It is not the first time that Halloween Horror Nights has set its sights on the Latino audience. In 2011, 2012, and 2022, the popular and ambitious Universal Studios event featured variants of a haunted house dedicated to “La Llorona,” one of the most chilling myths of Hispanic origin, linked to a woman who became a wandering specter. after murdering his own children.
10 years ago, “El Cucuy”, the Mexican version of ‘El Cuco’ or ‘Boogeyman’, also arrived at the theme park in a maze format, accompanied by the voice of the well-known Mexican-American actor Danny Trejo. And in 2022, one of the “zones of fear” -consisting of areas with illustrations, audio and image effects and some costumed actors- was “El Pueblo del Terror”, made up of supernatural characters linked to other myths of our culture, like El Chupacabra, El Cadejo, El Charro Negro and Tlahuelpuchi.
In the current edition of the calendar, which will take place between September 7 and October 31, Tlahuelpuchise, a creature whose legend originated in the Mexican state of Tlaxcala and which has strong indigenous roots, will find itself back in action. But she won’t do it alone, but she will find herself hand in hand with other terrifying beings and in a much more active modality (that is, represented by actors and in the midst of all kinds of locations) thanks to the new haunted house “Monsters: The Monsters of Latin America”, which will also feature the participation of La Lechuza and El Silbón.
The creator of all this is John Murphy, the Anglo-Saxon Californian of Irish descent who has worked as Creative Director and Executive Producer of Horror Nights since 2006 and who, after going through the maze with the Los Angeles Times en Español (or, at least, what was already available of this last week), sat down with us to talk about the process that led him to implement what we will soon find in the park.
“As with everything we feature, I did a lot of research, from what you find in YouTube videos to what you get from news articles,” he told us. “The choice of Tlahuelpuchi was the easiest, because she already knew her and she had a horrifying story, because she is a vampiric witch who lives on the blood of her victims.”
ominous bird
The second monster presented is La Lechuza, a myth present both in northern Mexico and in the Rio Grande Valley, in Texas. It is about a creature -usually a witch- that turns into a bird and uses her voice to pretend that it is a child and thus capture its victims. It is immune to bullets, and if you shoot it, you immediately drop dead.
“In the case of La Lechuza, the choice was made as a combination of my research and the contributions of the fans who had told me about it over the years, so I already knew it,” the creative director resumed. . “But when I started reading more about her, I realized the reach of her in the United States, which also made her attractive to a local audience.”
“It is closer to La Llorona in the sense that it has crossed the border,” he added. “In fact, there was an incident in Texas where all the residents started calling the police to claim that there was a huge winged creature flying over their house. This went on for a while, until the police found out that it was a doll made by some naughty children.”
The last participant is El Silbón, who is distinguished from the previous ones by coming from South America, more precisely, from certain regions of Colombia and Venezuela, where he is characterized as a peasant who, after premeditated murdering his father, was condemned to wander forever and kill womanizers, drunks and, from time to time, completely innocent people.
The traditional pulquerías acquire a new meaning on the tour.
(Sarahi Apaez / Special for Los Angeles Times in Spanish)
“He is much less well known than Tlahuelpuchi and La Lechuza, but it seemed to me that he had a horrifying history and that he also looked very terrifying, because he is forced to carry the bones of his father and his victims on his back, and he is frequently represented with a very tall guy,” Murdy described.
Given that the majority of the Latino population in Southern California is of Mexican origin, it is evident that our interviewee also took into account the myths that had that origin, which, in any case, did not prevent the inclusion of El Silbón.
But, with regard to the representation of this figure, there is a detail that we do not overlook when touring the haunted house: the scene in which the aforementioned devastates a crowd of drinkers takes place in a pulquería, that kind of Mexican tavern that does not exist in South America. During the walk, Murdy himself acknowledged that, in this case, he had taken creative license.
“What happens is that the tour includes a cemetery that evokes a couple of famous cemeteries in Mexico, with a very particular architectural style, and that for us works like a portal,” he explained. “In addition, I loved the idea of pulquerías, which I was completely unaware of, and in which an alcoholic beverage is sold that lends itself well to a scene in which it is combined with the blood of the murdered.”
the creative part
Despite the huge number of people who participate in Horror Nights -Murdy calculates that there are close to 1,000-, the gestation of everything that is presented arises from his mind. And “Monsters” was no exception.
