Edgar Allen Poe’s short story “The Pit and the Pendulum” inspired a ‘B’ movie of the same name with Vincent Price. I grew up with such classics. The final scene in the movie is the closest scene to the book of the entire movie, and even it is distant. The movie inspired me to read all of Poe’s works. When my passion turned to haunts I dreamed of my own pit with a giant clockwork Pendulum slowly carving a victim in half (Yes, I am a sick puppy, woof). My two attempts at this room are this month’s scene study. But I have more elaborate plans for the Pit and the Pendulum. In reality I have more elaborate plans for the haunt business. Book number six (March 2002) will detail an entirely new concept for the design of haunts. Competition requires us to evolve, or die.
In my early parking lot haunt days I was limited dollar wise and skill wise to eight-foot ceilings. My first ‘true’ torture chamber was placed outside, or with no roof. The Pendulum was nearly twelve feet high. Guests would travel through my indoor haunt to the torture chamber with no roof. It contained the pendulum and a rack. The scene had four actors. Two victims and two victimizers (torturers) were in a constant state of movement. The guests had to pass between the rack and pendulum to exit the scene.
Bottom line was it did not work as well as I would have liked. Four actors in a scene is an intense investment of talent that needed a greater return on investment. That is not to say that the scene did not work, it is to say that it did not live up to a four-actor investment. This self-examination of your haunt is the most difficult. You must be able to examine your creation; dissect it; accept shortcomings; realize you are not perfect and ‘punt’. That is to say, if it is broke, fix it. The following year the rack moved on to the “Guard Room” (April scene study) and the pendulum stood alone.
The “Pendulum” evolved from standard fair of blood and guts
to ‘beauty and the beast’. In its
original incarnation the victim wore a special brown shirt with a gouge across
the stomach that matched the swinging blade.
The victim would position his or her stomach to have the blade graze the
gouge. The victim shrieked in pain and
the torturer cackled with pleasure as the guests tried to make their way to the
exit. The current and enduring version
plays the scene extremely low key. The
victim is a beautiful female in a full-length sheer white dress. It goes to her neckline, to her feet and
covers both of her wrists. She wears a
body suit, because she may be completely covered, but her appearance may show
"skin". .
Guests basically ignored the rack (and did the same in the first version of the guard room, which is why the castle no longer has a rack) and riveted their attention on the giant swinging blade. In various floor plans the blade would swing out over the guests and make them duck, but the reality is they would have had to been seven feet tall for it to have hit them. Placing the “X” table on a twelve inch raised platform and elevating the table to the necessary height accomplishes this. This platform gives the torturer power over the guests and presents the victim in a more visually pleasing setting.
The beauty of the panel and sixty-degree design is the ease of re-designing scenes and customer path through them. Over the years I have created many variations of this room, but two basic designs, indoors and outdoors. As my skills increased I have been able to wrap the guest path completely around the “X”. This gives the actors more time to work with the guests and provides the guests with the maximum view of the scene. I try to use this same wrap around technique when ever possible.
The pendulum scene became one of my obsessions. I would observe the scene and the reactions it created. I was fascinated with the blade, its swinging; its shadow. I looked for ways to use the shadow. First I tried to project it onto a wall observed by guests as they approach the scene (bust); then I created a special window panel and matching light fixture panel. The light was at the same level as the swinging blade and would cast the shadow onto the translucent Plexi-glass window. I noticed about twenty percent of groups hesitating at the window, observing the shadow and questioning what is this?
The walls of this scene have been decorated in a variety of ways. Instruments of death and destruction have been used as décor. Death chambers containing skeletons and an occasional live actor have livened the scene up. One year I added a second level, guests entering or exiting the scene would walk under an actor overhead.
The blade itself is nothing much. A large plywood shape draped with bits of flesh and blood soaked cloth suspended from a painters adjustable metal pole. It is swung manually. One year I added a small pump, water supply and heater. Warm water was forced down the center of the pole into sponges on the blade. As the blade swung, warm water droplets would fly off of the blade and land on the guests. This was used with the brown shirt and caused many intense reactions from disgust to near vomiting. One girl became to ill to walk and her friends had to help her to the car. I let her friends return to complete the haunt.
Castle Dragon is an R&D haunt. I am constantly experimenting. I will try almost anything once. It is this research that is developing the haunt of the future, a new design so radical that its simplicity will amaze you. So powerful in presentation that the competition will adopt or perish.