FEARnet sat down today with John Murdy, Creative Director of Halloween Horror Nights in Hollywood, to see how the experts do it!! As you may know, FEARnet is all about Haunted Houses this month offering a $50,000 prize for the best user submitted homemade haunted house, and showcasing some professional grade homemade haunts across America on our series Route 666. John let us in on a few secrets about making the most horrifying haunts and how he gets the adrenaline of visitors pumping! This year Halloween Horror Nights teams up with Freddy, Jason and Leatherface for a never before seen haunt! FEARnet will be on the scene tonight at Universal Studios Hollywood as Halloween Horror Nights 2007 opens to the public for the entire month of October! Be sure to check back for coverage of opening night and the HHN experience soon!

Tell us a little bit about your role in creating Halloween Horror Nights?

?Well I?m the Creative director of Halloween Horror Nights and the Creative director of Universal Studios Hollywood so I?m creatively responsible for all aspects of the event, from the theme of the original concept to seeing it through to completion.?

Do you come with all of the ideas and concepts yourself?

?This year of course was different from past Halloween Horror Nights because our deal with New Line Cinema and bringing Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th and Texas Chainsaw Massacre alive in our park. I conceived a lot of the ideas for those haunted attractions down to the props that go into the rooms, the lighting, and the audio. We use a lot of special effects and projection illusion and all of that stuff. I oversee all aspects of it right down to the training of the cast members that are going to be playing Jason, Freddy, and Leatherface.?

Do you recruit and find actors?

Being in Hollywood we have no end of actors in town. And of course these film series? have a very rabid fan base so when you think about it anybody who is a fan of Friday the 13th, it?s probably their dream to play Jason Voorhees. But there are lots of things that are particular about those characters that we have to convey to our actors. Some of them are very subtle. We do a ton of research on all of these film properties and on all of the aspects of the event. One of the things I think is unique about this deal was that New Line has never allowed this before. I first sat down with them in NY to talk about the possibilities of bringing these films to life for Halloween. I think they were pretty reluctant at first because they had been bombarded over the years with everything from Freddy rollercoasters to Nightmare On Elm Street musicals, and they never allowed it. They wanted to know what would be different about Universal and of course, we are the studio that invented horror movies. We have been doing horror movies since the 1920?s with the silent film era. It?s kind of in our blood. We also try to bring a movie quality production level to everything we do so I think when we sat down with New Line it was pretty much we want to take people to Camp Crystal Lake we want to take people to the boiler room; we want them to smell it and to feel it. When it comes to the actors, there are a lot of people who have played Jason over the years, Kane (Hodder) who has played him the most just has very specific things like Jason always leads with his head when he moves or Freddy Krueger is like the Fred Astaire of serial killers and moves with grace and agility. So these are all the things we translate to our performers so that the performances they?re giving at our haunted attraction are equal to what they?re getting on the silver screen.?

Do you guys pull a lot of the set ideas and designs from the actual films?

?For me where I started was the films. Of course I watched every single one of them and you watch and pick out the parts that will translate best to a haunted attraction. The next step was to go onto all the fan sites on the internet to see what the fans faves were. We read all of that stuff because we feel we are doing this for the fans. They?ve waited a long time for something like this. It?s one thing to watch these movies it?s another thing to walk through Camp Crystal Lake. So we pull a lot of specific kills from the films and try to recreate them. For example, there?s a great kill in Freddy vs. Jason where this guy is in bed and his girl is in the shower and Jason comes in and folds the bed in half and breaks his back so we are doing that and there?s the classic double impale from Friday the 13th with the guy and girl in bed. So we are doing that. We are trying to hit on the things that the fans love most.?

This year Horror Nights is using the three of the biggest horror icons for scares, but what else can visitors expect to see that is different?

?Well you still have to create a coherent experience. Even though we are trying to hit all these moments in the movie you still want a through line. Take Nightmare on Elm Street; we debated a lot where to do that particular attraction. Where we finally netted out was, set it in Westin Hills Asylum, which in the film series is where Freddy was conceived and born. His mother Amanda was a nurse who was raped by 100 maniacs, and you know, gave birth to Freddy. So we wanted her to be the through line for that experience as sort of a ghost. So you see Amanda through the entire attraction. With Friday the 13th it?s Crazy Ralph, who they sometimes call the Crazy Old Man, he?s the old guy who always screams ?You?re all doomed! You?re all going to die!? So we tried to find things that would tie it all together to go into multiple environments. We don?t like to mess with the brand but sometimes the brand asks questions that maybe we can answer. In the case of Jason the first film he?s not the killer, it?s his mother Pamela and he just shows up as the little boy drowned in the lake. Later in the series he?s an adult so you wonder what happened to Jason in between so we created Jason?s Lair out in the woods that?s a demented kid?s room where he lived before he became an adult. Same thing with Leatherface in Texas Chainsaw Massacre, there?s a lot of references where Sherriff Hoyt will say ?Stop playing with your dolls and get down here!?, and it?s like well where is he, what?s he playing with. It was obvious to us where to set Texas Chainsaw Massacre, we built the entire damn Hewitt house! But on the way you go behind the walls of the house and find a room that Leatherface hangs out in when he?s not killing people. We made his doll, which we call his best friend, and it?s sort of a collection of corpses and is just a little bit of everything stitched together. We get really detailed and take great pride in our sets from everything down to the wallpaper like a really authentic 1940?s or 50?s wallpaper.?

