Today we’ll continue our look behind the scenes of HHN 2019 with House of 1000 Corpses, a maze we’d previously featured at the event in 2010 and 2011 (and once as Rob Zombie’s American Nightmare in the era before we brought HHN back in 2006). So let’s step inside...
Obviously Chris and I have had a long history working with Mr. Zombie (he even performed in the maze that predates my time with HHN). Hard to believe this pic on the red carpet from 2011 is 10 years old now...and that Sid Haig (far right) is no longer with us. RIP Good sir!
The two previous HOTC mazes were built in the then T2 attraction’s exterior queue line, which is a much taller/larger space. They were also 3D mazes so this time we decided to do it non-3D. The approach was still Captain Spaulding’s Museum of Monsters and Madmen...
Spaulding’s museum/gas station/fried chicken stand is always a fun set to revisit. It also starts the maze off with a bang with a double scare of Captain Spaulding and his big-headed accomplice Ravelli! This big guy with an even bigger head coming at you is always unnerving!
We decided to resculpt the Captain Spaulding mask for the 2019 maze and I think Magee FX really nailed it. It ended up being a fitting tribute to Sid Haig who passed away shortly after we opened. I only met Sid a couple of times but he was always a gent.
And as a strange coincidence, Chris and I decided to feature Sid’s character much more in the 2019 maze that we did in the past. We just felt he was such a great character we ought to see him more...he was everywhere in the Murder Ride section.
Another change we made in the Murder Ride was to animate the figures of Ed Gein and Lizzie Borden (who wasn’t featured in the previous mazes) and have their names appear via invisible UV when the performer trigger was activated. My daughter Izzy sang the Lizzie Borden rhyme!
Probably my favorite performance in HHN 2019 was Dr Satan in the Murder Ride scene. It was written for him to act as if he was an animated figure and then spring to life with the trigger...but these guys exceeded my expectations with their performance!
Leaving The Murder Ride, we approach the Firefly house. Again, we had to change things up due to the height/space restrictions from our previous HOTC mazes by coming at it from the side...and stepping on to the porch...
But by approaching the house from the side via the porch, it created a unique opportunity for Tiny (played by a stilt walker) to scare you (since he could be totally hidden on the other side of the house). This was another change from the previous mazes.
Inside the Firefly house we meet Baby...and Otis. In the previous maze at T2, we spent more time in the Firefly house but in this version we needed to get back outside again as we still had a lot of ground to cover before we meet up with the real Dr. Satan.
Still he had to do both iterations of Otis in the maze since Bill Mosley (who also played Chop Top in Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2) is one of my favorite actors in horror. Plus this iteration of Otis in the graveyard burning the poor girl in the bunny suit is freaky as Hell!
The final section of the maze takes you down into the tunnels underneath the Firefly house where you are attacked by the tunnel ghouls. FYI - The weird voice you hear in this scene is actually a slowed down recording of famous occultist Aliester Crowley...spooky
The finale scene is Dr. Satan’s Lair where the good doctor is doing unnecessary brain surgery on Jerry (played by Chris Hardwick in his pre-Talking Dead days). Dr. Satan was the distraction in the scene, the main scare came from The Professor on the opposite side!
The final, final scare was a new twist we came up with to end the 2019 maze that was different from the previous mazes. You exit past 3 film posters for Ron’s “Firefly Trilogy”...Dr Satan pops through the last poster for one final scare!
HOTC Trivia - many of the props in this maze were actual props from the film, including Ed Gein and Lizzie Borden. Dr Satan’s torture chair is from the movie “Mystery Men,” it’s the chair Greg Kinnear’s character dies in!
HOTC trivia - my daughter Izzy sang the Lizzie Borden song for the maze. Here she is with her sister Addison goofing with Chucky at our production facility. For a treat, I took them both to Halloween Town, which coincidentally is owned by Rob Zombie’s make up artist Wayne Toth!
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Today we’ll finish up with 2019’s “Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man,” when we left off we were down in the catacombs, working our way back to the ruins of Frankenstein’s castle...
One of my favorite scenes in the maze was Dr. Frankenstein’s ruined library with its scores of books that hold the secret to life. Once again, we drew inspiration for this scene from the 1943 film and Bernie Wrightson’s amazing illustrations for the 1983 graphic novel
In our version, Dr Frankenstein’s library has been ravaged by fire after his monster threw the switch that caused that massive explosion at the end of Bride of Frankenstein. Here’s a pic I took when our props and dressing team had started work in that scene...
We’re going to close out the week with a look back at “Universal Monsters: Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man” from 2019. I always envisioned The Universal Monsters maze from 2018 as being like “The Avengers” movie that we would spin-off if it worked. This was the first spin off...
This maze was loosely based on the 1943 Universal film “Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man.” We also combined elements from 1939’s Son of Frankenstein and 1944’s House of Frankenstein. I’ll show examples of that inspiration as we go along
The facade statement for the maze was the gypsy camp which was something we designed but didn’t use for the 2018 maze. Slash created an original score for the maze including a gypsy theme for this section.
Today we’re gonna take a look at Stranger Things from HHN 2019, this was the second maze we created for the Netflix series and like the previous one it was housed inside Stage 29. The original idea was to do a maze based solely on season 2 but it ended up with a tease of Season 3
The maze began where season 1 ended, with Will in his bathroom vomiting up that strange parasite that would eventually become the Demo Dogs. This scene utilised our “disappearing room” effect, changing from a normal bathroom to a Upside Down version...
From there we took you back through the Byers house that we visited in 2018, only now you’re doing it in reverse and the walls are covered with Will’s tunnel maps that he drew after encountering The Mind Flayer. All of these drawings (and there were a ton) were created by hand...
Greetings Boils and Ghouls. Today we’re going to take look back at HHN 2019’s “Creepshow.” I’ve always been a big fan of this film since I first saw it back in 1982. When our good friend Greg Nicotero told us he was producing a new series...we jumped at the chance to be involved!
From the beginning, we new this maze was going to be a mash up of segments from the original film and episodes of the new series. We eventually settled on 5 stories. “Father’s Day,” “The Crate,” “They’re Creeping Up on You,” “Grey Matter” & “Bad Wolf Down.”
We also know we wanted to pay homage to the EC comic book style of the film/series, both with the set design and the exaggerated blue and red lighting. We also knew we wanted The Creep to be the “connective tissue” of the maze, just as he was in the movie/series...
OK...let’s see if I can take you through “The Curse of Pandora’s Box” by only using the text from the poem I wrote for Pandora to narrate in the maze. This is either going to be cool or a complete disaster! So let’s do this...
“Come inside...come inside
Anything can be acquired...
Anything your heart desires...”
“Come inside...come inside...
Anything can be acquired...
Anything your heart desires...”
Today were going to look at “The Curse of Pandora’s Box.” Chris & I both had ideas for an original maze. Chris had the basic idea for Pandora while I was developing a Latino themed maze (like La Llorona & El Cucuy). We decided to go for Pandora so I shelved my idea for later.
Chris’ idea was to have guests enter Pandora’s Box and then transition the environment to UV with black light sets and characters (which we hadn’t really done since Clowns in 2014). So I set about doing what I always do at the start of a maze...tons of research.
I started with the obvious...the story of Pandora which first appears with the poet Hesoid in 700 BC. I learned that Pandora wasn’t given a box in Hesoid’s tale...it was a jar. Someone improperly translated the story from Greek and the box stuck, which is good. A jar isn’t scary