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At this time of the year, there are plenty of “haunted house” options for Halloween thrill seekers, most consisting of long dark hallways populated with masked marauders who seek to pop out suddenly at the most unexpected moment. Your heart pounds, you get an adrenaline rush, and then you see that, well, it’s just a guy in a cheesy mask. To quote B.B. King, “The thrill is gone.”

What separates Oracle Productions “Disturbed III” from such offerings is that it attempts to leave you with a fright that you can take home with you, something to think about. Yes, there are dark halls and even some pop-outs. But what stays with you is what you experience after the “boo!” factor. As these gifted performance artists interact with you and act their soulless little hearts out for you in cramped quarters, when the light is good enough, the makeup, special effects and costumes are convincing enough that, well, they often don’t look like theatrical trappings.

A deadpan host ushers you in and is able to look you right in the eye as he cautiously introduces various “experiments” by a resident mad doctor who seems all the more mad because he has reasonable lapses of sanity as he attempts to explain himself. And the experiments themselves, complete with glowing eyes that dart around in the dark and who beg for your help more mercilessly than the panhandlers outside the theater, really do a convincing job of making you feel as if you are encountering truly tortured, lost souls.

Oh, and did I mention that this is all preceded by a running projector showing you dissections and botched psychological surgeries of the past? By the time the whole thing has ended, you end up in a back alley where you’re not sure which was worse: going in, or coming out to savor the scares for the trip home. (Dennis Polkow)

At Oracle Theatre, 3809 North Broadway, (773)244-2980; $9, through November 1,

After two consecutive Halloween seasons of having Edgar Allan Poe haunt the Tudor Peabody Estate in west suburban Oakbrook, First Folio (formerly First Folio Shakespeare Festival) has instead invited Count Dracula over this year for the holidays.

This is the Bob Hall and David Richmond off-Broadway adaptation, meant to be sexy and funny and preceding subsequent, admittedly more biting, satirical Draculas by decades. Given the opening-night audience reaction, which was deadpan serious (myself and the critic next to me were laughing now and then, but we seemed to be the only ones doing so and, after awhile, we were even getting looks from vampire purists), there is a disconnect here, whether by accident or design.

But the work is staged and acted so seriously that the confusion is understandable: every time Dracula appears, the fog machines go into overdrive; at one point the lights go out and a glow-in-the-dark bat is hovering over the audience in true William Castle fashion; at another point, a crucifix explodes into flames, which can have other meanings, especially in the suburbs. Meanwhile, Renfield is constantly chasing flies to eat while his doctors and the hero and heroine seem to think that they’re doing the real deal but with a bewildering variety of shifting accents.

But the biggest problem is that unlike the Poe show, where there was constant interaction between cast and audience that was helped along by having various scenes staged in various rooms of the house, here, we are ushered in a side door and stay put in one room with all of the action off to one side, as if we aren’t even there. (Dennis Polkow)

At Mayslake Peabody Estate, Route 83 & 31^st Street; Oakbrook, (630)986-8067. $23-$30. Through November 2.

If only Broadway jukebox musicals were half this twisted. A cult hit from last year, “Carpenters Halloween” marries director John Carpenter’s 1978 slasher flick “Halloween” to the music of The Carpenters, replete with all the ooey goodness you’d expect from “We’ve Only Just Begun” and “Rainy Days and Mondays.” It’s a tremendous idea, and talk about your incongruities.

The creators Scott Bradley and Jonny Stax—better known as The Scooty and JoJo Show—have a serious boner for pop culture and movies, and the company has concocted some majorly funny stuff in the past year, including a transgendered “Tron” spoof called “Tran,” and a John Hughes-Molly Ringwald confection that all but slayed me. I love the aesthetic they’ve landed on, with cardboard cutout props (like something ripped from a comic book, literally) and Muppety puppets filling out some of the roles.

Can’t say things work quite as well in “Carpenters Halloween,” which isn’t fully realized conceptually. (Bradley, who stars in the Jamie Lee Curtis role, also directs.) The awkward stage dimensions at Mary’s Attic are part of the problem—any show with numerous scene changes is going to look clunky in this space. And some of it could my own deficiencies—I can’t quote “Halloween” the way I can “Sixteen Candles.” I will say this, Bill Morey’s costumes (including the goofiest pair of bell-bottom jeans ever) are bang-on-the-money. These kinds of details matter, and Scooty and JoJo get it.

The best thing going on is Bradley’s performance, and that’s been the case with all of Scooty & JoJo’s shows so far. Bradley is an expert mimic—he’s got the Jamie Lee Curtis hair flip and facial expressions down cold. Someone get this guy some Activia. (Nina Metz)

At Mary’s Attic, 5400 N. Clark, scootyjojo.com. Tues-Thurs 8p, special Friday performance on Halloween. $15. Through October 31 November 5.