Category Reviews

Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios

4 Comments read Attractions, California, Live Shows, Pacific, Reviews, Travel, USA, West

Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios is supposed to be one of the premier horror events in the country. Accordingly, when we packed our bags for LA, I brought an extra pair of pants, in case I had a fear-related accident. However, I should have checked to make sure the extra pair of pants actually fit me. When we went swimming earlier in the day, I’d worn my pants over my suit going to and from the pool so that no one would have to look at my see-through leg skin, but this plan backfired as my pants got quite wet on the way back to the room, creating the appearance that I’d already had a fear-related accident, and my backup hipster pants were too tight to the point of severe discomfort. So I spent the minutes before we were off to CityWalk furiously blowdrying my crotch in the hotel bathroom with the provided hair dryer.

Waiting to get into the park, Jason had his first experience with a Southern California Bro waiting behind us in line. “So, bro, get this, I was dating this chick who turned out to be lame, and she was like, I thought that The Simpsons ride was too long but that the King Kong ride could have been longer and I was like, what, the Simpsons ride is like, a perfect length, and really, how much longer can a gorilla fight a dinosaur? Man, the best part of The Simpsons ride is like, when you go down to hell, I was all like WHOOOOOOA!” …he was suitably impressed with the guy’s bro-itude.

Immediately upon entering the park, it’s clear this event isn’t intended for children, with made up girls in short shorts grinding and writhing in cages to rock music. Once you’ve passed them, you’re into the Klownz area, overflowing with chainsaw-wielding clowns and geysers of flame shooting into the sky. There were so many clowns, in fact, that it was very easy for one to sneak up behind you while you’re distracted by another. One clown was very, very determined to try and get a squeak, a squeal, a screech, something out of me as he followed me through the area, blowing into my hair and dangling some sort of furry mass of something in my face. Really, the one he should have been going for was Jason–there were only a couple of times I was genuinely startled all night. Overall, the actors were very good at finding people who were totally engrossed and scaring them back into the moment.

Terror Tram: Scream 4 Your Life Our first stop was the Terror Tram, as it stops running a few hours before the park closes. We had purchased front-of-the-line passes, which meant that the most we had to wait for anything was a few minutes (compared to the 100+ minutes everyone without a pass had to wait for damn near everything), so we weren’t concerned about having to pick and choose the things we wanted to do most out of fear of not being able to see and do everything–but we didn’t want to get caught up elsewhere in the park and accidentally miss the two things that closed early. The Terror Tram bills itself as a behind-the-scenes look on the Universal Studios backlot of four horror movies currently in production; it’s essentially Universal Studios’ unbranded horror maze. I’m glad we chose to do it first, as it set the scene for the rest of the night. I’m not necessarily certain what I expected Halloween Horror Nights to be, but the Terror Tram absolutely blew all of my expectations away. The only word I can possibly think to use to describe it is “elaborate”. One of the movies was “Zombiez on a Plane”–and we walked past an entire plane ripped up, with bodies dangling out of the seats. I was so impressed by the work and money pumped into this event that I would forget that I was supposed to be scared. One girl was having her face ripped off, and as I was gawking at her makeup, she squirted water “gore” into my face and my reaction was not “ewww”, but “Wow! Awesome!”

The Simpsons Ride Our next stop was The Simpsons ride. It was hard enough for Jason to drag me away from Krustyland the first time to go to the Terror Tram: there was no way he had the strength to resist me again, especially since I’d been wanting to ride this ride ever since I’d first heard it existed. Everything about the area was spot-on perfect, from the references to the “Tooth Chipper” to schlocky Krusty-brand merchandise to the fully-stocked Kwik E Mart. The ride was charming, funny, and had a number of unexpected surprises. Afterward, my cheeks hurt from smiling.

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Halloween Adventure

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Halloween Adventure was an excellent (wait for it) respite for my smile muscles, because it was the only down note of the evening. It was a bunch of juvenile racist jokes with some song and dance numbers…and the main villain was Osama bin Laden. Really, Universal Studios? Wow. Pretty tacky. It did have some pretty attractive scantily clad young people, but I can get that elsewhere, without jokes about Mexicans and leaf-blowers.

