Halloween Horror Nights: Universal has long history with ‘Ghostbusters’ — Remember Robosaurus?
Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights will double as a homecoming this year. “Ghostbusters” will be back.
Sure, it will be the first time the paranormal-fighting crew is featured in one of HHN’s haunted houses. But the franchise goes way back with Universal Studios. “Ghostbusters Spectacular” stage show was part of the opening-day lineup for the theme park in 1990.
And the “Ghostbusters” guys had roles in the second-ever Horror Nights. The event had our jumpsuited heroes in the park’s streets versus something called Robosaurus, a fourstory-tall, mechanical, fire-breathing contraption, said Michael Aiello, Universal’s senior director for entertainment creative development.
“It would move into New York as kind of a vehicle, and then it was literally transformed into a mechanical dinosaur,” Aiello said. “Its big moment was it could pick up a car and literally tear it in half.”
Enter the ghostbusters and the “Ghostbusters” theme. Their car “flew down the street, ghostbusters got out and pretended to dispel this mechanical, obsessed beast that was Robosaurus,” Aiello said. “That was a pretty amazing moment.”
When the franchise moves indoors for 2019 Horror Nights, the emphasis will be major scenes and details from the 1984 film, which starred Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Ernie Hudson and Sigourney Weaver.
“We’ve re-created the firehouse,” Aiello said. “You’re going to see where Janine sits. You’re going to see where the packs are hung. You’re going to see the closets where they store all their gear. So, all of that is going to be an amazing kind of front door.”
Iconic scenes from the film will be tackled at HHN, including the Temple of Gozer and the marshmallowy Stay-Puft Man.
“We have a pretty massive set piece that are those famous doors with Gozer in front,” Aiello said.
The Stay-Puft man will be produced using map projection, he said. We’ll see Slimer as well. The maze’s elements will include Pepper’s ghosts, practical ghost effects and UV technology.
Fans of the film will hear familiar phrases, said Charles Gray, show director. Many Halloween Horror Nights houses have trigger effects such as screams and howls, but the new “Ghostbusters” maze will be filled with movie dialogue.
“In this one, you’ll hear a screech and then you hear a bit of the action dialogue that you will remember — these touchstones that will take you through the entire piece. So you really are walking through the film,” Gray said. “It’s beat after beat after beat.”
Gray and Aiello already had “Ghostbusters” on their Universal Orlando resumes. Gray was an actor in the second version of theme-park show, which closed in 1996 to make way for the Twister attraction, which was replaced with Race Through New York with Jimmy Fallon in 2017. Aiello was a walk-around ghostbuster character after the stage show closed. (There were also a couple of street shows featuring “Ghostbusters” characters and Beetlejuice. There was dancing involved, Aiello said.)
Although the film is considered more comedy than horror, there will definitely be frights in the house, creators said. Let’s just say that having Slimer a few inches from your face should be jarring.
“There are a lot of startles within the house, so you’ll be laughing one second and screaming the next,” Gray said. Visitors can expect surprises in the containment chamber and moments of complete darkness, he said.
“I do believe ‘Stranger Things’ has helped us get to where we are right now, in the fact that there is horror in our event, but there’s also as much Halloween in our event as possible,” Aiello said.
“We know horror, we know blood and guts. We know gore,” he said. “We also know these other things that we were brought up on as kids that we just feel deserve just as much a pedestal as anything else in our event that would lean more toward the horror side.”
Halloween Horror Nights is an after-hours, extra-ticket event at Universal Studios theme park. It runs for 41 select nights between Sept. 6 and Nov. 2.