Universal Studios Hollywood’s Halloween Horror Nights Creative Director John Murdy closed out the main stage on day one of Midsummer Scream’s Awaken the Spirits convention on Saturday sharing details around a new scare zone for 2021 along with new in-depth information around the previously announced new maze inspired by The Bride of Frankenstein.
When “Universal Monsters: The Bride of Frankenstein Lives” was announced back in July, Universal Studios shared that the the maze would pick up where the 1935 film left off, today Murdy explained that the idea for the maze was born from discussions around how the character deserved her own story beyond just the five minutes the character gets in the film. And during the Halloween Horror Nights panel Murdy took a deep dive into that story sharing the entire maze narrative along with concepts around the maze characters and many of its key scenes.
Over the course of the maze the Bride will undergo a transformation, beginning first as the wounded monster rising from the rubble at the end of the film, to becoming an intelligent scientist who can reanimate life the way Dr. Frankenstein and Dr. Pretorius did with Frankenstein’s monster and the Bride, albeit through much different means.
The maze’s story is told by the bride herself who audibly narrates each new chapter of her story as guests make their way through the maze. The story starts as the bride escapes the destruction from the end of the film, recovers the body of Frankenstein’s Monster and then sets out on a path to revive him. Guests will enter the destruction left behind in the film and witness the Bride as she attempts to free Frankenstein’s creation from the rubble and escape the castle to safety. But upon escaping, the Bride comes upon a new danger as she is soon hunted by the brides of Dracula from the 1931 film “Dracula.” Guests will then be taken to the blind man’s cottage where the Bride has found shelter from the vampires. Scorched from the events in “Bride of Frankenstein” There she finds the crucifix, still hanging despite the blaze and fashions it into a weapon to fend off Dracula’s brides.
It’s here the hunter becomes the hunted and the bride sets out on a mission to find the secret of the vampires’ eternal life. Moving on to find refuge in an abandoned church, guests will be taken into the laboratory of the Bride who experiments on the vampires in search of the secret to eternal life and a means of brining back Frankenstein’s monster.
Through her efforts she discovers that blood is the secret, but before she can use it to revive Frankenstein’s monster, a final battle against the vampires will ensue as some of the vampires escape captivity from inside the depths of the castle where guests will venture to uncover the monstrosities that have occurred there.
After the battle, the bride finishes her life’s work and resurrects the monster, but once reassembled the monster is not as he once was and is now an eight foot tall creature that will be played by a stilt walker in the maze.
The maze will then dump out into an all-new scare zone announced during the panel, “Universal Monsters Silver Scream Queenz.” The new scare zone builds upon the female monster theme of “Universal Monsters: The Bride of Frankenstein Lives” and will feature female archetypes of some of the classic Universal Monsters characters. Characters announced include Ack-Su-Namun The Mummy, The She-Wolf of London, and Dracula’s Daughter. Each character will get it’s own trailer stylized to look like the classic trailers of the ’30s and ’40s and will play throughout the scare zone.
But while the focus of the panel was predominantly built around the new “Bride of Frankenstein” maze and its new related scare zone, Murdy gave attendees one additional reveal for 2021. At the end of the panel, Murdy announced that Terror Tram would be returning for 2021. However, no other details were revealed as part of the panel, but he said more information would be coming soon.
Midsummer Scream’s Awaken the Spirits is a Halloween and horror convention taking place at the Pasadena Convention Center in Pasadena, CA August 14 and 15, 2021.
