I was just in Orlando to see the MST3k Live shows there. While in Orlando, and I attended Halloween Horror Nights at the Universal Studios theme park. The event is composed of several horror-themed houses filled with scare actors and atmospheric effects from licensed intellectual properties like the “Stranger Things” TV show and films like “Poltergeist”
It got me thinking, given that Halloween is near, that a number films from MST3k and other B-Movies would make for good Scare House events at theme park-like environments.
I think “The Brain” film from the 2018 MST3k Live Show could be the basis for a scare house. House attendees could be terrorized by the monstrous brain creature puppet, as well as the evil employees of the Psychological Research Institute from the film, as well as film characters hypnotized into murdering people by The Brain, who’d be portrayed by scare actors. You would go through rooms modeled after locations from the film, in which would mimic the hallucination scenes the characters experience in the movie.
For other MST3k films, I think “Squirm” and “The Killer Shrews” would make for good Scare House properties.
I would have to go with “Being from Another Planet,” and visitors would walk through an industrial basement that get’s scarier and scarier, but nothing happens. And you’ve spent $20. I didn’t say it would be a GOOD scare house!
Your pick?
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Manos: The Hands Of Fate –
Why not go with a proven commodity? You could combine Sampo’s idea of prolonged boredom in a room that projects scenes of driving past endless irrigated fields with the ???? of Torgo and the mild titillation of The Master’s wives (minus the little girl, please).
the ‘Beast of Yucca Flats’ house of the damned.
try and survive room after room of the desolate and dimly lit Cuba/New Mexico while being pursued by a deranged bald fat mutant, two near sighted and overworked cops as well as the family from Hell…from Hell…from Hell….
and don’t you be playin’ with the coyotes!
How bout Space Mutiny?
Need a basement of a petrolium plant for the setting. Scary rooms with 80 year olds dancing while presenting like baboons. The floor polishers from hell can chase people room to room. How about lame villions flame broiled room. The Lt La Mont room where LL gets killed and rises up back to her station to work again and again…The scary background tape would be Chuck Groundround screaming like frightened little child.
How about “Monster a Go-Go”?
“But… ”
No… actually, I thought better of it.
A Case of Spring Fever.
Can you endure the horrors of the house with no springs? Doors that won’t close! Rotary phones that won’t dial! And all the while, the mocking voice of that malicious imp, Coily, laughs at your misfortune, while his demented victim-turned-acolyte, Gilbert, torments you with random facts about springs!
Remember, if you didn’t hate springs so much, this wouldn’t have happened! Bwa ha ha ha!!
The Screaming Skull would probably serve as a decent basis for a scare house.
Seriously, though: “The Unearthly” could make a pretty good “scare house”. Let me lay out my case:
* The premise itself is not bad, and makes for a good bit of scariness. I mean, a mad scientist experimenting on hapless folks and creating horrendous twisted creatures and what-not. Come on!
* Tor Johnson would make a pretty imposing character to have lumbering frighteningly about–even if he *was* shouting “time for go to bed”.
* A buried, supposedly dead guy emerges, zombie-like, from his coffin. A staple of haunted houses from time immemorial.
* John Carradine. A scary man.
* It was actually set IN A HOUSE.
Full disclosure, however; the real reason I’m suggesting it is because: Allison Hayes. (rowr)
I’d come up with a haunted house based on Attack Of The The Eye Creatures, but… I just don’t care.
Universal has the JAWS ride/attraction
So why not..
The Devil Fish Experience
You could choose to go on the ride with a man built like a Ken doll or
enjoy the ride with an anorexic female.
Along the way you could have vaguely American Coast Guardsman trying to rescue you!
I think it adds up to a winner.
I want a themed MST horror house that mixes it up, maybe called House of Horror-ibly Annoying Characters. The hallway has a mirror; if you look into it, you’ll see Eddie Deezen mugging over your shoulder. One room features the two annoying soldiers from Attack of the Eye Creatures, spying on all the guests wandering through the house and making icky comments about them. Heathcliff from Wild World of Batwoman sits in another room and paws at anyone who’s foolish enough to enter. Droppo would be there with his Mr. Rogers music and an offer of food pills. To keep things lively, all those children from various Japanese movies run through the whole place, demanding cokes, sticking their tongues out, telling you how to deal with any monsters you meet, then telling you they don’t care. And no matter where you step in the house, you hear a voice incessantly calling…”Cabot? Cabot! Cabot!! Cabot?” Brrr. That would give me nightmares!
‘The Atomic Brain’ complete with creepy old house, mad science laboratory, cat-brained woman, zombie girl, Half animal man and murderous old hag.
