Black Day for Horror Writer and His Bride

Terry Black’s screenwriting credits include “Dead Heat,” a 1988 zombie movie starring Joe Piscopo and Treat Williams, and several episodes of HBO’s “Tales From the Crypt.”

So it’s somehow not surprising that the Costa Mesa writer and his fiancee, Elizabeth Monica Lockwood of Glendale, have chosen a Halloween motif for their wedding Sunday.

They’re tying the knot in the chapel at Fairhaven Memorial Park in Santa Ana.

“We like the cemetery,” said Black, 43. “It kind of gives the ambience we wanted.”

The groom will wear a “slouch-collared tux with a vampire cape” for the afternoon wedding; the bride has opted for a more traditional look.

“We talked about getting a black dress for her, but Beth drew the line there,” said Black, who chose a more romantically appropriate day to propose: Valentine’s Day.

“Being a horror writer, I didn’t want to have a traditional wedding,” Black said. “But actually it was Beth who suggested we get married at a cemetery [close to] Halloween. I think the reason was that, after I proposed, she wanted to pin me down with a specific date, and she knew that would appeal to me.”

The couple’s wedding reception in the university center at Cal State Fullerton, where Black teaches screenwriting, will include decorations such as dead tree branches festooned with black and red ribbons and little Styrofoam ghosts, and candy gummy worms in the caldron-style punch bowl.

The guest list of 200 includes many of Black’s Orange County writer pals, including Maxine O’Callaghan, Donald Stanwood, T. Jefferson Parker, Neal Shusterman and Cynthia Saunders (creator of the NBC series “Profiler”).

The couple drew the line in asking guests to wear Halloween costumes at the reception, but the women will be provided with Mardi-Gras-style feather face masks and the men with “Phantom of the Opera” white masks.

Black said Lockwood’s father, a pianist, “is putting the songs together. ‘Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered’ is one of them.”

What would a Halloween-themed wedding reception be without that early ‘60s classic “Monster Mash”? A rock band assembled by the best man--Black’s brother, screenwriter Shane Black (“Lethal Weapon”)--will do the honors.

Terry Black suggested to Lockwood, who works in the feature-film cost-estimating department at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, that they rent a hearse to drive them off to their honeymoon.

“She balked at that,” he said. Despite his suggestion that “we can stretch out in back.”