[MichaelMyers]

Thought HDC would enjoy this write-up of this year's Exorcist maze at Universal Studios. The whole article is worth reading.

Are you afraid to step inside ‘The Exorcist’ maze at Universal’s Horror Nights?

I had high expectations when I arrived at Universal Studios Hollywood for an exclusive preview of a new Halloween Horror Nights haunted maze based on what I and many consider to be the scariest movie of all time: “The Exorcist.”

Like many Horror Nights fans, I’ve been waiting and hoping for a decade that Universal would bring the 1973 supernatural horror film to life in a haunted maze. To my amazement, the Exorcist maze exceeded my expectations.

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But while Murdy always dreamed of building an Exorcist maze, he had no idea how to pull it off. The film violates two of his three criteria for a good Horror Nights maze. While “The Exorcist” has high audience awareness, the film doesn’t have many interesting environments you would want to see or readily identifiable characters that can be easily replicated with live actors.

“When you boil it all down, ‘The Exorcist’ in its essence, is a movie that primarily takes place in one bedroom with a 12-year-old girl that never gets out of bed,” Murdy said. “It’s the scariest movie ever made, but it’s scary in a theatrical sense.”

Which is fine if you’re staging a play, Murdy said, but not very useful if you’re trying to scare hordes of visitors passing through a Horror Nights maze expecting to be terrified out of their wits.

That’s when Murdy remembered the so-called banned movie trailer for “The Exorcist,” which consisted of little more than flashing subliminal black-and-white photographic negative images of the possessed girl and the demon set to creepy music.

“I don’t know how, I don’t know why, but this is our maze,” Murdy said of the movie trailer. “Somehow we have to do this. I want people to feel like they’re getting possessed.”

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http://www.latimes.com/travel/themep...nap-story.html