Is it appropriate for me to write a review of The House of Horrors & Haunted Catacombs in Depew, a suburb of Buffalo, New York? My insight into this gigantic haunted attraction dates back some six months to mid-April 2007 while on the set of the Mini-Movie Gruesome. During the weekends I spent on the set, I had the privilege of roaming various parts of the haunt in depth. It was obvious to me then that this was not your ordinary haunted house: hidden inside an unassuming strip mall, behind the blacked glass doors of an old Ames department store was an incredibly large floor plan containing the four haunted attractions that make up The House of Horrors and Haunted Catacombs.

Covering an impressive 80,000 square feet, it's enough space to have been previously named North America's largest indoor haunted attraction and voted as Buffalo's best haunted house. Both of these accolades coming from the Haunted House Association, a well known name in the haunted attraction industry.

Fluffy adjectives aside, the question remained - Can they scare someone who has seen much of the haunts in full light?

This past weekend two friends and I paid a visit to The House of Horrors and Haunted Catacombs in an attempt to answer that very question; a question that beckons us all. Not "Why are we here?" but rather, "Why do we fear?'"

The answer is quite simple: We fear that which we don't understand. It's one of our oldest instincts. With my understanding of what rests beyond the elaborate facades of the haunts, one would think that element of fear would fail to exist.

We would soon find out as we made our way past the multistory, creepy castle facade of the Haunted Catacombs and into the 30,000 square foot haunt. The first room was the foyer, a room I had spent plenty of time in. Now, though. it was somehow different, infused with horror and fear. A spooky female actress caught a member of my party off guard and gave her a nice shock not even 30 seconds into the haunt. All right, I thought, this might impress me yet. And impress me it did.

Beyond the custom built facade and a few rooms I had previous knowledge of exist an amazingly detailed and, yes, scary haunted attraction. Its size alone allows for scenic setups and actor scares that most haunted houses simply don't have the space to pull off.

This included a Frankenstein scene that dare I say looked even better than the old black and white Universal stage set all other images of the monster and the good Doctor's lab are based upon.

Beyond the lab, and through various mazes, including one that makes excellent use of strobe lights and mirrors, the three of us became lost in the maze of doors, a true nightmare come to life.

The creativity didn't stop there, either, with one of my favorite parts of the haunt just a bit further ahead. At that point, we were forced to make a choice of tunnels and crawl through on our hands and knees. Below us, encased in Plexiglas rested an eerie corpse presumably entombed forever.

After abandoning all concepts of time being lost in the maze, two of the last scenes of the haunt were so impressive that they simply must be seen to be believed. After crossing a bridge beside an animated 20 foot demon who feasted upon his most recent victim, the crooked pathways of the maze brought us to the pastoral village of Sleepy Hallow and face to face with a beyond life sized horse bound Headless Horseman in a moment from Tim Burton's film brought to life.

The exit to the Haunted Catacombs was strategically placed near the entrance to the two smaller haunts, Psycho Therapy and City of the Dead in 3-D. We decided to go through these two haunts next and save the House of Horrors for last.

I must say that the first of the two, Psycho Therapy was a bit of a disappointment to me. The theme and concept of the haunt, that of an insane asylum where the inmates have taken over is derivative of the vastly more superior Psychoscareapy, a staple haunted house at Universal Orlando's Halloween Horror Nights. Several of the rooms were not much more than a send up to Universal's haunt instead of what I was hoping would be a creative and unique take on the insane asylum concept.

My companions, however, having not visited Universal, enjoyed Psycho Therapy for what it was and probably had a better time inside than I did. I will say that the scare in the first room was well executed and performed with the intensity and lunacy required for an asylum haunt. The main standouts of the attraction were the extremely disturbing claustrophobia room and the machine gun air cannon tooting evil clown at the end of the haunt.

Psycho Therapy led directly into City of the Dead in 3-D without a second queue line. After donning our obligatory used and abused 3-D glasses, we were treated to an impressive 3-D haunt filled with exquisitely detailed murals of gory, blood dripping, oozing zombies that possessed a definite Iron Maiden influence. My friend even commented that he felt like he was walking around inside an album cover.

The haunt contained minimal actors and revolved around a central area that had an urban decay atmosphere and vast amounts of day-glo paint.

Walking through City of the Dead in 3-D felt like being in a grown up version of some lost episode of Scooby Doo in Zombieland. The overall effect of the haunt that of a drug induced zombie freak out complete with an impressive and stomach-churning 3-D spinning vortex ending.

After a quick break, my group and I ventured into the last haunt of the night, The House of Horrors, the other namesake mega-haunt that again exceeds 30,000 square feet.

We walked through a creepy front area that recreated an outdoor scene complete with buzzing fireflies and approached the meticulously detailed facade of the haunt. Stepping onto the porch the House of Horrors, we entered through a real screen door which added a realistic touch to the build up of entering the haunt.

Inside the attention to detail didn't falter once as we traveled through the house. The fear inducing meat locker room setup brought us uncomfortably close to various hanging bodies that we were forced to navigate through before being surprised by a well placed drop door where one final "victim" managed to truly capture the essence of the area.

Beyond the meat locker room, the seemingly endless dark closet further added to the creepy aura as we struggled to pass through the resident's abandoned clothing, a truly unnerving experience.

The House of Horrors didn't contain itself to the house proper as we stepped "outside" and traversed through a large graveyard behind the house and into the greenhouse and beyond. We spent an extended period of time lost in a cove-type setup until we finally had to place ourselves at the mercy of one of the actors to lead us out. He could have been leading us to our deaths and we wouldn't have cared at that point.

When we finally found our way out of The House of Horrors, I had the answer to my question: yes, they definitely were still able to give me some great scares. They also left me wanting more.

The only thing that could make The House of Horror and Haunted Catacombs better would be if they took the space the two smaller haunts currently occupy and made it into another mega-haunt on par with the namesake haunts.

Having had a chance to get to know both the owners, Brad & Tim while working on Gruesome and afterwards, I know that they are driven by their passion to create the best haunted attractions they can. Every year they spend the off-season revamping the entire place to make it even better and more horrifying. Personally, I can't wait to see what they come up with next Halloween season and beyond.