On Sunday, Midsummer Scream wrapped up its three-day Halloween and horror convention with its Universal Studios Hollywood Halloween Horror Nights presentation, which featured John Murdy, the Creative Director of Halloween Horror Nights Hollywood. During the presentation, Murdy announced a new maze and scare zone and unveiled a new limited edition vinyl featuring the Halloween Horror Nights music created by Slash to a packed Grand Ballroom.
New Haunted House: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Murdy kicked off the panel announcing The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Legacy of Leatherface as a new house coming to Halloween Horror Nights Hollywood for 2024. This will be Horror Nights’ sixth maze inspired by the Texas Chainsaw franchise and Leatherface and will take a “multi-verse” approach to the story in celebration of the film’s 50th anniversary and will bring every iteration of Leatherface to a single haunted house. “The people that we’ve always dealt with over the years on Texas Chainsaw Massacre, they came to me and they pitched me this idea,” said Murdy. “They said, why don’t you take a ‘multi-verse’ approach to this classic franchise.” So Murdy went back to the source material and re-watched the original “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and was inspired by a line from Nubbins Sawyer, the hitchhiker in the film, when he says, “My family’s always been in meat!”
There, Murdy realized that you never see the slaughterhouse Nubbins talks about in the film. “So what we decided to do was create an alternate timeline,” said Murdy. “We decided to create an alternate timeline that runs parallel to the events in the 1974 “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” film but takes place entirely at this location you’ve never been to: The Slaughterhouse. Because if I know the Sawyer family from ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre,’ which I do. I know that if there’s a slaughterhouse that they all used to work at that’s been sitting there abandoned, they’re probably doing something with it.”
So Murdy explained during the panel that he then went deep into his research on slaughterhouses to figure out how they functioned and what they were made up of to create the bulk of the maze. The facade and most of the maze’s story will revolve around the slaughterhouse until the timelines cross and you find yourself in the Sawyer house from “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” During the presentation, Murdy shared several slides featuring the various iterations of Leatherface and the other members of the Sawyer family that will find their way into scenes in the maze, which you can check out below:
If you’re wondering how Leatherface appears in all his different forms in the maze while creating a cohesive story, Murdy also tackled this challenge. He turned to old interviews featuring original Leatherface actor Gunnar Hansen, who once described Leatherface as having no personality of his own, which is why he wears the different skin masks. “He wears different masks depending on what he’s doing,” explained Murdy. “He wears the killing mask when he’s out chasing people when he’s hunting. He wears the pretty lady mask with makeup when it’s the formal occasion, like the dining room scene, and he wears the old grandma mask, the old lady mask when he’s stuck in the kitchen with the old man washing dishes. He just takes on a different mask for whatever job he’s doing. So it occurred to me that that’s what we’re going to do with this house. All these different iterations of Leatherface are going to represent all the different jobs that you would do in the slaughterhouse.
New Scare Zone: Luchadores Monstruosos
During the panel, Murdy also announced a new scare zone called Luchadores Monstruosos. The scare zone is a tie-in to the “Monstruos 2: The Nightmares of Latin America” haunted house and is inspired by luchador cinema, a horror genre originating in Mexico. The films were popular in the 1960s and 1970s and starred some of the most popular masked luchadors in Lucha Libre at the time, facing off against famous monsters. For the new scare zone, the cast of characters will instead be monster wrestlers facing off against monster wrestlers.
The “good” monstrous consists of the characters The Blue Death and The Green Devil, who are up against the “bad” monstrous, which consists of The Cave Monster, The Horror Wolf, The Water Demon, The Bruja, The Skeleton Man, The Night Zombie, and The Bat.
Limited Edition Vinyl Album from Slash
The final major announcement out of the panel was the arrival of a new limited edition vinyl album featuring the music from Universal Studios Hollywood’s Halloween Horror Nights created by legendary guitarist Slash. The album will feature 11 tracks Slash has composed for the various Universal Monsters-themed Halloween Horror Nights mazes over the years. Slash has remastered each track for the release.
Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood begins Thursday, September 5, and runs on select nights through Sunday, November 3. This year, guests will encounter eight all-new haunted houses, an onslaught of sinister scare zones, and the iconic Terror Tram.
A variety of Halloween Horror Nights ticket options are available for purchase to the Universal Studios Hollywood event. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit UniversalStudiosHollywood.com.
