Zamora the Torture King feels no pain -- sort of. He is part of Hellzapoppin, a clan of sideshow performers who will be hitting up Speakeasy Lounge in Lake Worth on Thursday, February 23, and Alligator Alley in Hollywood on Friday, February 24.
Beside him will be Frank Simon, a man with eight Guinness World Records. He'll hold up a lady from the audience who weighs about 100 to 110 pounds on one foot only by using his teeth. That's right, his teeth.
Chelsea NoPants can swallow 27 inches of steel. Think a very long, cold sword.
And Zamora, you'll see him:
Lying on a bed of nails while four of the biggest audience members stand on top of him, he'll even lie on a bed of razor sharp swords and have a giant brick crushed on his chest by a sledge hammer.
It's hard to believe it goes quite like that.
"When you come to the show," Zamora said to us via phone, "When you are a few feet away, there's absolutely no question that it is real."
Zamora has appeared on Ripley's Believe It Or Not? and Stan Lee's Superhumans, been studied by scientists in Minnesota, and cat-scanned by a Japenese TV show. He can put skewers through body parts. People have a lot of interest in a man who can feel no pain -- us included. But that's the trick. He can somehow turn the pain off.
He said he has no nerve damage. "I can feel pain," Zamora said, "But I can change how I react to it." When prepared, he said he can "turn off the part of my brain that reacts to pain."
The art of sideshow activity appealed to him because, "It was real magic. No wires. No mirrors."
For the 21-and-over crowd, tickets cost $10. For 18 to 20, it's $20. Show starts at 9 p.m. Thursday at the Speakeasy Lounge, located at 129 N Federal Hwy. in Lake Worth. Call 561-337-8844; and it happens again at midnight on Friday at Alligator Alley, located at 2006 Hollywood Blvd. in Hollywood. Call 754-234-3865.
