Review: Haunted Hollywood 2025

Halloween-themed burlesque show spoofs Psycho, Scream, and other horror icons

Haunted Hollywood is back at the Beverly Center for Halloween 2025, offering another naughty horror-burlesque-drag-strip show accompanied by copious cocktails and lots of risqué humor. It mostly follows last year’s template, but the bawdy fun is easily worth revisiting, and newcomers will have a blast. Many bars and nightclubs offer Halloween-themed drinking experiences; Haunted Hollywood is closer to an elaborate Vegas show, providing a two-hour experience loaded with memorable entertainment.

Haunted Hollywood 2025 Review: Preshow

The main change at this Halloween’s Haunted Hollywood is that the entry process has been streamlined to get you into your seats sooner. There is no “pharmacy” photo op (actually, a bar serving drinks) immediately after you enter, and the walkthrough has been trimmed back to a single room. A Marilyn Monroe look-alike leads you through makeshift (and blindingly dark) corridors to a room in the Bates Motel, where you can take some pics and enjoy a glass of champagne (included with price of admission). While you sip and take pics, Marilyn encourages you to explore the room for clues. It won’t take too much searching to find the suitcase full of money that Marion Crane stole in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 classic, Psycho.

It’s nice that to hang out in the setting and interact with the character, but the experience is brief compared to last year. Then, you passed through a series of six rooms representing different iconic horror scenes, meeting characters who would later perform on stage. It was a cool, creepy, fun preview of what was in store, providing a jump scare or two (a Texas chainsaw killer), along with a few bawdy laughs (a fanatic nun threatening to spank misbehavers). This year, that sort of pre-show interaction takes place at your table, which is still fun but not as much fun.

Haunted Hollywood 2025 Review: Main Event

After that, the show fires up with a sultry torch singer belting out tunes somewhat themed to the season (e.g. “Superstition,” “Creep”). Then a drag queen host emerges to supervise the rest of the proceedings. In between introducing the acts on stage, she moves through the audience, exchanging suggestive banter. The premise is that she is auditioning a replacement to take her crown as the queen of evil. Contestants dance, strip, contort, and in two cases dazzle the audience by spinning overhead in apparent defiance of gravity.

Each act is themed for the season, featuring everything from high school horror to alien abduction. Franchises bleed into each: There’s a mashup of The Nun and The Exorcist. For fans of killer dolls, Chucky and his girlfriend Tiffany show up, accompanied by Annabelle. A blond stand-in for Marion Crane from Psycho battles a killer seemingly plucked from an ’80s slasher movie. And a Drew Barrymore lookalike (from Scream) fends off Freddy Kruger, Leatherface, and Michael Myers.

The seeming randomness is all part of the provocation. The show is not aimed at dedicated geeks nitpicking over the details of their favorite franchise. It aims to explode expectations, taking familiar situations and slapping them in the face. And that’s great, because if you just want to see the movies, stream them at home. Haunted Hollywood is all about overthrowing restraints and refusing to abide by the rules.

Haunted Hollywood 2025 Review: Booze, Bites & Bakes

Besides a great show, Haunted Hollywood brings back great food and beverages. Most Halloween-themed cocktails around Los Angeles restrict themselves to cocktails, but here you have several delicious options for noshing.

This year we sampled the Spinach & Artichoke Me Dip and the All Tied Up Bavarian pretzel. Though not exactly enough to qualify as dinner, they were enough to keep us satisfied through the two-hour show.

Our cocktail selections included Black Magic (vodka raspberry liqueur, lemonade topped with club soda and a sugar rim), Wicked Watermelon (Tequila, melon liqueur, triple sec, simple syrup, with lime, orange, and pineapple juice), and Old Hollywood (whiskey, Cointreau, bitters, simple syrup, orange slice garnish). The first two are for drinkers whose taste runs toward the sweeter end of the spectrum. The latter is a very nice variation on the Old Fashion – rich and nicely balanced.

Haunted Hollywood Vault Review: Conclusion

Haunted Hollywood does not offer traditional Halloween horror, but seeing monsters and slashers twisted into burlesque versions is all part of the fun. If the salaciousness scares you more than the slashing, why not risk taking a step outside your comfort zone? You’ll be pleasantly surprised to find strippers peeling off clothing to reveal not just sultry skin but also aerial artistry and other amazing talents that will have you screaming with approval instead of terror.

Haunted Hollywood 2025: Photo Gallery