming ? we want to see a play that is hilarious without apology, and appeals to our other, more animal instincts. In such cases, nothing could be better than the two short plays in Thrillpeddlers’ Shocktoberfest.
Shocktoberfest!! 2001
Silke Tudor, SF WEEKLY – October 3, 2001
The Thrillpeddlers are the only theater company in the United States actively translating and producing the bloody one-act horror plays and sex farces that made the Grand Guignol Theater one of Paris’ most popular tourist attractions during the 1920s. The company’s annual presentation of Shocktoberfest!! has become one of my favorite events of the Halloween season, which is saying a lot in this October-loving town.
Shocktoberfest!! 2000
Joe Mader, SF WEEKLY – October 25, 2000
Never mind the Castro — the best Halloween experience this year is at the Exit. There, the Thrillpeddlers celebrate the holiday in gruesome style with three scintillating adaptations from the Grand Guignol.
S.F. Thrillpeddlers Try To Bring Back Grand Guignol
Robert Viagas, PLAYBILL – July 23, 1998
If you thought Sweeney Todd was creepy, wait until you see the work of Thrillpeddlers, who describe themselves as “a company of artists, actors, writers, musicians, and technicians dedicated to creating a new era of live horror theatre and events in the tradition of Le Theatre du Grand Guignol.”
Fear of Science
John H. Harvey, SOMA Magazine – November, 1991
The most remarkable feat of the production was the way it was able to move fairly swiftly between laughter-producing and horror-producing moments in a way that would have seemed impractical to this reviewer if he had not witnessed it himself. The humorous moments were all created by the resonance of the action on stage with the well-known and well-loved cliches of horror fiction, whereas the moments of genuine horror were brought about by the penetration of the audience’s defenses against the unthinkable.
