Plastic Miracle

Halloween almost slipped by us this year. Everything we had and were doing was tied up in the attempt to launch a satellite network. My students would not let it pass. Space, we had plenty of space. Money, well, that was in short supply. We had props and sets, lights and effects, but no way to build the connecting walls. The building materials from years past had been used in other ways. Then it hit me, walls of black plastic (hey, get over it, this was '85 and I knew no better). The sets were placed and ropes formed the tops of the walls, black plastic was draped over the ropes and walls were formed.

This year marked the first time we were inspected. The Farmers Branch Fire Department came out the week before Halloween. Made sure we had at least two 10-pound fire extinguishers and flashlights. That was it. We were opened the 17th through the 31st and charged $3.

This haunt was remarkable in that I used more blood and gore than ever before. The teens loved it. One scene was an actual telephone booth with a teen girl being hacked to death from the shadows. The customer path covered three sides of the booth. It was remarkable because the amount of blood that was squirting and splashing everywhere. She would wipe the glass with her bloody face as customers hurried by. This was before plastic knives and things, so we used a real machete. Her back was protected by plywood covered with a pillowcase filled with cotton and straw. The hacking sound added to the illusion and as customers came close the machete would slip and hack a piece of wood near her face. Not to worry, her mom wielded the weapon. Friday and Saturday nights we would destroy several pillow cases.

This was the year to learn the value of scene placement. The telephone booth was placed in the middle of the haunt; it should have been at the end. Customers commented about it as they exited and the remainder of the haunt was as in passing. In the business of theatrical revues an actor knows his performance was miserable when he reads his name and the word adequate. It indicates that the reviewer did not remember his performance, but noted his name in the credits. The last half of our haunt was like that, it was there, but nothing came close to the intensity of the telephone booth. There was a natural fear of whatever was hacking at the girl would come after them, but they did not notice our closing scenes. This is not to say that we did not scare them, we did. But there was a difference.

It hit me like a ton of bricks. I should have known better, but who would have thought that a simple scene could have such impact. At once I realized I should have moved it. But my designs were not that flexible and I had other duties. The haunt did OK, nothing fantastic, but we had the same amount of money left over as the year before, only because we spent nearly nothing building the haunt. This was also the year for developing pace as a haunt concept.

A simple effect occurred by accident. As the customers moved along the curtained path, the curtains (black plastic) moved with them. The flow scared a majority, who thought they were being followed. Their imagination filled in the blanks and after the telephone booth some wanted to exit. Another problem was no internal exits. The haunt had an entrance and an exit, nothing more. We began to add more illusion to the flowing curtain. At selected locations an actor would rush the curtain, pushing it in towards the customers. The reactions were extreme and we had to be careful as to not scare the customers into anything that would hurt them.

This wanting to get out of the haunt because they were scared and being able to move scenes was having a cumulative effect on me. The satellite network thing folded up around my ears and my concentration returned to the acting school.

Next Week, 1986

Mad Hatter

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