So many good suggestions already. I offer: The House of the Bride of the Monster! So OK, there’s really no bride and no monster, but you do get an actual house. Be careful not to bump into the walls — if you do, they will shake like the flimsy plywood they are and threaten to fall on you. Tor Johnson wanders slowly around the attraction, not doing much of anything, and for an extra fee you get to wrestle the (fake) octopus. Unfortunately, all the furniture and lab equipment will have signs meaning “No Touching,” although it will be worded “No Tampering in God’s Domain.” The scariest thing of all? Stock footage. Lots and lots of stock footage.
Girl in Gold Boots Experience.
RiffTrax has some new stuff available.
The movies “Terror in the Wax Museum” and “Ready Player One.”
The shorts “At Your Fingertips: Floats (Live Edition)” and “Ladybug, Ladybug, Winter is Coming.”
Enjoy.
Don’t forget the complimentary Budweiser.
The EricJ Scaroleum. Whenever a group of people start to enjoy something, he shows up to throw garbage word salad at them until everyone leaves in horror.
I agree with The Killer Shrews. Make it like a ride where the car/boat looks like the big cans our heroes hid under to escape.
Merry Christmas; let’s visit the Haunted House.
Can you imagine the lucky kid who stumbled into this Haunted House?
The Racket Girls gymnasium experience……..can you think of a scarier exhibit?
Brrrrrrrr……
The Teenagers from Outer Space House. Tremble at the sight of a giant lobster! Mr. ‘Torcha’ jumps out at you screaming about ‘Torcha’, Psycho Spaceman turns people into skeletons, Sparky the dog chases you, see Sleepy Grandpa napping on the couch, gasp at the boiling pool with the sexy swimmer, and visit the room with the most wooden acting doctor ever. The last room is a collection of stock footage featuring volcanoes exploding.
The “Alien from L.A.” experience. Watching Kathy Ireland attempt to act is more horrifying and hideous than anything MST3K ever showed.
Future War, but instead of a scare house it’s just an endless, inescapable maze of cardboard boxes.
Behold!
The Hobgoblins House!
With Margehair as the ticket taker and Roadrash on the porch saying “You’re a friend of Daphne, knock yourself out!” as you walk in.
Beware of the Dance to the 80’s room! Can you escape the Assault of the Hand Puppets?
Take in the Garden Tools of Death exhibit where Nick goads you into a fight while Amy shouts emasculating dialogue at you.
Did I ever tell you about the Security Guard Room? The main attractions here are a desk and chair with stained trousers draped over it. Rambo Nick shows up, deliberately flips over the desk, and starts throwing flash bombs at you. Escape is only possible through a really slow closing vault door!
Now take the security cart to the end while being slowly chased by a snarling Hobgoblin cart.
When you exit, the Club Scum Emcee will ask you to participate in some donkey mud wrestling.
Run.
The Chicken of Tomorrow House –
Sponsored by The Vegan Council. First they separate the boys from the girls in the “sexing room”. The cockerels, I mean boys, are led straight away out a back door to a large trash can. The End. For Them. The girls, we’ll be calling them pullets for now, go on to large rooms with plenty of stuff on the floor to poop on while they work out what the pecking order is going to be. The final and most horrible exhibit accompanied by screechy, hitchcockian shower scene music, is a pair of the caretaker’s filthy pants emblazoned with the message “I REALLY DON’T WASH DO U?”.
As you walk in, Buz teleports in front of you yelling “Stay away from Michele!”, then pours beer on you!
Veering over into RiffTrax territory…
“House on Haunted Hill”, which is a haunted house already. In the Halloween version, You hear the hosts doing their Lockhorns routine on tape loop while hitting all the gimmicks as used in the movie.
And the acid bath under the basement floor….. is real!
I’m thinking of a Brain That Wouldn’t Die house (a country house, of course): as you turn into the parking lot, you see the flaming wreck of a 1959 Ford convertible with William Proxmire’s hand sticking out of the front seat; you knock and the door is opened by a neurotic lab assistant with a withered arm; you pass through dingy rooms full of sultry men-women doing asexual chicken dances in your face; camera-wielding weirdos pester you; in the basement is a tall creature in a cheap rubber mask waving a bloody arm and a cackling be-turbaned woman’s head in a lasagna pan. Meanwhile, Psycho Doctor Bill tells you over and over that you can trust him to fix your face as he offers you drinks that may or may not be spiked. And every few minutes, you find *you’re in another dimension and you don’t know what’s happening to you, ahhh* . . .