What specific type of scares do you use?

?There are a million ways to scare people, most commonly in this industry we have the ?boo scare? which is just something popping out but we get much more elaborate than that. We actually give actors tools to scare people and we give the actors control over some of those tools. For the part where the guy gets his back broken in Freddy vs. Jason, when Jason comes into the room he has a foot trigger that he can step one which triggers a light cue, the audio, and blood to spray on people. We are trying to physically touch them. We don?t want the actors to actually kill people, though it?d be interesting. But you want them to break down their walls and defenses. In Texas Chainsaw Massacre you have to walk through pieces of human flesh and it?s just disgusting, our guys created it, it has hair on it, and it?s just disgusting. We like to play on all of people?s psychological fears so we play on sense of smell a lot. When you?re walking through the woods of Camp Crystal Lake you?re smelling pine but when you?re in the bathroom of the Blair Meats Company you smell something entirely different. We use a lot of projection allusions.?

How long does something like this take?

?It?s getting to be year round. We started working on this year?s nearly a year ago.?

Aside from the Freddy, Jason and Leatherface aspect of the tour, what new and exciting things can visitors expect this year?

?Universal has a tremendous legacy in horror. Universal?s House of Horror, our other attraction, has everything from Phantom of the Opera to Chucky from Child?s Play you?re going from scene to scene in all these films. You?re getting the breadth of horror. We have the Tram of Terror where we take people through our back lot at night and drop them off and make them walk. We use the Bates Motel, the REAL Bates Motel and the real Psycho house, the real plane crash scene from War of the Worlds and that?s just something people can?t do anywhere else. You can?t see these real authentic icons brought to life anywhere else.?

After working in the industry for so long, are you more of a horror fan or of Halloween and haunts?

?For me I got bit by the horror bug at a very early age. I started doing haunted houses in my parent?s garage when I was 10 years old. It was back in 70?s and times have changed a lot. Your parents would send you out with a pillowcase for hours and hours, and that was my favorite time of year as a kid. Halloween has grown tremendously since then. It?s second only to Christmas in retail sales. I started doing these haunted houses in my parent?s house and we did it for about 4-5 years until my father looked out the door one year and there were about 300 people lined up to come in and he was just like, uh we?re going to get sued, this is not good. I was Norman in the bathroom with a real knife, just things you would never do now!?

Aside from your involvement in home haunts as a kid, how did you actually get started in the business?

?Well I actually started working at Universal as a tour guide in 1989. I was originally an actor and playwright, very interested in filmmaking. We have a lot of different programs. I guess it?s the modern day equivelant of working in the mail room back in the old days there are a lot of people in this company, actually Ron Myer the president of this company started in the mail room but ever since the 70?s it?s been more about the tour guides. As a tour guide on your days off you could go and observe films or observe other areas. At the time Back to the Future 2 was filming so I got to watch Robert Zemeckis and later Speilberg direct. I got a lot of experience and knowledge from observing. You just learned as much as you could. After I left the tour I started working with Universal Creative which is involved with the parks. I started off as a PA and just worked my way up. I wear a lot of different hats though. I perform aspects of the show, you?ll hear my voice, or see my shadow; I?m Leatherface in one shadow scene in Horror Nights. I direct some of it, I do some audio production, direct the talent, write the scripts so creatively it?s great because I get to do a lot different things.?

From working on things like this from all ends and positions, is it possible for you to even get a little freaked out or scared?

?Yeah it is actually! You know where every little thing is you know every little bit, but just in the employee rehearsal night they got me pretty good! That?s the fun of it, if they can scare me they?re doing pretty good. The Leatherfaces were kicking butt the other night. They know when they get me they?re doing pretty good!?

What is your biggest fear?

?I have a lot actually! I would say claustrophobia would be my biggest fear. When I was a little kid my brothers buried me alive up to my neck like three times in the backyard in the sandbox until my mom caught them. It?s ironic because I use that when designing. There?s an actress in Texas Chainsaw Massacre when you?re going through the meat factory in the freezer and you?re going through all the rotting bodies and the meat is stored. We have an ice box, that?s horribly claustrophobic. She?s in an ice chest with body parts and she?s completely safe but I just could never do it!?

Halloween Horror Nights runs from October 5th - October 31st in Los Angeles, CA and Orlando, FL. For hours and information visit the official website.