There’s no telling when someone will sneak up behind you, jump out of an old picture or the walls of an entire room will disappear — in the new mazes at Universal Studios Hollywood Horror Nights, things aren’t always as they seem.
Even when there are no surprises, you’re still dealing with women getting sawed in half right before your eyes while ducking and weaving through corpses hanging from the ceiling.
Hollywood Horror Nights Creative Director John Murdy has been working with construction teams for months on mazes that he’s spent a year planning, in preparation for this Halloween season’s scares
“The whole point of it is to create what I call living horror movies,” Murdy said. “It should feel like you’ve walked thought the movie screen and are living a horror movie.”
This year’s main attractions will be several haunted mazes themed after popular horror films “The Exorcist,” “Halloween,” “Freddy vs. Jason,” “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and hit TV series “American Horror Story.” Universal Studios’ new permanent attraction, “The Walking Dead,” will have elevated scares. The Terror Tram returns as reimagined by “Hostel” creator Eli Roth, as well as a “Purge” themed scare zone.
“Exorcist is something I’ve been chasing the rights to for a very long time, for decades,” Murdy said. “It’s pretty surreal after all these rooms to be standing in ‘The Exorcist’”
An attraction that has cable-owning horror fans excited is the first ever installment of the Emmy and Golden Globe Awards-winning TV series “American Horror Story.” The show that offers a new theme to every season mashes up three chilling seasons into one terrifying building.
The AHS maze starts in the first season’s “Murder House” before sending attendees through “portals” into the “Freak Show” and “Hotel” sections.
For non-fanatics, the premise of “Murder House” is that the spirits of all those who have died in the house still haunt it.
“It deals with a lot of different time periods within that one house, so what’s kind of cool about this section of the maze is it jumps scenic environment,” Murdy said. “The looks dramatically change as you go along.”
The maze starts where the show starts, in the beaten up dilapidated Murder House.
“You’re going to hear [Addie] saying, ‘You’re going to die in here, you’re going to die in here,’” Murdy said.
Then, mazegoers will experience Larry Harvey and the charred ghosts of his family. The room incorporates lighting effects, smoke effects and stimulates attendees sense of smell, all the time not knowing where there might be a secret door with a spirit behind it.
“It’s set them up, knock them down,” Murdy said. “So everybody look over here and then scare them from the opposite direction.”
The house even includes a piggy-man scare, which references a story-line that is confined to a single episode.
“The final sections of ‘Murder House’ deal with the basement,” Murdy said “[A] lot of the action takes place in the basement.”
Mazegoers won’t make it out of “Murder House” without running into Dr. Montgomery and his specimen jars, the carved smile of the Black Dahlia and axe wielding Tate in full skeleton makeup.
“What they’re really good at is getting as close to you [as possible without touching you],” Murdy said.
The Murder House wraps up with the pieced-together remains of Dr. Montgomery’s son, who became the monstrous creature Infantata. Finally, fans get a reveal about Constance’s children.
“She talks about having four kids. She has three on the show, you only see three,” Murdy said. “So the fans for years, ever since Murder House aired, have been wondering what happened to the fourth kid.”
The truth of the matter is that the fourth kid was cast and filmed, but edited out – never making it to audiences’ screens.
“So [Ryan Murphy] asked me if I could bring that character to life in the maze,” Murdy said. “So fans of American Horror Story, you’ll finally get to see what Jessica Lange’s fourth child looked like who’s an adult male, and he’s very strange.”
When mazegoers enter into the “Freak Show” portion, they walk into twisty the clown’s woodsy hang-out. Doll parts and balloons hang from the trees when attendees pass twisty’s rustic bus on their way to the freak show circus tent.
“This [attraction] is all about Mordrake,” Murdy said. “On the show, Mordrake is a character who shows up on Halloween night… and he’ll claim one person and take them with him.”
After going through the final portal, attendees find themselves in the art deco interior of “Hotel Cortez.”
“Then we go into the room you’re not suppose to go into, room 64, and run into the mattress man,” Murdy said. “You basically get trapped behind the mattress man and the addiction demon.”
Then mazegoers enter the trophy room of James Marsh — the sadistic serial killer who created the hotel — before entering the “hidden vault” where vampires Valentino and his wife have been locked away for decades.
Murdy says one of the biggest challenges in making this maze is choosing which scares to utilize, and condensing the three seasons into a single maze.
For horror fans that think they wouldn’t be worn out after going through “Murder House,” “Freak Show” and “Hotel Cortez,” there are several other mazes that have had just as much effort and collaboration to create the “living horror movies.”
For the bravest students, go to ushtix.com/csulb to get a discounted ticket.