A narrow corridor, with the sewage worms from Robot Holocaust, reaching out at you.
I’m all in for one of the newest additions, the House of “Carnival Magic”. The smell of chimpanzees and vomit permeates the air. Thrill to Alex the Talking Chimp and his existential ennui! Gaze in amazement at Markov the Magnificent as he transforms a local yokel into Gus the bar bender! Marvel as the animal trainer is mauled by his own tiger! Try not to be horrified by the cloudiest orange juice known to man! And, finally, witness the grandeur of Misty O’Shea as the girl in the car, driven by Alex the Amazing! You will never be the same!
The Deathstalker Haunted House.
The extras would be like the Warriors From Hell.
How about a scare house full of things you could turn into if you aren’t super-careful: warwilf skulls, bats on wires, plus moon rocks (OH, WOW!) that turn you into giant lizards if they scratch you.
Speaking of warwilf: as a writer and linguist, I would be terrified to be stuck in a language scare house full of Valerias and Natalies jumping out from dark corners and shouting things like “Yoo and yoo dawta ar doohwmed” and “Dis is absolutely fassinetting”, disembodied voices talking about “snark farms” and “making woppits”, creepy people with names like “Butt Healer” and “Toblerone”, and a never-ending soundtrack playing songs like “Idiot Control Now” and “Aw Du Peepo Abba in Da Woooaa”.
I wanted to speculate about what a buffalo shot scare house would look like, but could not bring myself to. I’d be happy to have everyone else take a crack (sic) at it though!
the Watch Out For Snakes house.
you hear a voice that says out of no where, Watch Out For Snakes.
Assignment Venezuela House
The doorways are narrow and the rooms are WIDE!
Maybe everyone has given this one a pass because it’s too easy, but if the talking monkey doesn’t make you jumpy, and having your fortune told by Madame Estrella doesn’t chill you, and Ortega doesn’t leave you with wobbly knees, then Ray Dennis Streckler frolicking is guaranteed to shake you to the core.
Hmmmm….
You walk into the house. It looks like some kind of spacecraft. There are a few nice, friendly touches. A racecar bed, nachos in the kitchen, a chicken puppet. Then, you walk into a room, and the door slams shut behind you! You look around and you’re surrounded by huge screens, and they’re all playing “Manos, the Hands of Fate”! NOOOOOOOO!
When the movie is done, you stagger out of the room, shell-shocked. You stumble down a long hallway, into another room. Suddenly, the door to that room slams shut behind you! More screens! No matter where you look, you’re overwhelmed by “Castle of Fu Manchu”! NOOOOOOOO!!!
And it goes on and on. More rooms, more screens, more terrible movies. Twelve seasons worth! And the most horrifying things of all? You’re alone, with no pals to help. Plus, you’re gagged, so you can’t joke. And you don’t have great comedy writers providing material. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!
And, in the end, you drag yourself out…and you get back in line for another go ’round. Some people just love being horrified.
In some way, almost any and every riffed film can be adapted into “scary funhouse” format (they sort of already ARE just by the nature of the medium). I think it’s harder to conceive of any which could NOT be! “Mitchell” perhaps? Well, Joe Don is pretty scary. The films in the Coleman Francis trilogy? We have a very creative group here… I’m sure someone can come up with something even for these beasts!
The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies Experience. Admit it, there’s a lot of things in this film that can be incorporated in this type of haunted house:
* The animatronic clown and “GET YOUR TICKETS HERE!” monkey (I can definitely place the monkey at the entrance of the place;
* The creepy gypsy ladies fortune telling booth and her “off limits area”;
* The deranged Xmas pageant and “Schick Out of Shave” dance numbers;
* The hypnotism wheel the gypsy lady uses to get others to kill for her;
* A crossdressing dancing Nazi getting killed by some guy in a hoodie;
* Jerry’s “freakout dream” after killing said Nazi (and the sight of his foreign roommate;
* The eventual appearance of the titular mixed-up zombies;
* Last, but definitely not least, Ortega.
How about the villa from ‘Danger! Death Ray!!’? Nothing says horror quite like wall-mounted guns!
Especially for Cambot. But let’s take this a step further and have an oily-James-Bond-rip-off scare house: the aforementioned guns, death rays, psychotic chewing gum, death-spore water guns, Prince, a time-cop Abe Lincoln, disturbing crotch shots of various kinds, irritating or irrelevant sidekicks, pseudo-suave secret agents that all look like different versions of the same person seducing cardboard-cutout barbie dolls with barf-producing pillow talk … If done right, it would be terrifying!
Hey, it’s Mickey! And he’s wearing pants!!