First, quantity. Field of Fear routinely trots out 50 or more actors for its show. Even on a muddy night after rainstorms, we noted 41 in the attractions that were fairly evenly spread throughout, plus another six in the midway or acting as doorpeople.
Some of these folks pulled triple duty. We first ran into local yokel Jeb holding forth at the entrance to the hayride, later met him inside Hillbilly Hell, and caught up with him again in the midway. Same for Fester, he gave the rules for the hayride, teamed up with Pogo the clown inside another attraction, and harassed us on the midway. These guys really got in their steps!
Moving on to qualitative analysis, most actors performed very interactively, whether that took the form of talking with us, screaming, pursuing, or what have you. Maybe the actors were hiding energy drinks out in the corn, but nearly all of them were bursting with vitality. Even at the very end of the evening, tramping around in the mud. Total commitment, way to go actors!
Many demonstrated a fine aptitude for improv, riffing off things we said. It was nice to hear someone come right back with a snappy answer when they said do you want to play a game and we asked what the game was: ‘Hide and go bleed!’
Each attraction held its own strong characters. On the hayride, the gleeful chainsaw guy really got into grinding his equipment against the wagon. An axe murderer put great gusto into attacking a victim. A shovel killer and the young lady he was chasing displayed perfect timing as the very realistic-looking killing blow came just as the wagon turned a corner. One extreme athlete grabbed onto the back of the wagon and glided through the mud like a water skier!
In Hillbilly Hell, cheerful psycho/hayseed Jeb loquaciously shared his views on moonshine (‘I just make it I don’t drink it, instead I get high on life and cutting people up’) and his preferred protein (long pig, a.k.a. human for those unfamiliar with the finer points of cannibalese). Pogo the clown taunted us about our reluctance to go down his slide (‘don’t worry, there’s a chiropractor waiting for ya at the bottom’). Very special shout-out to Tony the pig-man butcher, who rapid-fire yabbered at us with auctioneer speed in some bizarre pig (-man butcher) Latin that made him sound a bit like a bloody Boomhauer from King of the Hill.
Carnevil had a belligerent playground brat who turned hilariously verbally abusive and a clown that put its own spin on ‘Ring around the Rosie.’
For The Infected, a demon girl revealed her vendetta against guys who employ roofies, but the big stars here had to be the giggling ‘survive or die!’ twins who played sick games with visitors to the graveyard. Their manically murderous schtick was an absolute riot.
Another set of twins, the midway clowns who self-identified as ‘the good-looking one’ and ‘the fun one,’ got a lot of mileage out of playing off each other. To sum it up, the cast at Field of Fear made our visit and brought each attraction (and the midway) to life. Unlife? Eh, you know what we mean.
Hayride: 7.69
Carnevil: 8.03
Hillbilly Hell: 8.36
The Infected: 8.49
