[filmmaker2]

"The Big Haunted House" Part 2

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Back to the story, now:

Once the attraction was operational on the first night, the din was incredible. You could hear the howling of all the sound sources half a mile away! And everything was cranked up to a loud volume...

Of course, you wouldn't want to work on something like this without going through it at least once, so all the haunt workers inside the attraction took a break at some point, took a V.I.P. spot at the front of the line, and wandered in to sample the wares.

The layout that had been built was impressive: You would buy your ticket at the entrance to the school and begin down a walkway towards the first strip building. This walkway was lined with lots of plastic plants and rigged with speakers pumping out
the sounds of crickets and the occasional wolf howl. This area was known as “The Werewolf’s Forest,” and was sort of an atmosphere thing to get you primed up for the rest of the show. No werewolves jumping out at you--just the sound and the
atmosphere. A very classy introduction before you got to all the craziness inside. I liked this part a lot because the sound effects made the walkway come alive. The crickets sounded real...

Once inside the first strip building you would experience several haunted rooms (including the zombie hillside), and then leave the structure, to be diverted briefly over to the multi-purpose room, whose large area was being divided up into several sections. Now that you had gone through the first of the strip buildings, and seen a few small but cool scenes, the haunted attraction would hit you with a big production wallop that just floored me, personally:

The big display piece, sitting in the multi-purpose room, was a completely fabricated house, small enough to fit inside the building, but still full-sized. I don't know who designed it or built it, but it was amazing, and built from scratch. Imagine walking into a building and finding a building inside that building, with a path leading up to it, trees, and so on. Amazing!

You would go into the multi-purpose room and start walking along a fabricated pathway, complete with rocks and shrubs and broken fence sections, and then you would enter the house itself, which was neither rigged for effects nor populated by ghoul performers--the house was considered spectacle enough that they let it exist on its own, which I think was a tasteful idea. I remember seeing this and just thinking, "Wow." You walked up the front steps, and then into and through the house, and then out of the house and down the back steps. I've never seen anything like this in any haunted house show.

After walking through the house, you would then leave the multi-purpose room, which had other scenes that you would see later on in the tour. The next thing in your “Halloween Adventure” was to visit the remaining strip buildings, moving from one to another continuously. These strip buildings made up the majority of the haunted house, time-wise. The connecting gaps between the buildings were roped off so people wouldn’t stray off the course, and these “between” areas were supervised by haunt workers. “Move alooooong, please,” they would say in a spooky voice. This horror maze was a huge affair, and it took quite a while to get through it...forty-five minutes I think was the average time it took? So really, it was worth the four bucks...

Anyway. Many Halloween fans in Los Angeles had been invited to run sections or “rooms” of these strip buildings, and they had gone crazy decorating them and adding props. Each “room supervisor” was tireless and devoted, and vying to “outdo” the other supervisors...old furniture had been dragged in...dummies constructed and rigged...“sledge-hammer sculpture” techniques employed to texture the walls of some of the rooms.

One area was your basic “black walls in the dark” maze that you had to feel your way through, and as soon as you got through most of it and started seeing light, someone in a mask was waiting to scare you. They got me pretty good when I went through the first time.

One room was a “Psycho”-inspired room, liberally splashed with dark purple Pan-Chromatic Blood, a movie blood put out by Max Factor. It must have been sitting around in somebody’s closet for decades. The Max Factor movie blood formulas were heavily scented with a rose perfume, so the Psycho room reeked of roses...and the dark purple of the Pan-Chromatic Blood was very unpleasant and strange. This room was lit with lots of red, and a “Mrs. Bates” dummy sat in a chair, watching you as you went by.

One room had a dummy of “Michael Myers” standing on a pedestal holding a big knife, and the theme from the “Halloween 2” soundtrack playing VERY VERY LOUD. Deafening to walk through this area.

One room had an “Iron Maiden” theme, complete with the proper music and the band’s mascot, Eddie, lurking around trying to scare the unsuspecting.

I remember too that there was a very tall dummy of Frankenstein’s monster mounted on a platform that rocked slowly back and forth, to create the impression that it was walking towards you. I think a Don Post mask was used for the head...crackling electricity sound effects and a strobe light completed the scene.

After going through a couple dozen of these rooms, each with a distinct theme, you went out of the last strip building and into the night air again, cool at this time of year, and went back into the multipurpose room for the remainder of the show. The kitchen of the multipurpose room had been renamed “Hell’s Kitchen,” and there, a mad chef menaced with a plastic meatcleaver. I can’t say whether this actor was male or female...all I remember is the hideously contorted face, and the dark circles under the eyes! When I walked through this area, I felt a strong urge to move on
into the next room. The mad chef definitely creeped me out...

Then there was a blacklight-lit corridor, painted flat black and then dashed with splotches of glowing neon color. Very disorienting!

There was one nice gag with a monster head that popped out of a box like in the movie “Creepshow”--a performer was hidden behind a wall with a mechanism similar to those trash cans with the lids that pop up when you step on the pedal. When someone approached the box, the hidden performer would see them and step on a pedal, which made the monster poke its head up.

And then there were a few more rooms...I recall that one of them was a room full of large bones...I don’t know if they were real or not, but they looked real, and I never cared to go close enough to find out for sure.

The show ran for ten nights or so in the month of October and cost four dollars or thereabouts to get in. All the proceeds went to the reputable charitable organization called "The March of..." something, I don't remember what they were called, but anyway all this wackiness was for a good cause (helping sick children). On the last night of the show my friends and I went all out with the makeup, bringing in every rubber appliance we had and gluing rubber pieces on anyone who wanted them--and there
were quite a few volunteers. “Oooo, me, do ME!! I wanna look creepy!”

These ghouls and monsters roamed around the front of the school, taunting and menacing the people waiting in line. One of the security guards saw a goat-face appliance he just
had to have glued on, so he became a security goat. Several TV monitors were set up where the line formed, so that the people waiting could watch the trailer for the film "Terror in the Aisles." It turned out that "Terror in the Aisles" had some kind of deal going with the show, they contributed financing or something and in return they got a publicity venue for their film. Neat! So I remember walking around outside and seeing this trailer over and over and over again.

The attraction drew quite a crowd during its run, and I don’t remember anyone being badly scared by it. It was too much spectacle and too much fun. Everything went very pleasantly...and when the whole thing was done and the last night finished up, a bunch of us went out for burgers and hot dogs, very tired and hungry, and not a little sad that the show was all done. I’ve done a few haunted house things like this since then, but none of them had such huge scope or such pervasive atmosphere. It's a very special memory of a special time.

SPOOOOOOOOOOKY!