Miss Adventures in Makeup

Miss Castaic and other performers transform into ghouls for Fright Fest

One wouldn’t expect Miss Castaic to transform into the perfect ghoul, but such is the nature of Fright Fest.

Kristin Cunningham, an 18-year-old Valencia High School senior and Miss Castaic 2004-05, is squeezing in a little fun between studies and charity appearances, trying to terrify her audience.

Cunningham is among local young ‘ people performing weekends as monsters, freaks and ghouls in Magic Mountain’s annual Fright Fest. She had so much fun playing a ghoul last year that she jumped at the chance for an encore appearance.

“I had a blast, so as soon as I heard the call go out for this year, I was there,” she said enthusiastically.

She’s not alone, either. Jody Hutchinson, talent manager for Six Flags Magic Mountain’s six Fright Fest mazes, said the park took all comers who applied this year.

”We have plenty of wardrobe and makeup, so we can always find a bizarre character and a dark corner for a talented freak,” Hutchinson said. As of opening night last weekend, more than 250 performers were populating the scary’ mazes and wandering pround the park creating mock mayhem.

The “action” performers working features like the bungees and gallows are paid $10 an hour, while all other performers make $8, she added.

On the night of the first dress rehearsal last week, Cunningham underwent a transformation from bright-eyed teen into blank-staring, cadaverous-looking zombie. She was placed in a beat-up coffin toward the end of the Willoughby’s Haunted Mansion maze.

It was a complex process. The first stop was the wardrobe room, where actors picked up their costumes, mostly vintage clothing with the appropriate grunge factor. When Cunningham told wardrobe manager Brenda Kaye that her character would be a ghoul, the two of them checked out a few different outfits on the racks before deciding on the perfect “look” —Victorian would do just fine.

Cunningham picked out a filthy white blouse, long tattered skirt and beat-up high heels, changed in the dressing room, and returned to the wardrobe building for makeup.

The primary reason Magic Mountain’s Fright Fest freaks look so scary is Scott Ramp, whose Pasadena-based company, ScreamTeam.com, is contracted by the theme park each October to paint the performers.

Ramp, a makeup artist since the late 1970s, teaches his art and craft at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. And when he’s not teaching, he’s working on films, most recently the forthcoming “Adam & Steve” starring Parker Posey, or developing his Web site, which offers theatrical monster prosthetics.

“We sell them all over the world,” he said.

Once dressed in costume, the Fright Fest performers lined up for face makeup to be airbrushed on by Ramp’s artists.

“All but two of the 24 artists working with me here are former students of mine,” he said proudly, “and most of them have worked Fright Fest several times before.”

Ramp’s crew lined three performers at a time against an interior wall, and the face-painting began.

“Every single face is a new canvas,” he said, encouraging his artists to be as creative as possible. “Close your eyes very tightly,” said Nicole Sandoval, 26, of Toluca Lake, before she sprayed dark circles on Cunningham’s eyes and sooty-looking smudges on her face.

Then Cunningham shifted to the next position, where Laura Rathbone, 23, of Los Angeles sprayed on white and gray accents. Within three minutes, Cunningham’s transformation from girl to ghoul was complete.

Next, Cunningham joined the other two dozen performers assigned to Willoughby’s Haunted Mansion, one of the three mazes for non-squeamish park guests 18 and over the other — two are “Brutal Planet” and “Terror at Carnage E. Hall” for a pre-rehearsal meeting with Crystal Ray, 24, of Frazier Park, who oversees the Willoughby talent. Ray started out as a Fright Fest actor six years ago.

“I’ve been assigned my own room,” Cunningham said grinning after the briefing. She made her way through Willoughby’s to her designated spot a nice, comfortable open casket stuck in a dark corner near the end of the maze and climbed in.

“This is awesome,” she said. By the time most guests stumble through the maze to her “viewing room,” they’ll already be wiggedout and made weak in the knees by the other Willoughby freaks. Cunningham gets to finish them off by suddenly sitting up in her coffin, sticking her gruesome mug right in their faces, and screaming like a banshee.

“What could be more fun than getting paid to scare the living crap out of people?” she laughed.

One got the distinct impression Cunningham would play the ghoul even if she didn’t get paid.

“Oh, yeah — definitely!”