Things You're Just Supposed to Know

Most of the time, Long-Forgotten assumes that readers are already familiar with basic facts
about the Haunted Mansion. If you wanna keep up with the big boys, I suggest you check out
first of all the website, Doombuggies.com. After that, the best place to go is Jason Surrell's book,
The Haunted Mansion: Imagineering a Disney Classic (NY: Disney Editions; 2015). That's the
re-named third edition of The Haunted Mansion: From the Magic Kingdom to the Movies (NY:
Disney Editions, 2003; 2nd ed. 2009). Also essential reading is Jeff Baham's The Unauthorized
Story of Walt Disney's Haunted Mansion (USA: Theme Park Press, 2014; 2nd ed. 2016).

This site is not affiliated in any way with any Walt Disney company. It is an independent
fan site dedicated to critical examination and historical review of the Haunted Mansions.
All images that are © Disney are posted under commonly understood guidelines of Fair Use.

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Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Unseen Twists and Turns in the Corridor of Doors

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If you know anything about the Haunted Mansion's developmental history, you know about the Imagineers' difficulties in finding exactly the right mix of the frightening and the funny, but no one seems to notice that there was another, equally important balance that needed to be struck: the balance between Scary A and Scary B.  After all, there is more than one kind of fear.  When our guests aren't giggling, should the Mansion slowly give rise to an overwhelming sense of horror through the use of suggestion and eerie atmospherics, or should it pop things right into your face and scare the bleeding crap out of you?  The choice is between (1) driving them slowly insane and (2) giving them heart attacks.  Between two such worthy objectives there can be no easy decision.

Choices, choices...

The tug-of-war between fear and fun has been given several clever names (Scary vs. Silly, Light vs. Fright, Kooky vs. Spooky).  What should we call this other dichotomy?  Nameless Dread vs. Severed Head?   Too long.  Chills vs. Thrills?  Better.  Hey, how about Brr vs. Boo?  All in favor of that one, raise your hand.  All opposed?  I saw only one hand, and it was a yea, so I guess that means Brr vs. Boo wins.  Isn't democracy great?


Brr and Boo

The distinction between Brr and Boo is clear enough in theory but not always obvious in practice.  There is a kind of gray scale between them. For example, you can create a tense situation with loud noises that brings the victim almost to the point of panic (Brr or Boo?), and you can have ghostly manifestations that are so distant and detached that they aren't particularly alarming (Boo or Brr?). Nevertheless, gray scales do not disprove the reality and distinguishability of black and white.  We all know the difference between the kind of fear caused by a sudden shock and the skin-crawling kind you get from a creepy environment. It's the difference between heart thumps and goose bumps, between mouths wide open in terror and eyes wide open in terror.

It is also true that the two can coexist rather cozily.  You can have a heavy atmosphere of foreboding providing the environment for a sudden scare, going from Brr to Boo in a flash.  Think of the Attic scene before Constance moved in, when it was a dark and sinister place violently punctuated by that most quintessential Boo, the screaming pop-up spook.

(Oooooo...pop-ups!  May I digress for a moment? Yes I may; I graciously grant me permission. Why, thank me very much. I'm quite welcome. The blast-up types are the best pop-ups.  DL had two in its attic from 1969 until 2005. For those who have never seen them, here's the first one:



attic blasty 1 (best)


Here's the second one. Not very good footage, I'll grant you, but that's him at the beginning.

This wretched gif is also him. (Video of attic blast-up no. 2 is exceedingly rare.)


There is some scant evidence that WDW also had some blast-ups in its attic at the beginning; if so, they were removed very early.  Tokyo and Paris have never had them. DL alone had a blast-up at the midnight jamboree, and it's still there today, the only surviving blast-up ghost in the entire Disney universe. Good ol' Blasty. Long may he rave, o'er the land of the freak and the moan of the grave.)



shorter version

This whole preamble (less the digression) was necessary because I think we need something like the Brr vs. Boo tool in order to facilitate discussion of an unknown chapter in the development of the Corridor of Doors.  The COD is a Brr masterpiece.*  It's intense, and yet it's all about atmosphere.  There are no visible threats.  Nothing jumps at you.  But did you know that the Imagineers at one point thought about scrapping this approach in favor of Boo?  We'll get to all that, but if we're going to delve into the development history of the Corridor, it might be helpful to take another look at the original inspiration.


Once Again, The Haunting

What, again?  Yes, again. Because believe it or not, folks, there's still a lot of juice left in that old lemon; and furthermore, we need to go past the details and get to lofty concepts and all that neat, heady stuff. Let's quickly review, and then start squeezin' anew. To begin, it is common knowledge that the bulging door gag in the COD was inspired by a scene in Robert Wise's 1963 supernatural thriller, The Haunting.



