Last Friday, after hearing many positive reviews of the event, I attended Halloween Horror Nights which takes place at Universal Studios in Hollywood. I was left wondering how so many guests walked away with positive things to say.

To be clear, I am no stranger to the world of haunts. I’ve worked at several myself as a scare actor, and have attended many more. I’ve found that most haunts have their own strengths and weaknesses, but it seems that Universal has very few strengths to trumpet. I found this pretty shocking considering that Universal is not only a real live working film studio, but also because it has a history of horror films to draw on. (Hell, it’s very name is practically synonymous with the horror of the 30′s, 40′s and 50′s.) As a Halloween horror destination, it’s not very scary nor very interesting.

Horror Nights has a little over a handful of mazes. (Seven of them as compared to Knotts Scary Farm’s thirteen.) Because of this, once the night gets rolling, the wait times skyrocket. As you walk around the park, there are boards listing wait times and only a few had anything listed under sixty minutes. There are only a few rides, which also experience higher wait times. Then, lastly, there was one live show.

On the night that I attended, my basic ticket cost $57, and I was only able to experience a little over half of the attraction offerings. For almost double the price, I could have gotten a pass that allowed me to skip to the front of the lines, but since there’s so little content, I imagine you could do everything in a few hours, leaving you with a lot of extra time where you’re either bored or have to start repeating attraction visits. As a comparison, a basic Knott’s ticket on the same night of the week will cost around $47, for more than double the attractions (maybe triple when you could in all of the rides and shows available to haunt guests). From a basic monetary standpoint, Universal simply doesn’t live up to the price.

To get into a more specific review, I will start by saying I believe that with all haunts, terror should start at the door. Upon entering the park, you are thrust into a fog-filled clown nightmare that should have set the tone for the rest of the evening. Unfortunately, nearly all of the scare actors were in full rubber masks (something that occurred in nearly all of the evening’s events). Rubber masks have their time and place, and I know they’re cheaper and easier than makeup, but these are the first scare actors to greet your audience. They are in your customer’s faces. Rubber masks when close up tend to be less shocking that a really good makeup job.

Secondly, the entry area of Universal suffered from a proliferation of chainsaws. Chainsaws are scary. They’re loud and should make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. However, when there’s a dozen of them running around and whirring like mad, they lose some of that essence. You start to acclimate to them, and it ruins the terror they should instill.

Aside from the entry area, the park was pretty free of scare actors. I hate to make comparisons again, but you can’t take two steps at Knotts without running into another monster. It keeps the tension up in between attractions. Universal also missed a golden opportunity to place monsters along the attraction lines. There was a perfect captive audience, ripe for scaring, who instead spent most of their wait looking bored and checking Facebook.

Of the few mazes available, the ones I was able to get into were The Wolfman, The Thing: Assimilation, Alice Cooper’s Welcome to My Nightmare and Scream for Your Life. None of them were particularly good.

- The Wolfman: This maze had to utilize a preexisting space, and in places it showed. The walkthrough area they used normally showcases imagery and sets from various Universal horror films. They really should have worked harder at retheming the parts that were out of place, rather than trying to shoehorn Wolfman elements in. The best part about this maze were the actual werewolf costumes as they really resembled the look from the film. They also worked in the feral boy look from the movie. This maze was consistently the shortest wait all night, likely because the 2010 film remake was not terribly successful. I still felt it was one of the more pleasant ones to experience at the haunt.

To go on a quick tangent, why not just amp up the attraction that is already there? From what I’m reading online, there are normally scare actors in there anyway that fit the variously themed rooms. It would likely have been more effective than their attempted overlay.

- Alice Cooper’s Welcome to My Nightmare: This was the first maze I went through and I can’t really say that there was anything about it I liked. It has the same issue as all the others in that it focuses almost solely on what I call “jump out” scares. To me, a jump out scare is one where the actor jumps from their hiding place at you, sometimes while making a banging noise or rattling a noise can. They are cheap scares and are almost always going to get the guest to twitch. However, their twitch is a natural reaction to something coming at them at high speed, not necessarily a real indication of true terror. It’s almost always more impressive when the scare actor can freak a patron out by their very presence, or the idea the guest can’t avoid walking by them and is terrified at the prospect. Also, having a monster ahead of you that catches your focus can be a distraction from the jump out scare actor. This misdirection leads to an even bigger fright as guests are less likely to start intentionally gazing around for hiding places.

The other huge annoyance of this maze (and several others) was the use of heavy hanging plastic and fake bodies along the maze route. It was tiring to consistently have to push everything away to just get through the maze. It wasn’t scary, it was frustrating. There is also nothing like getting hit by a heavy body prop swinging backwards from the guests ahead of you. This element could have been used far more sparingly and been more effective because of it.

