Halloween is a busy season for L.A.’s theme parks and they go the extra mile to make sure visitors are duly terrified

As dusk descends on an October weekend at Universal Hollywood Studios, there is a chilling change in the air. Clouds of vapor rise from the ground, gruesome shadows loom on storefront facades. Lying in wait are dark intricate mazes filled with the quintessentially macabre, all carefully designed to scare the hell out of visiting guests.

“Halloween Horror Nights have become big business for theme parks in Los Angeles”, says Cory Asrilant, entertainment production manager at Universal Studios Hollywood, who helped spearhead the park’s first Halloween Fright Night in 1997. “Halloween is getting bigger every year and we are planning to add new ‘scaracters’ and more mazes next year and to keep expanding Halloween because of the popularity.”

Crowds can grow as large as 40,000 on Halloween night at Universal Studios Hollywood and, at $39 a person (even for kids), that translates to more than $1.5 million, not counting the sale of merchandise. That level of revenue has bred a hot and heavy competition between theme parks, with each trying to top the other.

“Our deal is the best in town,” crows Andy Gillardo, spokesman at Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia. “Our tickets are $23 per person for the entire day, which includes the scariest fright night in town.”

But Universal Studios Hollywood claims its horror nights offer something special.

“No one has the caliber of talent that we are able to draw upon,” counters Eliott Sekular, Universal spokesman. “We have the advantage of being able to reach out to our talent from TV and film, who work on designing mazes for us. For example, our newest maze, ‘American Nightmare,’ was created by Rob Zombie, a multi-platinum recording artist whose genre is bringing the element of horror to rock music.”

Mazes of fright

Indeed, the foundation of Universal’s scare-fest are its half dozen or so mazes, each of which has been designed with at least some input from big-name talent.

Universal’s Asrilant adds that the celebrity involvement is not just a marketing veneer, either.

“The celebrities take a real interest in their mazes”, he says. “We are not just using their name; we actually brainstorm with them and together create a maze from their vision.”

Josh Whedon, creator of the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Angel” TV shows, assisted on designing the maze based on those two shows, as well as on the World Wrestling Federation-themed maze “The Undertaker: No Mercy” and Clive Barker’s “Harvest” maze.

To create true terror, skill is required.

“We augment the park’s regular staff for these nights,” says Sekular.

This means troops of ‘scaracters’ who in the daylight are really college students, out-of-work actors, housewives and an assortment of eccentrics, many of whom return every year for the sheer thrill of scaring folks. There is no shortage of roles for talented scaracters, including monsters, the ghoul patrol or sliders, who wear wheels on their knees and slide out of the dark to terrorize unsuspecting guests.

Stand-up comic Scott Everett Berger, a scaracter at Six Flags Magic Mountain, has become quite good at what he does.

“I’ve had ladies go into labor, people lose control of bodily functions and one man fell into a fountain from fright,” says Berger, better known as Bone Daddy at the park. “I scrape a flat-headed shovel along the ground, which makes sparks and a god-awful sound and, when people hear it, they know something bad is coming.”

Asrilant says Universal Studios Hollywood trains its people to take their scares only to a certain level.

Ghoulish restraint

“Most of our people are very experienced and can judge by the look of terror on a person’s face just how much further to take it. We use many of our most experienced people to train new scaracters,” he says.

Good scaracters have a sense of responsibility.

“If I see a kid cowering or hiding behind his parents, I will come over and talk to him in a friendly way,” says Berger.

Preparation for a horror night starts early in the day. At Six Flags Magic Mountain, by 4:30 p.m. Scott Ramp, a professional makeup artist, is working feverishly with his Scream Team, doing “MASH-unit makeup,” 5- to 20-minute makeups per scaracter. Inside a huge trailer, Ramp’s team swiftly applies bloody gashes and scars, torn flesh, macabre features and white ghoulish makeup. Makeup must be top notch to impress the jaded crowds.

“The way you make up a person can create real fright,” says Ramp. “We have macho teenage guys who come in and see the actors with our makeup on and think it is a rubber mask and mockingly say, ‘Oh, gee, we’re so scared.’ But when they see a real face moving beneath, they start to freak out.”

Backstage scenario

Behind the scenes at Universal Studios Hollywood, there is also a bustle of activity in preparation for the evening’s fright night. Makeup areas on sound stages and in trailers are filled with the evening’s first shift of scaracters. Dark humor fills the air as many smoke, eat or brood while waiting their turn in the makeup chair. Professional makeup artist Michael Burnett supervises his cadre of young students and professional artists, all of whom work intensely to transform hundreds of human faces into those of monsters.

Nearby are the gruesome choices: prosthetic scars, blood-laden gashes and wounds, jars of fake blood that will eventually ooze in abundance from mouths, eyes, ears, head wounds and gashes. In another trailer, wardrobe mistresses hand out dozens of monster costumes, shoes, sneakers and bizarre headgear. A seamstress quickly mends a tear in the dress of a girl wearing skeletal makeup with dripping blood. (She’s playing an angel of death in one of the mazes.) Wearing jeans and T-shirt, Angie Curry has a sweet voice behind her face of horror.

“It is just a fun scare,” she says, explaining her work.

Other scaracters, monster makeup convincingly in place, wile away the wait until the witching hour by playing cards, eating pizza and talking to friends on cell phones.

The adrenaline is flowing and the scaracters seem impatient for the first victims of the evening to step inside the pitch black of Clive Barker’s “Harvest” maze, as the rumor spreads that Barker himself will be visiting tonight.

A flashlight beam reveals the terrifying maze, with gruesome corpses hanging from the ceiling that guests will bump into in the dark, and bizarre objects emitting squishy liquid that jump out as you grope your way through the maze. As you walk across a section of glass floorboard, a corpse with his mouth open in horror lies trapped beneath. Behind a surprise closet door another unpleasant surprise awaits: a monster leering from between two toxic tanks. Outside, park visitors are already shrieking with terror as the roar of a buzzsaw rips the air and a monster chases after them, blood dripping from his hands.

After engaging in hours of frightening antics, most of the scaracters are ready to call it a night, as the park prepares to close. But a few hearty ghouls plan to journey forth into the night.

“I am too hyped up to go home,” says scaracter Larry Ross, “so I meet up with friends and work it off.”