HALLOWEEN TREATS LURE ARTSY SPIRITS : This Halloween, why stay home and answer doorbells? For thrills and chills, grab your Elvira wig and Dracula fangs and head for the nearest theater, movie house or music hangout.

Saturday night, you can attend a “Dead Man’s Party” with Oingo Boingo, dance with Dead or Alive, join the Redd Kross or take your chances with Lizzy Borden, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, the Angry Samoans, the Ghosters or Radio Werewolf. Nope, it’s not an Elvira-hosted movie marathon, it’s just the Halloween highlights of the pop music schedule around the Southland.

Oingo Boingo’s eighth annual trick ‘n’ treat (this year at Irvine Meadows, where the band also plays Halloween eve) is as close as the local rock scene comes to a Halloween tradition, though the Ghosters have haunted the Lhasa Club every year since their debut on Halloween four years ago. A press release promises that “all who supported the Ghosters in this lifetime will be rewarded in the next.”

Headbangers can sample the post-Alice Cooper gore of ax-wielding Lizzy Borden at Perkins Palace in Pasadena, while Fenders in Long Beach offers a thrash-punk-metal lineup of the Angry Samoans, the Mentors, Texorcist and Celebrity. Popular L.A. cut-ups Redd Kross promise something special (including replicas of the grinning heads from the “Neurotica” LP cover) for their Variety Arts Center show, and in a more gothic vein there’s Radio Werewolf at Zombie Zoo, the cavelike club beneath Osko’s in West Hollywood.

The dance-inclined can choose between (or see both) Anglo-disco group Dead or Alive at the Palace (5-10 p.m. early show, 10 p.m-5 a.m. late show) and Stacey Q at Pico Rivera Sports Arena. The latter will also feature a $1,000 costume contest.

But the scariest treat may be at the Palomino, where Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, rock’s original crypt-kicker, will emerge from his coffin to put a spell on you.

And looking ahead, it appears the Halloween spirit will be kept alive--so to speak--for a couple of weeks, with upcoming area appearances by the Grateful Dead, the Dead Milkmen and the metal bill of Armored Saint, Grim Reaper and Helloween.