Written by Byron Kerman Thursday, 05 October 2006 02:17

Rapture is the weekly dance and drink party for goths and the goth-friendly at the Upstairs Lounge (Tues., 10 p.m.-3 a.m., 3131 S. Grand Blvd. above Mekong, 314-773-3388). DJ Skeletal and friends play new and classic dark, ambient, industrial, batcave-type stuff and often give away freebies in the dim, cozy space. Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows you're undead...

The 30th annual Archon science-fiction convention means Evil Dead freaks, Klingons, and vampire LARPers (Live Action Role Players) roaming the halls of the Gateway Center and adjacent Holiday Inn in Collinsville, for four days of obsessive-fan bacchanalia (Oct. 5-8, http://www.archonstl.org/). This year's con, in addition to the robot-sumo contest, dragons-and-damsels art show, and masquerade, features an appearance by the voice of Ren and Stimpy, Billy West.

Evil Aliens is so thoroughly blood-soaked and funny, it often earns comparisons to Peter Jackson's sopping-wet gorefest, Dead Alive. The chance to see the former on the big screen at midnight in October is about as sanguine as it gets. See whether they used bright-red fake arterial blood or the syrupy-black venous stuff at the Tivoli Theatre's Midnight Madness (Oct. 6-8, midnights Friday and Saturday, 10 p.m. Sunday, http://www.landmarktheatres.com/).

If you came of age in the '80s and had an older brother or a friend with an older brother who was too cool for school, you may have been exposed to the scary album covers and music of Celtic Frost. To Mega Therion, released in 1985, was a frenzied, cryptic disgorgement of black metal that pretty much made the whole planet puke bile and poop out the black fundament of doom in a grand and simultaneous paroxysm. It was hard to ignore. The corpse-painted Swiss lads, led by a feller calling himself Tom G. Warrior, fizzled out, but have reunited for an American tour and a new album that comes 15 full years after their last release. See them live, older, wiser, and less hairy at Pop's Oct. 17.

Jacquelyn Reingold's Girl Gone is a drama about a woman who hears the siren song of evil and just has to follow. When a young stripper's friend is brutally murdered, she goes in search of the killer. Her dark, psychological journey makes The Exorcist look like the proverbial church picnic. The NonProphet Theater Company, in their first season of not-just-comedic fare, presents Girl Gone in the Wolfson Theatre at the Jewish Community Center (Oct. 19-29, 314-752-5075, http://www.nptco.org/).

Once you have seen a husky man dressed in a Batman costume squiring a miniature dachshund dressed as Robin, you can cross over into the next world with no regrets about missing anything. Marvel at the apotheosis of cute at the Howl-O-Ween Pooch Prowl parade along South Grand Blvd. Dogs and their humans wear  matching costumes in a contest benefiting Support Dogs Inc. (Oct. 28, http://www.southgrand.org/). To the Batmobile, Squeaky!