- The Thing: Assimilation: While this was the best of the mazes I went through, that really isn’t saying much. It was far better themed than any of the others and had a nice mix of actors in makeup and ones in giant “Thing” costumes. It was obvious they were trying to do something to help bump up interest in the recent release of the film prequel. (Sadly, the maze was better than the abysmal movie.) The maze had a very creepy vibe, it was accurately themed, it had a nice mix of scare techniques, and it also had an average wait time of ninety minutes. I don’t believe that any five minute maze is worth that much wait time.

- Scream for Your Life: This should have easily been the best part of the night, but it wasn’t. Scream for Your Life is a sort of open air maze that takes place on the actual studio backlot and uses real movie sets. But before you even get to that part, you have to hop on the studio tram to get out to the location. Again, here was a wasted opportunity. The spiel on the ride over was cheesy, and there were no frights along the way. Universal, you had a captive audience that paid for scares, so scare them already!

The tram dropped us off near the Whoville set and then wound us around the Bate’s Motel, the Psycho House, some of the War of the Worlds set and a few other small areas. I feel like a broken record, but yet again, there was an over-abundance of rubber masks and chainsaws. I did run into a “Norman” outside of the Psycho house, and that was pretty cool, but short-lived. There were a few less jump out scares, which was a nice break, but it was pretty lackluster regardless.

The only other Halloween specific attraction we were able to experience was Bill and Ted’s Excellent Halloween Adventure, and it was a whole lot less excellent that its name would have you believe, unless they meant it to be in excellently poor taste.

The show is an attempt at making fun of all things pop culture, but it only manages to be pretty boring and tacky. Rife with booty shorts and lame jokes, it was an hour of my life I can never have back. It’s also another shining example of why Knotts has the better haunt as they too have a pop culture extravaganza and it’s actually funny and makes more sense.

The other discomforting thing about this show is that it was either written before Osama Bin Laden was pronounced dead, or someone has a really poor sense of when they’ve crossed a line. I don’t want to get political here, but having Bin Laden as the main villain of the production just seemed wrong. And even if he wasn’t dead, it seems far from topical. (When was the last time you honestly heard a Bin Laden joke aside from immediately after his death?) Furthermore, when you set him alongside characters spoofing TRON and The Avengers, it gets even creepier, and not in a good way.

All in all, Universal’s haunt is not something I would attend again. I know the economy is bad and that this event must have been expensive, but for the price and quality it’s just not a fair bargain. Besides that, I’ve been to smaller local haunts that have packed a far bigger punch on what is certainly less of a budget. There was so much wasted potential, and that’s what makes me saddest.

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Photo/Makeup by Spatola Designer Images

I like to scare people.

That statement is the main reason that I’ve tried my hand at being a scare actor. (For those unfamiliar, a scare actor generally works at a haunted attraction with the intent of terrifying the patrons.) I don’t know why I get such a kick out of it. Maybe I find a perverse and possibly sadistic thrill in scaring the piss out of another person. Maybe it’s some sensation of delight at being able to effectively entertain and disturb at the same time. Maybe it’s all of the above. Whatever it is, I like it.

At this time I have worked at three separate haunts. Two of them were only for a few nights as a volunteer, and one was as a paid employee at an autumn carnival. So far I’ve gotten to be an eyeless dolly, a bruised lobotomy patient, a demon, a deranged nurse, a vampire and the classic generic haunt monster. I’ve got my favourites out of that group (eyeless dolly and nurse) but they’ve all been fun roles to fill.

Many scare actors seem to have a type of character they play in general. Noisy and sarcastic, screamers, wild lunatics and so forth and so on. My forte is the silent, creepy type. I revel in being able to terrify people without having to say a single word. I’ll throw in a growl now and again or a gnashing of teeth, but a silent stare and a crazed walk are immensely effective on their own. I remember scaring one guest at a haunt so badly that they tried to run away from me. I gave chase and they tripped and landed face first. They started to get up, took one look at me looming over them and took off running again.

I also use my size to my advantage whenever possible. I’m fairly tall, but slender, so I can fit into places some other scare actors can’t. At one haunt there was a tunnel filled with fog for guests to go through, and generally the actors would bang on the outside walls and scream. I was just slim enough to slip inside with the victims guests and pretend to crawl sideways along the wall, appearing out of the mist. The space was so narrow that walking by me was unavoidable and I actually had to make sure people would leave the tunnel in the correct direction.

Scare acting also has a lot to do with timing. Sometimes you’re in a place where folks can see you from far away and visa versa. That can be easier sometimes since you can start to gauge who’s going to be the best target to torment. (Haunt monsters tend to pick out the weakest of the herd.) When you’re in hiding though, it’s a lot more difficult to time your scares. You have to listen to the group to try and figure out how large it is and try to aim for the middle. (The general rule of thumb is not to go after the first or last of a group. The middle is best for collateral damage.)

Unfortunately, working haunts isn’t all fun and games though. It’s hours of repetition. If you’re the type that screams and hollers at people you have to be careful to not lose your voice. There’s always the chance you could get maimed by a guest (especially if you’re like me and like to get in as close as possible). And, of course, there are the jackasses.