House of 1000 Corpses in 3D Zombievision

I’ve always been a fan of Rob Zombie’s horror work, particularly House of 1000 Corpses, so I was definitely looking forward to this maze. Before we went through, we were handed a pair of 3D glasses to wear, which made the maze even more disorienting than it would have been otherwise. They managed to touch on nearly every area in the movie, from Captain Spaulding’s store to the Murder Ride to the house of the Firefly family to the underground tunnels where Dr. Satan resides. The colors, the tone…everything was spot-on perfect.

The Thing: Assimilation The Thing was one of our favorite mazes of the evening. Not only were the special effects amazing (they were created by Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff, two people who worked on the film), but they managed to create an atmosphere in which you felt like you may have possibly stepped through a portal into Antarctica, your breath fogging from your mouths on what you know is a warm Los Angeles evening. One of the only downsides is that, unlike the film, you aren’t threatened by the menace that anyone around you at any time could turn into The Thing (which could have been fixed with some line plants…but then again would have increased wait time so I don’t know if the payoff would have been worth it).

Jurassic Park: In the Dark This is the same ride as it is during daylight hours, except in the dark, it has a little more punch. We were told that you would get drenched on this ride, and since we wanted to do everything but didn’t want to spend have the night shivering in wet clothes, we bought two of the ponchos that were available for sale. I recalled all too well the time I’d gone to Six Flags Great America’s Fright Fest (located in Gurnee, Illinois, home of chilly to downright freezing temperatures in October) and ridden the Roaring Rapids ride, certain that all of the water geysers had been turned off, and discovering far too late that I was wrong and ending up soaked to the bone and colder than the White Witch’s nether regions. So I was insistent upon poncho purchase. …we were the only people in line in ponchos. When we got off the ride, our ponchos were barely sprinkled with water.

At least we looked cute.

Alice Cooper: Welcome to my Nightmare This maze was designed with the help of Alice Cooper himself, and contained a lot of references to his music, some of which I caught, and some of which went straight over my head as I’m not the biggest Alice fan. I’m guessing I would have enjoyed the maze more were I a huge fan, but then again, the dingleberry teenagers behind us were clearly fans, and one of them kept shouting at the actors that they weren’t so-and-so, that they weren’t doing such-and-such right, so they couldn’t have been having a great time. Unless they enjoyed taking some of the fun out of it for me, in which case I guess they had a blast. I certainly had fun mocking them afterward. One of the actors in this maze got me good, as he came crawling at me on the floor and I only saw him coming out of my peripheral vision: I tripped over my feet and then Jason’s feet while scrambling away.

Revenge of the Mummy This ride was ok. I mean, I enjoyed the Mummy movies (up to a point), and I always dig rollercoaster-type rides, but it wasn’t anything special or particularly horror-themed. It’s certainly not something I would have waited an hour and a half to ride.

Hostel: Hunting Season On our way into this maze, a group of girls came screeching out of the end, running and screaming well into the night. I thought for SURE this meant that something at the end would be beyond terrifying, but it didn’t end up scaring me, though overall the maze was one of the most gruesome. However, one of the actors squirted me and caught me off guard with more water “gore”, and the guys in the next room must have heard my “EWWW” because they nailed me, too. Or maybe they all like taking shots at girls in glasses, I’m not an expert.

La Llorona: Villa De Almas Perdidas La Llorona is a widespread legend in Mexico about a woman who drowned her two children for the love of a man, who subsequently rejected her, and she now roams the afterlife in ghostly purgatory, weeping for her lost children and seeking to drown other children to join them. I was distracted by the dudebro in front of us who was masking his own fear by walking behind his girlfriend with his arms around her, penguin waddling through the entirety of the maze. For the amusement of the people walking behind us, I did the same thing to Jason, which encited some laughs from the people behind us. Though the legend doesn’t really resonate with me personally, I thought the makeup and everything was very well done–there were a lot of cemetery settings with gravestones and weeping angels, and the actors were painted to resemble stone so realistically you could not tell which were the people and which were the props. At one point during the maze, they had an extra-large Maria head devouring a child in his bed (Freddy Krueger style), and when I drew Jason’s attention to it, saying “I don’t recall that being part of the legend”, an actor crept out of a hiding place, so when Jason turned back, he was so startled he nearly jumped through the ceiling, getting brays of laughter from everyone including myself.

