Zombie Joe's Urban Death Tour of Terror: 2022 Review

Zombie Joe’s Underground Theatre, North Hollywood, CA

It’s Halloween in NoHo, which means this time of the year brings another around of our favorite, twisted, completely unique and somewhat depraved haunted attraction and theatrical experience, Urban Death: Tour of Terror! This is the attraction that originally introduced us to the outlandishly perverse yet captivating world of Zombie Joe’s Underground, whose Theatre of Cruelty, Butoh, and Grand Guignol styles manipulate the emotions and shock the mind and soul with explicit, frightening, jaw-dropping displays of horror.

(Photo courtesy of Zombie Joe’s Underground Theatre.)

This is the sixth Urban Death: Tour of Terror we’ve visited, so those who’ve followed along know what this experience is like. But for the uninitiated, this Halloween experience mixes scarcely lit, claustrophic sheet maze guided only by dim flashlight employed by groups of one or two to navigate the twists and turns of ZJU’s lobby space in order to reach a black box theater, where an approximately 15-minute performance takes space. The show portion features disconnected vignettes portraying various scenes that might start off looking innocuous but usually contain some sort of disturbing twist. The scenes are often graphic, featuring full nudity or simulated bodily fluids, or they feature some sort of implied violence or horrific act. Afterwards, it’s back through the maze to exit the show. As with the route coming in, the maze components contains sporadic scenes and startle scares showcasing their own unnerving or disquieting scenes, but they are different coming in vs leaving. The entire experience lasts a little over half an hour or so, and no matter what one might expect—whether they be a virgin visitor or a veteran fan—it is always memorable.

(Photo courtesy of Zombie Joe’s Underground Theatre.)

Although we seem to say this annually, this year’s Urban Death: Tour of Terror manages to raise the shock level even higher and create even more memorable and ghastly moments that leave the audience buzzing. Zombie Joe promised the craziest iteration yet, and he and his talented cast succeed!

This year’s assortment of acts runs a gamut of different styles of thrills. Scenes that play quietly but display unnatural movements, moments that intertwine with real world moments of horror, intimately uncomfortable witnesses of private exchanges, and performances that make full use of sexual depravity and extreme kink are sure to sear themselves into the audience’s brains. One moment with a scantily clad woman with her back turned to the audience doing an exotic dance over two salaciously eager fans below stands out a real crowd-gasper that had even the seasoned audience at last week’s media preview night shuddering with visceral aversion to the resulting twist—especially when the follow-up ensued.

There are also beautifully Gothic moments, fun traditional jump scare bits, and scenes that rely on non-visual senses to communicate a sense of nervous unease. The 2022 edition of Urban Death: Tour of Terror returns a few favorites, such as scene we like to call “The Skitters,” a disjointed, strobe-filled display of anthropomorphic animation, and Urban Death’s traditional, stormy closer.

(Photo courtesy of Zombie Joe’s Underground Theatre.)

If that wasn’t enough, there’s also a family-friendly kid’s version of Urban Death: Tour of Terror that plays Saturday nights at 7:00! What’s the difference? Well, no nudity for one. Which should be a given for a show meant to allow children in the audience. But the all-ages version also ramps up the silliness and absurdity factor to portray the a type of horror that would seem heightened and horrifyingly embarrassing to kids, as opposed to the more existential and mature themes that the regular Urban Death: Tour of Terror provides.

The fun starts with the preshow, where a clown slinks onto the black box theater floor from time to time to impishly target various guests, smiling and winking and eyeing their noses before swooping in an instance to “steal their nose” (complete with his thumb acting as the sniffer after acquisition) and then running backstage with a hysterical laugh of triumph. A callback to the same clown later in the show reinforces and symbolizes the ridiculous fun of Urban Death for Kids. There are other examples designed to appeal to juvenile humor, from a competition of flatulence that goes messily wrong to a game of imaginary pew pewing that turns cartoonishly more violent than anticipated to an example of ventriloquism that takes on Inception-like qualities.

Some of the scenes in the all-ages Urban Death: Tour of Terror are also shared with the regular version. These are, of course, the tamer ones that can still be appropriate for children. It’s fun to see the range in the different vignettes that Urban Death produces, as represented by this age range overlap.

(Photo courtesy of Zombie Joe’s Underground Theatre.)

We also have to commend the team for another fantastic and arguably best-ever Tour of Terror maze experiences. Both the adult and the children’s versions are wildly fun and enjoyable, with the mature maze featuring some truly shocking moments that can leave guests aghast and one particular dynamic scare that we haven’t seen at Urban Death: Tour of Terror but is executed with perfect timing. The children’s version also features a few modifications of the adult maze that we appreciated, like a Muppet doing the music instead of Urban Death’s regular music director and a deceptive candy dish that might be like cake in Portal.

Once again, Urban Death: Tour of Terror delivers a tantalizing and gripping experience that is unlike any haunted attraction in Southern California. This is one haunt that all Halloween season aficionados should try at least once. Chances are, they’ll find themselves hooked on this truly incomparable brand of penetrating, personal, primal horror!

(Photo courtesy of Zombie Joe’s Underground Theatre.)

Urban Death: Tour of Terror runs Fridays and Saturdays for the rest of this month, plus Sunday and Monday of Halloween weekend. Shows are at 8:00, 9:00, 10:00, 10:45, and 11:30. The kid-friendly version is Saturday nights at 7:00 plus Sunday and Monday, October 30 and 31 at 7:00. Tickets are $20 + fees in advance or $25 at the door. Urban Death: Tour of Terror is not recommended for guests under 16 years of age (and we’d say not under 18, to be frank), while the family-friendly show is appropriate for guests 8 or older.

(Photo courtesy of Zombie Joe’s Underground Theatre.)