So…you know how I always direct our scareactors not to pose for pics? Well, we’ve created some areas in the park that are dedicated character photo ops this year. I’ll give you the run down on where these are since it’s not something that gets an announcement… Laemmle Courtyard (by Waterworld) will have a revolving photo op that alternates between our Bride of Frankenstein from the 2021 house and David S. Pumpkins…yes, that David S. Pumpkins!

Ghostbusters on the surface might not be the first thing that pops to mind when you think of a perfect maze property for HHN but when you consider all the ghosts & creatures from the franchise, it had more than enough content to work with...and it would be a Hell of a lot of fun! “Who ya gonna call?” Back in 2006 when I was trying to bring HHN back to Hollywood, I was almost exclusively focused on slasher films but as the years went on and the number of mazes piled up, I started to become interested in translating films that weren’t strictly Horror.

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

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

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...

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.”

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...”

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.

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 Protector of Monsters (continued)...and Director James Whale, who had made Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein and The Invisible Man, ended up committing suicide by drowning himself in his Pacific Palisades swimming pool. Even Carl Laemmle Jr, the son of Universal founder Carl Laemmle, who had produced the monster films lived out his life as a recluse after his family lost control of their studio in 1936. He never produced another film and died in 1979, 40 years to the day of his father’s passing.

Been thinking about how to approach Universal Monsters to close out 2018 and decided to dedicate the rest of this week to it. This maze was extremely personal to me so to provide context I’m going to post part 1 of an essay I wrote on The Monsters earlier this year... The name of the essay is “The Protector of Monsters” and it’s about my lifelong obsession with The Monsters, how I view the films, etc. I pulled together a bunch of pics from my collection to help illustrate it. Thought this would be a good way to kick off the subject...

Happy Monday Boils & Ghouls! Playing Zoom bingo to help raise money for my kids Gaelic Football team later (that’s a sentence you could only write during the pandemic) so going to try and take you through 2018’s Poltergeist now...as Zoom Bingo takes a lot of concentration... The facade for Poltergeist was the Freeling house, which I thought Chris and team did an excellent job of recreating for the maze. The real house where they filmed is in Simi Valley, Ca and still looks pretty much the same (last time I checked). Here’s the house before and after.