The Wolfman: Curse of Talbot Hall This was the perfect maze on which to end our experience. Not because the maze itself was particularly outstanding, but the people around us enhanced, rather than detracted from, our experience. I’m not easily scared, but if someone fails to scare me, I won’t fling insults at them or be a jackass, and I was surprised to see that so many people WERE jackasses about it. But this time, it was perfect. Just before entering the maze, the group of girls in front of us screeched and said “You please go first, I can’t go first, I’m so scared”. I laughed and said “No fear, ladies, I will hold your hands” and led the way through the maze. I had my fair share of people jump out at me, but there were also some people who targeted the girls at the back, one of whom ran forward into me, screaming “BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLS”. I turned to her, confused, and said “Excuse me, but did you just scream “balls”?” Yes, yes she had. Apparently this is a thing among the youth these days. This maze also contained my maze kryptonite: mirrors. Unless someone shows me the correct way, I will walk back and forth between two mirrors and spend the rest of my life in the maze, often walking into them face first.

Wrap up After we’d seen everything there was to see, we decided to hit the Kwik E Mart and head out early–our front of the line passes got us to the front of every line once, but if we wanted to see or do anything again, we’d have to wait the full time, and there wasn’t anything I was willing to wait in line for that long to do again. While at the Kwik E Mart, we bought some plastic glassware for the house because I can’t be trusted with real glass, a “Duff” and “Flaming Moe” energy drink to go with my Buzz cola, and a big pink Simpsons donut. How big, you ask? Big. Really big.

Delicious, too. We’re already talking about going back next year.

This year’s Halloween costume: The Gunstringer

5 Comments read Makeup, Projects

I found myself seriously charmed by The Gunstringer right around the time I was deciding what my Halloween costume would be this year, and it immediately became the forerunner, handily beating the competitors: Oompa Loompa, She-Hulk, and Sexy Phlegm Ball.

I made the poncho, gloves, hat bullets, holsters, and horse prop, as well as painting bones onto a leotard so I could pretend my body was skeletal and painting some plastic guns to look more realistic. I’m wearing it now, stuffing my face with mini-twix, and justifying the whole thing by telling myself I’m nothing but skin and bones. Out of all of it, the gloves gave me the most trouble. So much, in fact, that I may never make a pair of gloves ever again. Or at least not until sometime next year.

The makeup took about two hours to apply, from covering my eyebrows until finishing touches. It took nearly as long to remove, and I’m still finding occasional blue spots along my hairline or in a hidden cranny in my ears. If I was going to wear the costume again, I’d consider making prosthetics for the cheekbones, jawline, and forehead to make the skull more pronounced.

This year marks my first time doing something I thought I’d never, ever do: wear a couple’s costume, which on the scale of Big Deals is somewhere right around acquiring a mortgage. We might as well buy burial plots together now or get his and hers face tattoos.

Jason attended as my power-up: El Taco Diablo.

Our costumes were a hit even with people who hadn’t seen the source material, and they didn’t much impede us when it came to eating, drinking, or getting busy…dancing.

“Ever since I became a movie star I’ve been miserable. I had to get up at five a.m. just for makeup. I like the way the blush brings out my cheekbones, but it’s not worth it!”

6 Comments read Attractions, California, Makeup, Pacific, Travel, USA, West

On Saturday morning, we hopped back on the subway toward Hollywood Blvd to have lunch at Mel’s Diner and check out the Hollywood Museum, located in the historic Max Factor building: four floors packed full of Hollywood memorabilia. The ground floor was right up my alley and nearly bored Jason to death, as it was almost solely about makeup. They highlighted the differences between makeup applied for black and white films versus technicolor, how Max Factor’s innovations revolutionized makeup for film, and how it was eventually introduced for sale to the public as it was being stolen off of the sets by everyone. Max Factor’s “pan-cake” makeup was essentially a heavy foundation which, unlike the existing panchromatic makeup, did not reflect surrounding colors. Before the development of pan-cake, actors looked so bad in color that many refused to act in color films.

