The Problem with portraying a well known movie character...

[Jim Warfield]

When some of my customers compare me (or is my performance?) to famous movie mad men?
All maniacs, serial killers.
Am I trying to do this? No.
?

[Dr. Giggles]

I appreciate some of these responses albeit they were not what i was looking for. No matter how you guys disagree with haunts who portray movie characters, they will always be there. I posted this in hopes of helping actors to portray or put their own spin on the characters better. This is because they have no choice or they are assigned to that room.

[EngineerofFear]

When a customer compares you to a movie character typically it's because they are not sure how to place you in their mind. Take for instance chainsaw characters, anyone at a haunt with a chainsaw will always at some point be called Leatherface. No matter how original you look, or how different you act, when people get scared they are going to try and protect themselves by categorizing you.

This mis-categorizing automatically opens them up for ridicule.

My advice to anyone who is cast as a movie character: Do what you need to do to be scary.

If faithfulness is important then use the subtle body movements when you are not rushing, and implement to sporadic movements when you attack.

Every slasher film has the fast paced moment, Jason and Myers both have their rushing frantic moments, typically when their arm is stuck through a hole in the wall and they are trying to grab someone's neck.

[Nightgore]

Movie characters/masks/costumes in a haunt... are the BIGGEST LACK OF CREATIVITY IN THE WORLD!!! I mean, ANYONE can go buy a Capt. Spaulding mask, Jason mask, or the famous leatherface or Michael Myers mask. I mean, where's the creativity? Where's the showmanship? Where's the professionalism of the haunt? That's why my haunt you won't ever see these characters!

I just hate it when I see movie characters used in a haunt! Ugh...-Tyler

[Dr. Giggles]

Tyler i appreciate your stand point. But what can we as actors do? In the haunt i worked in i was put in the Michael Myers house, its there every year and people look for it. It is almost a tradition. It is the only movie scene we have. But my point is as much as the people on these boards hate it, haunts still do and likely always will do movie characters be it lack of creativity or they just think they are adequate. But please everyone can we stop the posts on how much you hate it when haunts do that or they shouldnt do that. Because they do, its just a reality and we need to discuss how to make them scarier or better ways to play them. Because us actors in our haunt career will likely be placed in those positions at least twice.

[Badger]

I went through a haunt that when we rounded a corner, had a 5 ft tall Freddy. There went any chance of getting a scare even though the room was well done and could have been much better with an original character.

I have worn a hockey mask even though I was not portraying a Jason character. The problem with that was everyone thinks you were playing Jason and would yell "Hey, there's Jason" whenever they saw me. I hated that character just for that reason.

It's a lot more scary knowing that you're creating an original character out of the dark recesses of your mind rather than copying some Hollywood writer's idea. If you want to study how movie actors portray their characters, that's great. Just study and use tham as an influence rather than copy it.

[jack]

I do A cenobite....not a recognisable one. No Pinheads needed. Why? Because then people expect the 'movie'.

I've made something that looks a lot like one of the nurses from Silent Hill. The actress has made it her own. It has a mouth fill of filthy sharp teeth....so it can make noises or even speak.

The nurse works.

But when I used Pyramidhead the expectaion of certain actions came back.

Similar monsters seem to be okay--exact copies always seem to be lacking something.

[legendsofthefog]

Our haunted hayride is probably always going to be our biggest bang attraction at our haunt. It started about 45 minutes long through almost 2 miles of our farm and drove by approx 18 sets. Now it has condensed considerably, and I think it is much better. Our hayride was originally based on a mysterious fog created by a government experiment gone wrong.. blah blah.... but we set up an old drive-in movie theater with all of our actor's cars ("Look - employee parking"). We had a big projector that we used to play night of the living dead. We made it so you drove through the screen and the fog mysteriously put you in the movies... (I guess a spin off of the old last action hero). You drove by Jason, Michael Meyers, and Leatherface, then you exited to the 'farm' in our hayride. As far as continuity and matching the story (www.youtube.com/legendsofthefog) the movie characters played in to the mix very well. However, I decided to cut ties with the movie characters just before transworld this year... hoping that I wouldn't have some of my best actors/builders walk away as a result....

Long story short, we started implementing our own signature characters instead of portraying copy written characters.

Pros to using movie characters... character recognition, your actors know how to act (homework is easy), costume is easy, and your customers may already have an instilled fear of those characters.

Pros to using original characters... Branding/marketing your characters. Check out some of our characters on myspace or haunt space... Rip-Saw, Edwin Lotf, Maggie Rose, or Frostbite. (myspace.com/legendsofthefog) These are all characters who I couldn't use for promotions in years past... now I can push the hell out of them. You can copy-write your own characters and do anything you want to, because they're yours!

If its not too late... its best to give the can to movie characters