HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL - Finale

The last turn actually took the visitors out of the carport and up onto the front porch of the house...

...where this fellow was waiting for them. The Coffin opens with a creaking noise and the pasty green Vampire with stake through his heart slowly rises up..... EEEEEKKKKK!

The lucky survivors scamper out through the "Cemetary" to receive their rewards...TREATS!!

[ How did I manage to cram all of this into my 10' x 20' carport, you may ask? With my usual scenic efficiency. The flats used for the walls of the corridors were only 3/4" thick, so it was posible to arrange them to make one long twisting corridor with the painted cardboard panels on springs to open and close the way. I was sitting on a small platform 4' high in the very center of it all so that I could see over the tops of the flats, using small mirrors for the spots I couldn't quite see, and there I flipped light switches and pulled cords which controlled all the figures and the action. A friend in costume would open the door and lock it again and then follow the "Visitors from behind to make sure they made it through alive!]

I used to start on the HOUSE  in the summer, working all the logistics out well in advance. I began setting the insides up a few days before Halloween, with the outside parts going up on that day.

It was a lot of work and a LOT of Fun. I never advertised, but carloads of folks whould show up before we finally shut it all down before midnight. I kept this up for about 8 years until I couldn't physically do it anymore.

I still miss doing it every year.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN !!!!!

HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL !

Near the end of the maze a pair of red glowing eyes were seen at the end of the last long corridor...

Suddenly a strobe light illuminated an 8'tall Frankenstein's Monster which loomed and bent down as if to snatch the poor visitors up!

More painted panels of some eerie skulls with blinking eyes...and the Master Himself

HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL !!

Once inside the lucky Visitors ( 2 at a time ) were led down a winding series of dark corridors...
(these flash pictures don't do justice to the special lighting which would pop on and off at intervals to expose the next fright around the corner)

The first scare was a squeeling Monster Spider which dropped down from it's large white web.

around the next corner a werewolve's howl was heard...followed by the abrupt appearance of the creature rising up inside it's cage...eyes aglow...

The painted panels on corrugated cardboard loomed at the ends of each corridor, flipping open to allow the unwary visitors access to the next fright...

HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL !!!

The outside of the HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL was painted black with vivid white murals and details lit eerily by blue floodlights once the sky turned dark. The windows and door glowed with blacklit 'demons' within. There was even a small "Cemetary" to one side with humorous tombstones into which the fortunate "Survivors" of the Walk Through emerged to receive their Treats.

Dangling from a tree nearby was this bizarre fellow...his eye sockets blinking red as he swayed in the breeze...

The Brave could approach the locked door and ring a gag 'Doorbell" I bought which emitted eerie sounds of gongs and chains. Then slowly the door swung open to the sound effects and the visitors were admitted....

HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL !!!!

Shortly after moving into our current house in Alamogordo, New Mexico I began a tradition of a Halloween Walk Through Haunted House which I set up in the open carport and along the front porch of the house.

I used some 4' X 8' flats made of 1x3 lumber and cheap masonite paneling, combined with corrugated cardboard cut-outs to set up the "Maze" in the 10' X 20" space....

The Cinefex Films - More Makeup !

We had no budget for the making of these films. We shot exteriors in Forest Park in Fort Worth, Texas  and interiors in  MARK'S house...utilizing a little 10' X 10' "Studio" room which was empty upstairs for most of the scenes...redressing it for each film.

Here is a shot of my own makeup case which I used in High School Dramas and for the makeups in the films, and later in College shows. I still have it and it is still pretty much the same as it was when we made the films 40 years ago. I made it from my father's old fishing tackle box. There is a pic of ME as the mad butler in DRACULA MADE ME DO IT ! after my demise in the film...and a pic of Mr. Walker as IGOR the hermit...one of three roles he played in that first effort, next to his own sketch for the character.

These 8mm reels of film sat in a shoebox in Mark's attic for 35 years. We would get them out and watch them again as a group from time to time, but didn't do anything with them until 1999. I purchased a device which would allow us to duplicate the films to VHS and we spent one long night doing just that for the thousands of feet of film in the shoebox. In 2008 I finally aquired a computer powerful enough to process and edit the films digitally and i set about the 3 year long process of restoring them as best as I could. The original reel to reel tape soundtracks were long gone, so I rerecorded all the dialogue, sound effects and music to create new ones.

Now all our efforts are posted on YouTube for all the world to see...and many have recently

the link is:  http://www.youtube.com/user/CinefexFilms

and there you can view not only the restored films but two documentaries on the making of and restoration of the films as well as some other little extras I've produced in the years since.

The Cinefex Films - Makeup!

This whole experience came about when MARK WALKER & MICHAEL BOYD showed me an 8mm film they had made in 1967 and based on the Dracula story and films from the 1930's and 40's. It was amateur to say the least ( they were 9 years old then) but it was pretty good and very creative visually. Mark was a born filmmaker and I proposed to them that we make our own serious Dracula movie. Over the next year Mark and Mike and I worked on ideas for a script...all very grand and ultimately way beyond our capabilities budget-wise. but we also created some gags and funny lines to spoof the whole genre and those took form as a kind of "Sequel" to the story which I wrote as a screenplay ( my first) and we decided that we just might be able to produce that as a film....

The result after more than a year of filming...re-filming...and creating a reel to reel tape soundtrack...
was   DRACULA MADE ME DO IT !

Above is the 16 year old ME applying wet paper towels and Karo syrup to poor MICHAEL BOYD as the "decayed" Dracula for DRACULA MADE ME DO IT ! and the finished product as it appeared in the final film. We did this makeup only once and filmed all the scenes requiring it in one long saturday afternoon ( the makeup itself took a couple of hours to do)....