“I do all the initial research, but once we formulate each concept, I start adding members of the Universal team,” he said. “Some have been working with me for years; others are new”.
“Since we did ‘La Llorona,’ Rose González, who works directly with Latino marketing and lived in Mexico City for a long time, has collaborated with me,” he added. “It helps us a lot to check that everything is authentic or culturally appropriate.”
Apart from this, as of this edition, Murdy has worked with the Department of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion that was established in the park two years ago, and which also provides him with recommendations and notes.
“It’s not just about Latino content; when creating [la nueva casa embrujada] ‘Universal Monsters Unmasked’, we decided that the representation of the characters should not be just Caucasian, so we made Dr. Jekyll Asian, meaning from India or Pakistan, because we know that in the medical profession at that time in England it was common to see doctors of that origin, ”he explained.
The sense of inclusion has also made Horror Nights include more female characters. In 2021, she presented the maze “The Bride of Frankenstein Lives,” starring a creature that appeared for just five minutes in the classic 1935 film.
In “Monstruos”, two of the three protagonists have female affiliation, and in the case of Tlahuelpuchi, the metaphor (because metaphors abound when we talk about terror) is especially striking, because it involves young girls who, upon reaching puberty, and without having done anything to deserve it, they become hideous creatures.
“Many of the myths and legends that exist around the world have a moral, and this is because they arise from people trying to explain something they don’t understand,” Murdy resumed. “The myth of Tlahuelpuchi is hundreds of years old, perhaps even 500.”
In the words of the same creative director, during the 1950s, a doctor began an investigation to determine why the infant mortality rate was so high in the region where the same myth began. “He began to issue death certificates, and in all of them, the cause of death of the babies was attributed to Tlahuelpuchi,” he said.
“Sometimes children suffocate in their cribs, and that was mostly in the old days when those cribs weren’t so safe,” he continued. “I have seen old photos of my own family, and I was shocked, because they were like death traps. It’s easier to say that a monster killed your son than to admit any kind of guilt.”
A scene from the new maze inspired by the movie “Evil Dead Rise”.
(Sarahi Apaez / Special for Los Angeles Times in Spanish)
The other routes of fear
During the press tour that we have mentioned, we also had the opportunity to visit the “Evil Dead Rise” labyrinth, directly and faithfully inspired by the film that was released in April of this year and that is part of a successful franchise that began in 1981. by director and producer Sam Raimi, who later went on to direct the Spider-Man trilogy headed by Tobey Maguire.
In this case, the level of production is absolutely impressive, because if there is something that distinguishes Hollywood Horror Nights, it is the care that is taken to reproduce scenes and environments seen in films and series that become haunted houses. ,
“This year, in addition to ‘Evil Dead Rise’, we have similar attractions, corresponding to ‘Stranger Things’ and ‘The Last of Us’; And they all force us to replicate the environments and the characters as best as possible, because that’s what we’ve established from the beginning of this event,” said Murdy. “It’s like you’re watching the movie or the series live.”
“The deal for ‘Evil Dead Rise’ took place at a restaurant in CityWalk about three or four years ago, because we had already worked with the franchise and knew it well,” he added. “The producers revealed to me that there would be a new film, and I was immediately interested. In addition, the manager [de la reciente entrega, Lee Cronin]He’s Irish, so we have a lot in common.”
The “Evil Dead Rise” walkthrough outlines each of the film’s iconic moments, so as Murdy acknowledged as he walked us through, it’s naturally full of spoilers, which can’t happen in the case of another of the new labyrinths this year: the one dedicated to “The Exorcist: Believer”, a film that has not even gone through the theaters (it will be released on October 6) and that Murdy has not seen (because he is not completely finished).
“In those cases, which are few, we go directly to the filmmakers and ask them if we can use certain things that interest us,” recalled our interlocutor. “Every once in a while, one of them says that something seems too revealing. But it’s not usually a problem, because we don’t use a lot of dialogue.
“As far as ‘The Exorcist: Believer’ is concerned, we received the working script and talked to the head of makeup and the production designer on the film, although our job was to make a kind of living trailer, because the first trailer was launched in July,” he said. “So you can go on YouTube to see it, or you can come to Horror Nights and feel it for yourself.”
2023-09-02 02:40:42
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