I can’t fathom why some people spend good money to go to haunts only to be rude to all the actors. Maybe they feel that they can get away with being nasty since they’ve paid to be there. Some of these people are nearly unbearable. They come in to heckle you, tell you your makeup is lousy, tell you that you aren’t scary, all the while you’re trying to keep in character and scare the other people coming through.

Sometimes the guests aren’t the problem at a haunt; sometimes it’s the other monsters. You get the ones that don’t take it seriously or roam into your area and ruin your scares. Effective scaring often results from teamwork, but not everyone wants to play nice. So many of the actors at the last haunt I worked were so horrible that I actually had to quit before scare acting lost all its appeal. The folks in charge had hired mainly high school kids that could never bothered to follow the rules or simply didn’t care. The experience we were trying to create really suffered because of a few individuals. There’s plenty of room for fun and jokes, but you have to remember that you still have a show to put on.

Sadly, I didn’t have the opportunity to work at a haunt last year. The timing was bad, and I’d already worked and quit the biggest local haunt the year before. I’m hoping that this year I can pick up a few days somewhere as a volunteer. I almost feel like a junkie that’s going to need her fix.

Gentlemen, start your chainsaws.

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The scary bride

On Saturday I visited the Halloween Haunt at Knott’s Scary Farm for about the fifth or sixth time in my life. I’ve made attending the Haunt a nearly annual trip. I love horror mazes and usually Knott’s goes pretty all out. I have to say though that I found this year mildly disappointing.

As it is every year, actually getting in to the park is a mess. The traffic gets backed up on the freeway at least a mile before the off ramp, and even once you get off you have to navigate to the Knott’s parking lot. Once you’ve parked, you have to get up to the main entrance which is a disorganized mess of people trying to find the correct line depending on if they preordered a ticket or are trying to purchase one the night of. The friend I went with and myself made our way to the side entrance and it wasn’t much better. The security posted towards the back of the mob urged everyone to squish forward into the vaguely distinguished lines to have security wand you and then search your belongings.

We finally got into the park and things were a little more smooth. I was reminded however, of the reason I try to avoid Saturday nights. Loads of people navigating through the dark and fog-machine haze being terrorized by scare actors makes things a little chaotic.

During the evening we managed to go through six mazes (two were connected) and see two shows. The mazes were generally decent, but not particularly amazing. The two definitely worth seeing are Terror of London, which is themed around Jack the Ripper (and apparently Frankenstein towards the end), and The Doll Factory which is just what it sounds like. We also went through Labyrinth, Cornstalkers, Lockdown, and Club Blood. I was sad that we didn’t make it to the 3D maze Dia De Los Muertos which looked very interesting.

As for the shows, the first we saw was Bloodlust. The show briefly explains that the world now knows of vampires and werewolves and everyone signed a treaty to not kill one another. The show then goes back and forth between a sort of standup act with Vinny the Vampire and Willy the Werewolf, and dancers in booty shorts. The standup parts of the show were particularly funny and were what I really enjoyed. As for the rest, the half naked men and booty-short sporting women singing and dancing to music were okay, but not my cup of tea.

After that we trekked over to the big stage for The Hanging. This is the show they put on every year and it’s a mashup of all the things in pop culture during the year beating the everloving hell out of each other. It makes more sense if you see it, but this year they made fun of: Harry Potter, Transformers, Star Trek, Kanye West, Twilight, Wolverine, GI Joe, Watchmen, Britain’s Got Talent, Bruno, G-Force, Octomom, John and Kate, Brittany Spears, Jack Sparrow, Hannah Montana, Jonas Brothers, Lady Gaga, Terminator, Christian Bale, Disneyland, and more that I’m probably forgetting. Bottom line: it’s hilarious.

I think the only really big downside to the evening was being insulted by one of the scare performers who thought they were real funny and decided to be rude about my outfit. They informed me in an extremely nasty tone that I might “have trouble shopping” there since they “don’t have a Hot Topic”. Yeah, you’re a real laugh and a half. She was probably just pissed off because she was dressed up as a clown. (And for those wondering, no, I was not wearing an outfit from Hot Topic.) Honestly, it’s the first time I’ve ever had a problem before at the haunt with one of the actors. I hope it’s the last.

All in all it was a nice evening. At about $50 for seven hours of entertainment it’s a fairly decent deal.  Though I do think they could do with lowering the ticket prices just a little.  So if you’re planning on going, enjoy. (Unless you have any little children, in which case PLEASE don’t be a moron and take them with you!)

*UPDATE*: I’d written Knott’s about their scare actor that insulted me and they got back to me last night. They said that some performers have been instructed to “heckle” the guests. I completely understand and support that. (It is in character for a scary clown after all.) I just hope they also instruct them that there’s a very fine line between good natured taunting and being a prick.

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