Funhouse Psych-Out Builds for Halloween : Entertainment: Disc jockey and promoter Gary Tesch plans to serve up a night of psychedelia, horror and fun.

In the campy 1968 film “Psych-Out,” there’s a scene where Bruce Dern flips out after taking a hit of acid and starts hallucinating, seeing grotesque, flesh-eating monsters instead of his hippie buddies played by Jack Nicholson and Dean Stockwell. In the background, music by the Seeds blared away, all of which added up to just another day in Hippieland.

Twenty-two years later, deejay and concert promoter Gary Tesch is busy preparing the Funhouse, his own version of a psych-out that’s a one-night slice of nontoxic psychedelia, horror and fun.

Celebrating its third year--fittingly on Halloween night--the Funhouse, at Old World Village in Huntington Beach, will offer what Tesch calls a true alternative to people who want to celebrate the season in a mind-altering way. But, Tesch insists, it will be free of any illegal drugs or bad flashbacks.

“The aim of the Funhouse is to keep the patrons on the edge,” Tesch said. “We like to twist them up. And they seem to enjoy it.”

Attractions include the mutilation maze, bizarre, adult-oriented carnival games, slides depicting what are said to be atrocities of medical science, a light show with blazing strobes, a multitude of mannequins and a huge dance floor, Tesch said. All the while, Tesch pounds the crowds with tunes by The Cramps, Link Wray, B.H. Surfers and loads of psychedelic music. “Only the cool stuff will be heard in the Funhouse,” he said.

Tesch said he and a group of friends will spend two days before Halloween pulling the club together, filling it with giant paintings of carnival freaks, games and numerous props that are stored in his garage the rest of the year.

Although Tesch is the driving force behind the Funhouse, he said a key ingredient is the paintings by his friend, Kurt Benbenek, a 30-year-old art school graduate of Cal State Long Beach.

“Kurt is responsible for all the huge paintings that are an integral part of the club,” he said. “Each, in their own way, project what I think this club is about,” he added.

While some have compared the Funhouse to England’s notorious Acid Houses--chic, underground venues run by deejays who play fast, pulsating music while various types of LSD were ingested by the patrons--Tesch, 30, dismisses the comparisons.

“The Funhouse is not about drugs or being trendy. And, in fact, it was in full-swing before Acid House got started in Manchester,” said Tesch, who lives in Long Beach. “The thing about the Funhouse is that we don’t take ourselves seriously. The last thing we want to be is a trendy affair.”

No stranger to the underground scene, Tesch has been associated with clubs in one capacity or another for more than 12 years. A mason by trade--which pays the bills, he says--Tesch at one time was jumping around from Long Beach to Huntington Beach to Los Angeles operating his now-infamous floating night club. Tesch was also operating Club Bad Trip, a Thursday night gig at the Night Moves club in Huntington Beach, which had Tesch spinning records of original and neo-psychedelic bands.

In the mid- and late-1980s, Tesch said, he seemed to be bouncing back and forth from Huntington Beach to Long Beach with his floating club.

“The hardest thing was keeping the club fresh,” he said. “Boredom is a common denominator in the club game. Once it sets in, a club is doomed.”

Now Tesch contents himself with two Funhouse shows a year--Halloween and New Year’s Eve, with the Halloween show, he says, the biggest draw. He says that considering that the only advertising he does is through record stores and some alternative clothing stores, he has been surprised by the numbers of people that turn up (he expects between 800 to 1,000 people this year).

“Believe me, I’m well aware of how hard it is for something like this to survive in Orange County,” he said. “But it does, and I hope it continues.”