Halloween Horror Nights is less than a week away at Universal Studios Hollywood and we were lucky enough to get a preview of the “Universal Monsters: Unmasked” maze. John Murdy, the man behind the monsters at Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood, clued us in to some of the details of this nightmarish experience.
Murdy started off by explaining that he and his team are always thinking about what’s going to come next for the event and how they can incorporate some of the classic Universal monsters.
“Last year, around this time, we were like ‘okay, what do we do with the monsters next?’ And I realized that this year, in fact September 6th, the day before we open this event, is the 100th anniversary of the very first Universal classic monster film, which was The Hunchback of Notre Dame, in 1923,” Murdy explained.
The maze will bring to life the nightmarish stories of that film, The Phantom of the Opera, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Invisible Man.
“60 feet below the streets of Paris is what they call the Empire of the Dead. The bones of six million Parisians are buried there,” Murdy said. “And as I got further and further into research I’m like ‘this is really a creepy story, so we should fold it into ours.’”
With The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera both being set in Paris, it was easy for the creative team to get those characters down into the catacombs. However, they still needed a way to incorporate the other characters.
“But what to do with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Dr. Jack Griffin, AKA the Invisible Man?” Murdy asked. “We decided because they were doing these experiments in London that were illegal, unethical, dangerous that the authorities chased them out of London and they’ve come to Paris and literally gone underground. So that’s kind of the starting point for our attraction.”
The story of the maze will be told by Madame Squelette, one of the many dead in the catacombs and the facade of the maze will be a massive English language, French newspaper with two video elements incorporated. Murdy explained that he wrote all of the text for that newspaper and it is all historically accurate information. He also admitted the text includes “tons of Easter Eggs.”
Murdy explained that guests will find the bodies of some of the workers who went down into the catacombs and had “mysteriously gone missing.” As it turns out, they fell victim to the Phantom.
As for the Hunchback, the maze will recreate a moment from the film in which the monster pours molten lead upon the heads of innocent people below.
Guests will actually get to witness the transformation of Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde before being attacked by the massive monster.
Murdy and his team asked the question “if all these monsters are underground, what do they do for fun?” So, they created what he called a “cabaret of death,” which welcomes guests with a giant devilish facade. It’s in the cloak room for this theater that guests will encounter the Invisible Man.
And while each monster will have his own section of the maze, guests can expect to get another glimpse of each one before they escape.
Guests will also get to experience an all-new original score for this maze, once again recorded by Guns N’ Roses lead guitarist Slash, as has been the case for Universal Monster-focused mazes in the past.
Guests will get to experience “Universal Monster: Unmasked” and so much more when Halloween Horror Nights 2023 kicks off at Universal Studios Hollywood on Thursday, September 7. Check out the full lineup here.