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Las Vegas City Life Pick of the Week SUN.MAR.12 The horror-inspired Haunted Vegas sideshow starring "Ripley's TV" fire-eating geek Zamora precedes the Haunted Vegas tour in order to prime your senses for brain-stem level gooseflesh reactions while on the bus. However, the creators insist this is no "ghosts and goblins' amusement park ride" for the kiddies (16 and older please) but one meant to educate the public about documented spectral activity in Sin City. Most of the two-hour tour is spent safely on the bus with the exception of one leg-stretching foray into a haunted park. The morbid ride will take you to the alleged otherworld digs of unquiet celebrities. Many will be familiar to longtime Las Vegans: from Bugsy Siegel's reputed attachment to the Flamingo to the spot where Tupac Shakur was murdered. There is even a stop at an unspecified "Motel of Death" where a number of celebrities are said to have checked in, never to leave. Check out the ghost tour website at Hauntedvegastours.com for a series of skepticism-allaying blurry photographs taken by actual passengers on Haunted Vegas tours such as the mysterious blur shot in front of Carluccio's Tivoli Gardens captioned simply, "Liberace." B.B. http://www.lvcitylife.com/city_picks/ Insider Veiwpoint of Las Vegas Show Review - by Insider Viewpoint of Las Vegas Staff Ratings Range from 1-10, 10 is the Best, 1 is the Worst "Shock!" Overall Show Review:7 Show Location: Bourbon Street Show Type: Variety Insider Viewpoint of Las Vegas staff delivers an in depth show review that gives you the complete picture of what to expect when attending this show. In determining the Overall Review Rating we research many categories as well as evaluating the ticket price versus entertainment value. Show Review As the name implies, this show will shock you! You may be shocked even before the show starts. We would like to state, that this show is not for everybody. For those people who think they have seen it all, step up and see this show. The show opens to a punkish rendition of 'Strange' by The Doors, song by a young lady in leather with a bad retro haircut. This 'opening song' really set the mood for the show. The male host of the show had an excellent script thanks to writer and co-producer Robert Allen. The small venue makes the audience feel part of the show with the performers often coming off the stage and into the audience. They introduce us to Zamora, the torture king, the star of the show. Zamora appears throughout the show performing classic sideshow stunts and other acts of pain that will have the most macho man grimacing. You will not see things like this in the popular TV show 'Fear Factor.' Other acts appear throughout the show that may not shock the audience, but are sure to make you laugh. The show fits nicely in the aging Bourbon Street property. It would not surprise us to see this show take off and be picked up by a more prestigious casino property. Las Vegas Review-Journal Bourbon Street show better fit for Vegas than one might imagine By Mike Weatherford "You gotta be kidding!" "Don't do it!" "Oh, that's sick." You don't hear this at a Wayne Newton show. Well, you might, but that's another review. But if the show is called "Shock," such audience response is high praise indeed. In fact, there was a suitably dark "Twilight Zone"-worthy twist in store for the college-age guy providing the most vocal feedback on this particular night. The guy was quick to volunteer for the hypnotism segment by Victoria the Enchantress (Victoria Wayne). She seemed nice enough, and in her sensible pantsuit, appeared to offer a harmless diversion at best, and an annoying detour at worst. Instead, Victoria took only two minutes to hypnotize the young man. She then peeled off the pantsuit to reveal boudoir lingerie, before subjecting the poor guy to the gentle caress of a boa constrictor, a tarantula and a cage full of rats, one of which nestled right into his spikey hair gel and made itself at home. The little show in the dinky Bourbon Street lounge lives up to its title with several surprises, and it wouldn't be fair to spill them all here. The surprise I can talk about is that "Shock" is not only well-staged in its Spartan venue, but lighter and funnier than its obvious inspiration, the Jim Rose Circus. Time will tell, in fact, if it's a good fit to have one genuine "geek act" -- Zamora, the Torture King -- as the star of what would otherwise pass for the type of late-night cabaret show the Strip has been in need of for a long time. There's a definite "Rocky Horror Show" vibe to much of the revue, from the bad TV horror-host puns of emcee Malakai (Ron Keck) to the singer (Kelly Carl) covering the Doors' "People Are Strange" and Oingo Boingo's "Dead Man's Party." But that stuff easily could lapse into the realm of community theater if it weren't backed up with something of genuine skin-crawling gravity. Zamora (Tim Cridland) gets right down to the nitty gritty early on, unwrapping long sterile needles and proceeding to thrust them through his biceps. Later he will smash and eat a light bulb. For a grand finale, he piles up broken glass and walks on the pieces, then lies flat on the rubble while an audience member hops on his chest. But even Zamora lightens things up a bit. "People say, `If you're gonna play Vegas, you've got to make your show a little more classy,' " he notes, before hanging Christmas ornaments on a string that he's purportedly swallowed, then extracted from his stomach. Other acts, such as Aryha, "The High Voltage Girl" (Deanna Hinshaw) offer what are more obviously illusions, striking a sometimes uneasy balance with the real stunts. Producers Robert Allen and Scott Lewis eventually may lean more in one direction than the other, particularly if the show catches on and the budget provides for more genuine sideshow performers. Hopefully, those won't come at the expense of the humor and clever structure. The big irony here is that a show dreamed up for a niche market might be more for today's Las Vegas mainstream than anyone realizes | |||