Entertainment

Club dread

Lurid downtown palace of debauchery The Box is coming to Times Square, and the results are terrifying.

Trading their signature smut for a new brand of slaughter, the creators of The Box are going into the haunted-house business. “Purgatorio,” is a massive interactive theater and nightclub on three floors, with more than 100 performers swooping from rafters, screaming obscenities and gushing fake blood.

The new venue opens tonight and runs through Halloween. Inside, guests are purposely separated from their friends and drawn into a space of utter solitude and horror — where death becomes a welcome escape.

“If 30 percent of the people are so frightened they run out on opening night, I’ll consider it a smashing success,” says Simon Hammerstein, who has a knack for spooking the faint of heart. “You might want to stay for two or three killings, depending on your appetite for blood.” Guests will enter through what looks like a funeral parlor, only to learn the funeral they are attending is their own.

“We wanted to make the death sequence this crazy and visceral experience,” says production designer David Korins. “It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity to experience death. The fear is very real.”

The club’s real fun begins after the messy business of actually dying is over. Once dead, guests can reunite with their friends and proceed through a lounge called Hell, a theater called Purgatory and a disco called Heaven.

Unlike other haunted houses in the city, guests are free to go through Purgatorio at their own pace. They are encouraged to drink heavily and linger in Purgatory, told they won’t be admitted to Heaven until they purge themselves of sin through utter intoxication. The club is also open to the public in a way that The Box will never be, with tickets for sale from $40 to $80 at enterpurgatorio.com — and no velvet rope.

“All the people that wouldn’t be able to get into The Box have a chance to see the shows at Purgatorio,” says Randy Weiner, a partner in both venues.

“This is a kind of environmental theater that appeals to people’s love of fear, love of sex and that macabre sense of humor in us all.”

Weiner even predicts that the kind of interactive, “environmental theater” on display at Purgatorio will one day replace most traditional stage shows. It’s proximity to Broadway theaters is a start. But would Hammerstein ever considering opening a more permanent venue in Times Square — a terrifying location even without fake Halloween blood?

“I’m tempted to put something like The Box in Times Square,” he admits. “It would be more inclusive though, with an early show for kids.”

Fortunately for parents everywhere, Purgatorio is open only to those 21 and older.

jsilverman@nypost.com