In an earlier post, I took the comparisons further, arguing first of all that it isn't just the gag itself: the design of the COD door was clearly
inspired by the Hill House door, and the jambs of the doorway seem to be inspired by the distinctive door jambs seen in hallways of Hill House.



I haven't mentioned this one before.  It's in Orlando/Tokyo, but not Anaheim:

(top left pic by Foxxfur)

Going a step further, there are the pounding footfalls heard in the film, which probably inspired the very similar sound effects originally planned for the Endless Hallway and Corridor of Doors but were never used.

There has also been speculation now and then about the mysterious wallpaper in The Haunting, which may or may not have influenced the famous demon-eye wallpaper in the COD.


 So far the review. To date, that's as far as I've gone with The Haunting.

Foxxfur over at Passport to Dreams has also explored the Haunting connection and took it several steps further in a January 2013 essay. For her, the second floor of the Haunted Mansion presents us with something like a "comprehensive catalogue of frightening images from the Wise film."

I'm not equally convinced by all of her parallels, which you can read for yourself, but I agree that the look of the Endless Hallway may owe something to sets in the film like this one:


And Foxxy is certainly on solid ground in pointing out a rather obvious inspiration that has somehow
managed to escape earlier commentary: the jiggling doorknob gag. It happens twice in the film, actually.


Okay, I'll add something here, but I admit up front that it's a bit of a stretch. See the Medusa design?  Well,
that makes it a pretty SNAKEY doorknob, doncha think?  Take that for whatever you decide it's worth.

The second time the gag shows up, it's on the very door that will soon begin to bulge, which is of course the door
that was more or less cloned for all the COD doors, including the doorknob jiggler type as well as the bulgarians.


So the connection between the jiggling doorknobs in The Haunting
and the COD may go a wee bit beyond the naked gag itself.

Just out of curiosity, how many of these do you think there are in the COD?  Answer: One


Fresh Juice From the Old Lemon

There is still more to be said about the influence of The Haunting. With our first new squeeze, we get this: the first time in the movie that the loud banging on a door occurs, the two female principals are inside the room, huddled in terror.  At one point one of them perceives that the Noisy Presence is actually up at the transom, and the camera dutifully directs our attention there.  The banging eventually stops and is succeeded by distant ghostly laughter, drenched in reverb.



It's against the top of the door!

It hardly needs to be pointed out that the COD also features loud banging and ghostly laughter (likewise drenched in reverb) . . .

The Corridor of Noise

. . . but it may not be quite as obvious that many of the individual sounds emanate from the tops of the doors; and furthermore, the transoms seem to have been chosen not simply as good, practical locations for the speakers but as a deliberate effect. The "effects" blueprints are careful to note this feature right alongside all the other effects.  The locations of sounds elsewhere in the Mansion are not indicated.

There is very much an "it" at the top of these doors



Lost in Spaces

Squeeze it again, and lo!  What have we here?  At an even earlier point in the movie, the females find themselves lost in the confusing
corridors of Hill House, unable to find the main dining room.




Shortly thereafter, the leader of the group, Dr. Marquack, (excuse me, Marquay), explains why the house is so confusing, with what is supposed to be a profound rejoinder from ElluvaBore Eleanor.  Sorry for the snark, but I absolutely can not stand the characters in this movie.

There isn't a square corner in the place.


The Corridor of Doors is just this way, of course, all crazy angles and inexplicable juttings in the walls, with doors facing in all sorts of improbable directions.  We talked about this in the previous post.  You are left with the impression that this area, like the hallways of Hill House, would be an easy place in which to get lost, and for the same reasons.





One More Squeeze

I've saved this one for last, because I think it's the biggest and in some ways the best.  The female characters in the film are "sensitives," and they're fond of saying things like "the house is alive" and "the house wants you."  There is no attempt anywhere in Wise's film to draw a clear distinction between the house itself and the unseen presence haunting the house.  The malevolent spirit may be spoken of as a more-or-less conventional ghost, a distinguishable entity named Hugh Crane, or one may dispense with such niceties and simply speak of the actual house as the malevolent presence—it's all the same, and logic be damned.  It's not even completely clear whether or not there is only one spirit involved, although that seems to be implied most of the time.  All of this ambiguity only cranks up the Brr factor that much more.

The house, it's alive!

The bulging doors in the COD have sometimes been referred to as "breathing doors," as if the house were alive.  In fact, pre-opening press releases for the Haunted Mansion speak of the COD as a "hallway of demonized doors."  Note that it doesn't say demons behind doors but demonized doors. I have argued elsewhere that the house itself acts as a surrogate body for the imprisoned spirits, and that's why it can appear to stretch and breathe and watch us like a living thing.  I made no mention at the time of The Haunting, but clearly the metaphysics on display in the film are congenial to this reading.


