Universal Studios Hollywood adds more gore for Halloween Horror Nights 2008

Halloween Horror Nights returns tonight for a monthlong run at Universal Studios Hollywood with a series of haunted attractions that, on the surface, appear unchanged from last year.

Freddy, Jason and Leatherface are back. So is the Terror Tram. And Bill & Ted’s parody show.

But the annual event, now in its third year after a lengthy hiatus, incrementally improves on many of the now familiar offerings.

Universal Creative Director John Murdy, the sick and twisted mind behind Halloween Horror Nights, gave me a tour of his walk-through slasher movie come to life.

The thoroughly revamped “Nightmare on Elm Street” maze includes:

* The Freddy shower scene: “So all the guys come in the room. They see in the shower the silhouette of a beautiful naked woman. Then out of the shower comes this hideous beast that they want nothing to do with. It’s basically a naked woman with Freddy’s face,” Murdy said.

* The aromatic dining room scene, which includes a vomit-spewing character named “Pukey”: “With the smell of puke in the room, your brain connects the dots and you go, ‘Oh my God, that girl just puked all over me.’ ”

* The Freddy snake scene, featuring the fiend devouring a helpless girl: “He’s chomping down on her and, of course, she’s screaming in agony.”

* The truly disturbing birth-of-Freddy scene, with Doctor Freddy delivering Baby Freddy while Freddy’s mother sits on an delivery table with her legs in stirrups: “This is pretty extreme.”

The Terror Tram, a deranged version of the usual studio tram tour, doubles in size this year with twice as many “scaracters.” Among the additions:

* At Camp Crystal Lake of “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” fame, visitors journey into the woods where they stumble upon a clothesline maze: “And it’s chock-full of Leatherfaces with chainsaws. And they’re real chainsaws. We just take the blade off. Because we don’t want to saw your legs off.”

* At the “War of the Worlds” set, the devastating plane crash scene has been transformed into an Elm Street nightmare: “Literally everybody in the town is turning into Freddy. So there’s Freddy cops, Freddy EMTs, there’s old woman Kruegers. I think it’s going to blow people’s minds because we’ve never done anything like this before.”

* Trams riders will also get a sneak peek at “The Wolf Man,” a 2009 remake starring Benicio Del Toro in the title role. Consider the thriller a leading contender for a new attraction at next year’s Halloween Horror Nights.

Also new for 2008:

* “The Strangers,” the masked home invasion robbers from the 2008 horror movie, take residence in the House of Horrors attraction.

* Bill & Ted’s Excellent Halloween Adventure takes aim at presidential politics and celebrity foibles.

* Toxic zombies take over the streets of New York in one of six scare zones.

Halloween Horror Nights runs Oct. 3-4, 10-11, 17-19, 24-26, 30-31 and Nov. 1.

— Brady MacDonald, Los Angeles Times staff writer

[Photo: Universal Studios Hollywood]

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This entry was posted on Friday, October 3, 2008 at 4:28 pm by Brady MacDonald and is filed under California, Family & Kids, Los Angeles, Theme Parks, Universal Studios Hollywood. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.