If you think that four “professional idiots” (their words, not mine), a haunted house, lots of ping pong balls and a jar of pickles sounds like a recipe for chaos… well, you’d be right, actually.
Meet The Lampoons – also known as Tina Baston, Adam Elliott, Josh Harvey and Oliver Malam – who’ve spent the last two years sharing their own unique brand of B-movie mayhem with London audiences. Now they’re preparing to unleash the madness on Edinburgh for the very first time with House on Haunted Hill, a hilarious and utterly bonkers remake of the 1959 horror starring Vincent Price.
“We’ve only gone and brought you a debut!” says Harvey. “We have lots of friends in London from our Halloween shows each year, but this will be a newborn baby idiot for us to all deliver. It could well be the most ridiculously bizarre late-night show on the fringe – a thumpingly hilarious non-stop comedy-horror the likes of which have never been seen.
“Everything you see in that very sweaty hour is completely devised from Rob White and William Castle’s original black and white 1959 screenplay. Then imagine we threw that classic screenplay into a large blender with some Mighty Boosh, Monty Python, Garth Marenghi and a heavy seasoning of surreal clowning!“
House on Haunted Hill is The Lampoons’ second full-length show, following the success in 2016 of their debut – another B-movie remake, Attack of the Giant Leeches, at Camden’s Etcetera Theatre. Elliott explains, “We’d been friends for a long time, and big admirers of each other’s work, but had been looking for the right project to come along. At the outset of The Lampoons we really didn’t know what we were going to end up with, but we knew we wanted to explore something beyond the more commonplace comedy styles. Turns out we like the irreverent and the ridiculous!
“As for the horror spoofs: well for one, you have to love the titles! Attack of the Giant Leeches, House on Haunted Hill, who doesn’t want to see those! But also, the simple plots of that genre really allow us to pull the stories and characters every which ridiculous way whilst still maintaining some semblance of story structure. Really, we make the most faithful unfaithful adaptations you’ll ever see.”
Faithful they may be, but The Lampoons’ shows could never be accused of being predictable – a lot can, and does, happen in those 60 minutes, from dodgy fake moustaches to the weirdest ballet recital you’ll ever see. “It’s always most fun to be at the start,” says Ollie. “Coming up with the ridiculous ideas list then going through the process of learning how to implement them. One day maybe we will see Josh as a grandfather clock.”
Now they’re looking forward to bringing the show to Edinburgh, where it’ll run from 1st to 26th August at the Pleasance Dome. “I think I’m most excited about being at the centre of a wonderful casserole of creativity,” says Tina. “I think seeing other shows and meeting other creatives every day will give us so much inspiration and motivation to make people chuckle every night. Also, I’ve heard Edinburgh has great beer…”
They’re also hoping to check out a few other shows while they’re in town: “3 Years, 1 Week and a Lemon Drizzle, Will Seaward’s Ghost Stories and Stevenson Experience – they’re twins AND comedians!”
And with plenty of classics still out there waiting to be reimagined, what does the future hold for The Lampoons? “After this debut fringe festival we will likely want to reach more regional areas with our clowns,” says Josh. “And also to continue re-imagining a wonderfully awful B-movie every Halloween in London.”
Catch the final London preview of House on Haunted Hill at Tara Theatre on 26th July. The show then runs in Edinburgh from 1st-26th August (11pm) at the Pleasance Dome.
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