Enter the nightmare. As you hesitantly walk through a life-size roach motel, you feel your feet sticking to the floor and an unpleasant smell you can’t identify.The terror doesn’t end there.
With each step, you realize you’re on Freddy Krueger’s playing field and there’s no way out but to keep going further into his sick and twisted maze.
As one of the featured mazes at Universal Studios Hollywood’s annual Halloween Horror Nights, students and faculty looking for a hair-raising scare will find that and much more.
With this year’s kick off of Halloween Horror Nights, Universal Studios decided to invite three of the most notorious horror film icons – Freddy, Jason Voorhees and Leatherface – to join the fun.
Those who expect knockoff characters will be surprised to find that the actors playing the roles of these horror legends do them justice.
According to John Murdy, chief creative director for Halloween Horror Nights, Universal Studios made sure that “everything to do with the brand of the characters remained the same.”
In collaboration with New Line Cinema, Universal Studios developed four new mazes in homage to Halloween’s sadistic representatives. From “Friday the 13th,” “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” slasher movie buffs get a chance to participate in the silver screen coming to life.
“The attractions are extensions of the movie,” said Murdy. “[Universal Studios has] done meticulous research down to the tiniest details. That’s what helps keep it alive.”
In a yearlong process, actors are trained through Universal Studios’ Scare Academy. They are taught scripts, details of the characters they are playing, audio cues and all things that embody the perfect scare.
Dressed in bloody, tattered clothing, the murderers roam the park with chainsaws, knives and murderous equipment that keep guests on their toes. Aimed at an older audience and those who can take blood, guts and gore, the reenactments are so gruesome at times that guests will even find some characters skinning their faces off.
The eeriest ingredients to the massacre mayhem aren’t the killers themselves, but their victims. Covered in everything from feces to blood, they run throughout the park with sheer terror in their eyes, crying for help.
“We did all things taboo and forbidden and force you to deal with it,” Murdy added.
Halloween Horror Nights will continue every Friday and Saturday night of October and on Oct. 28 and Oct. 31 at 7 p.m.
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