…the things women do to be beautiful.

Celebrities loved Max Factor’s makeup so much that they were more than willing to be featured in advertisements for the product. Today, you’d have to pay out the nose to get a celebrity to endorse your product! Celebrities no longer fall over themselves to advertise Max Factor makeup: After Max Factor Jr died, the company went public and then was merged with Norton Simon. Quality went down the tubes, it was turned into a drugstore line, which sold so poorly that it is now no longer even sold in the United States. However, the Factors are still involved in makeup–it’s not widely known, but Max Factor’s great grandsons are the founders of Smashbox, a higher-end makeup line.

Makeup displays were set up in four different rooms: one for blondes, one for brunettes, one for brownettes, and one for redheads. I’d never heard the term “brownette” before, but it does seem to fill in the spectrum nicely for women who have neither blonde nor dark brown/black hair. The redhead room was painted a pale green, and Max Factor felt that if your skin looked healthy and natural in this room, your tonality was right to become a redhead, which is how he decided that the color would work for Lucille Ball. I now know that redheadedness would not look natural on me, as the room gave my skin a sickly tint.

Mine would undoubtedly read “She’s a jerk!”

The blonde room was, of course, filled with Marilyn Monroe memorabilia, from some of her personal makeup, to outfits she wore, to some manner of prescription drug bottle. And then there was this: an unlabeled clump of dark blonde/light brown hair emerging from a box. There were quite a few things like this throughout the museum–just there, with no explanation. Was it Marilyn Monroe’s hair? Was it collected from her brush? Yanked from her head by the paparazzi? Was it wig hair? What is it doing there?

Also on the first floor: Marilyn Monroe’s limousine, the eiffel tower prop from Moulin Rouge, and a number of creepy bunny heads on legs from Along Came Polly.

The basement floor, a former speakeasy, was dedicated to horror and sci-fi memorabilia: in addition to props and costumes, they recreated the prison walkway from Silence of the Lambs. They had some of my personal favorites–one of Elvira’s costumes, a cryptkeeper puppet, and an entire Stargate costume display. I was sorely tempted to try and take Ra’s costume, as it would be much easier than trying to make one of my own for a future Halloween (of course, then I’d need the body of a twelve year old boy, so it’s probably for the best that I wasn’t able to get at it, rather than bellow in hippo-like dispair as I tried to cram myself into the original), and while I was at it, stick my face in Daniel Jackson’s pants since James Spader’s butt was in there for a time. (Was that too far? That was too far, I’m sorry.)

The third floor was also right up my alley, as it was a tribute to Lucille Ball, from her early days in Hollywood through the height of her career, up until her death. They had costumes, outfits worn to events, awards, jewelry, film clips, and more. She is one of my all-time favorite actresses–I watched reruns of “I Love Lucy” incessantly as a child, and I still love them as an adult. She was fierce, and brave, and funny, and an incredible role model for women, and it was very moving for me to be surrounded by evidence of her legacy. The fourth floor was more of a mishmash–a lot of random things from random celebrities and movies: the dog in a cast from There’s Something About Mary, Elvis Presley’s tattered robe (which they claimed came complete with peanut butter stains, though I could find evidence of no such stain, so it I suspect it was just sensationalism–like The King would have wasted any peanut butter on his robe!), Pee Wee Herman’s bicycle, some costumes from Moulin Rouge, and a small display on Michael Jackson, featuring even more random unexplained hair with a lifecast of his face. Two of the pieces appear to be wigs, but there’s a long ponytail that could have formerly belonged to Jackson? Maybe?

I like that they assumed that their visitors wouldn’t know the meaning of the word “scandal”.

We ended up spending several hours at the museum, seeing everything there was to see. However, we still had time to visit the Fredericks of Hollywood IN Hollywood (because, c’mon, who doesn’t love trashy lingerie?), meet another crazy on the subway, head back to the hotel, AND go swimming before it was time to head to Universal Studios.