Morton – whose Tales From the Crypt-style artwork and flair for makeup, costumes and homemade props have occasionally augmented the music of his many previous bands like Super X-13 and Gargantua (he also did The Luchagors’ CD cover art) – started the monthly Silver Scream Spook Show at the Plaza Theater last fall. Based on the old vaudevillian performances that mixed monsters and magic, usually held at movie theaters before or between features up through the ’60s, Morton and a crew of a dozen or so pals do their own version on the last Saturday of every month, prior to classic films such as Creature From the Black Lagoon and Jason and the Argonauts. The characters – namely Morton as emcee Morte and Jon Waterhouse as his sidekick Retch (played as if he stepped out of some nutty Hanna-Barbera cartoon) – are hilarious, played tongue-in-cheek for laughs. The storylines are corny and often seem held together by only the thinnest of outlines. The props and costumes, while low-budget, are wonderfully effective and totally fit the on-the-fly atmosphere. With two monthly performances – a 1 p.m. matinee geared more towards kids, and a 10 p.m. “PG-13” version – Morton’s Spook Shows are one of Atlanta’s most entertaining and unpretentious ongoing events.  

“I’ve been into all that stuff since I was a little kid. I’m like a monster movie fanatic,” explains Morton when I ask him how he got into it. “I’d been wanting to revive the spook show – it’s like a lost entertainment. I saw one when I was a child, a magic show in Brunswick, Georgia – I grew up on St. Simons. I saw two of ’em, actually, with a pretty cheesy magician – a double feature Godzilla movie one time, and a double feature Hammer film the other time. And I so wanted to be Houdini meets Dracula when I was a little kid…and here I am!” he laughs. When he says this, it’s in between his most recent matinee and nighttime Spook Show, he’s still in his green Professor Morte makeup, and we’re sitting with the band at the Righteous Room. Oddly, no one seems to stare.  

Two of his fellow Luchagors – Dumas and bassist Jay Hedberg – are also part of the Spook Show crew. Dumas plays “Spooksmodel” Pandora, while Hedberg adds sound effects. But as Morton emphasizes, everyone contributes to every aspect of the performances, and while it’s as seat-of-the-pants as it looks, a ton of work goes into it. Usually the core group is up all night building the props by hand for the next day’s show.  

“I’ve seen some really amazing set pieces and costumes that they all make,” says Hedberg. “Like the last show, they had these little cars that they wore – they were on suspenders, so they could walk down the aisles. They had lights on them, in the grills, and the lights worked! And they had turn signals on the back of them!”   

“But the body was still made out of cardboard,” Dumas laughs.  

“The whole idea is that it’s lo-fi, and it’s kinda got an Ed Wood quality to it,” Morton says. “We come up with all the illusions and build them ourselves. We try to do it right, but we do it on the spot. All the dialog’s improv. We’ll come up with a set list, and we’ll go through it for timing, which Amy’s real good at, because she’s been doing improv for seven years at a real high-paced thing…We’ve been getting bigger crowds, and for me it’s just a dream come true, to be able to give little kids a chance to see a Ray Harryhausen movie… That’s the main reason I’m doing it, because it’s a no-brainer that if you show a monster movie with pretty girls dancing around and magic tricks, the hipsters are gonna come out to it, but our goal is to have that room full of kids.”  

Dumas – who confesses that she made enough dough as a professional wrestler that she doesn’t have to work another day if she doesn’t want to – also volunteers at an animal shelter and started her own animal rescue group, ADORE (Amy Dumas Operation Rescue & Education). And she’s been augmenting these activities since April as the host of her own radio program on WKLS, Project 9-6-1. “PunkRockalypse,” heard from 9 to 10 p.m. Sundays, is, as you probably guessed, an hour of punk rock – but mostly the good, old school variety of which Dumas has been a huge fan since her high school days. Recent playlists run the gamut from old to new, including The Damned, The Dead Kennedys, Suicidal Tendencies, Rise Against and The Distillers. And – just every now and then – The Luchagors. “But I try not to really talk about my band, because I don’t want it to be the ‘Nepotism Hour,’” she stresses. She also encourages more local bands to send her their music. “This is fun for me, and I don’t have a hidden agenda. I’m all about more people being at everybody’s shows.”  

She may have to take a few weeks off at some point soon, however. The Luchagors plan to tour heavily to promote their CD, and even if they’ve yet to take off in their hometown, they’ve already got tens of thousands of fans worldwide simply by Dumas’ notoriety in wrestling. Given that Dumas is adamant about distancing herself from that world, there is concern that people will only focus on the band because of her – already The Luchagors have had numerous offers to play wrestling-connected events, most of which they’ve turned down. On the other hand, they have an instant fan-base, so things could be worse.  

“It’s a hard line, because I don’t want it to be like I’m turning my back on these wrestling fans that have gotten me to this point, but…we just have this uphill thing of gaining credibility and not looking like a gimmick… I look at it a lot like how Juliette Lewis had to do her band. It’s not like she hasn’t gotten any movie offers since then – she just said, ‘No, I’m not acting right now, I’m doing my band.’”  

Of course, they’re not totally adverse to playing up her celebrity status. Order your copy of The Luchagors directly from the band’s website, and it’ll come with a bonus autographed poster of the group.