The above was all written in October and early November 2013, so it was quite the gratifying coincidence to hear a similar analysis of the resemblance between The Haunting and the Haunted Mansion from Jeff Baham in the November 15 podcast of his Doombuggies Spook Show.



Incidentally, this interpretation might make better sense of the door knockers.  The fact that the ghosts are "going the wrong way" with their door knocking seems somehow irrelevant if it isn't the spaces in the house so much as the house itself that is the sticking point for the frustrated spirits who want to materialize but can't.

Wise's film is widely admired for its convincing presentation of a truly scary and genuinely haunted house without ever showing the audience a single ghost or even a single indisputably supernatural event other than the one experience of a bulging door—which is probably why that particular scene grips the audience's imagination so vividly. It is all done through atmosphere, nothing but sound and lighting and camera angles. There's only one genuine Boo in the film, and it isn't even a supernatural event (you know the scene I mean: the attic trapdoor thingie).
In short, the film is celebrated precisely because it is such a pure and successful exemplar of the Brr approach to terror. 


Make It Boo

My purpose in returning to The Haunting was to underscore not only the breadth but the depth of the influence of that film on the Corridor of Doors. What I mean is that the COD is indebted to the film in both small details and grand concepts.  We have documentary proof that a number of HM Imagineers saw the film together in a private screening, so you might be tempted to conclude that here is a case where the source material went almost straight into the ride without a ripple of dissent.  But resist that temptation, because it's wrong.  Marc Davis was not sold on using The Haunting as a template.
Does this look like a Brr?


It's obviously a concept sketch for the COD.  What's interesting is that it was done after they had all seen The Haunting and after they had started pulling ideas from it for the ride. The design of the door gives that away. This is, of course, a Boo.  You're suddenly frightened by the sight of an immanent threat posed by a dangerous Thing you can see right in front of you. Other than the great strength of said Thing, there isn't even anything supernatural here.  It's impossible to imagine this door in The Haunting.  It looks more like something from the Addam's Family, albeit without the camp.

That sketch was only one in a series.   I don't suppose that many of you have ever seen these.   Until now.   Who loves ya, baby?



I know you haven't seen this one:


I thought it might be funstructive (fun + instructive) to try to visualize more
fully what a Corridor of Doors with these Davis gags would have looked like:




We're mighty close here to a traditional pop-and-boo spookhouse. Even that last one, I think, is a Boo gag, although in this case a little more effort has been made to blend it into the environment.  Despite that, the difference is huge.  Wallpaper that looks at you is supernatural and profoundly unnerving; a guy peeking at you from behind a sliding panel is neither; it's just frightening.  It's also a cliché.


Hold on, not so fast. Maybe this was just another set of images produced quickly and without a lot of conviction, just some of the many ideas flung against the wall to see if they would stick.  After all, Davis churned out dozens and dozens of sketches.  He couldn't have been ideologically committed to all of them.

That's a point, but I tend to think in this case that the sketches really do represent Marc's preferred approach, which means he wasn't sold on the Brr approach presented in The Haunting that eventually won the day, which means we may have uncovered here another little Imagineering tug-of-war.  The Corridor will be scary, yes, but which type of scary?  The thing that convinces me that the sketches aren't outliers and that Marc wanted Boo in the COD is this other well-known sketch:


Davis seems to have had a hard time sustaining a Brr atmosphere even in this creepy concept painting.  Go up the left side of that hallway, and you've got an endless series of floating doors, not exactly threatening but surreal and hallucinatory, stirring up vague anxieties about getting lost in the Unknown, and all that.  Brr city.  But on the right side we see that Marc was unable to suppress his gag reflex, and we've got a padlocked door bending out of its frame and another door featuring a human-shaped hole in silly, cartoonish fashion.


Nope nope nope.  They don't work.  Not here.  Those doors belong with that other set we looked at, not here in this twilight zone.
(Tellingly, when this artwork was reproduced for an unused scene in the 2003 Haunted Mansion movie, they nixed the padlock and the hole.)


Marc's deliberate shift from Brr to Boo in the sketch is even clearer if we accept a proposal made by Mr. Fenwright over at Micechat suggesting that the COD may have been inspired in part by a popular television show.  I would bet my lunch money that many Forgottenistas are also part of that show's fan base.


Dark Shadows

The Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows (1966-1971) was all the rage in the late 60s, and during the 1968-69 season a long series of episodes (one hundred sixty-nine!) was dedicated to something called "the Dream Curse."  All you really need to know is that the same nightmare was passed from one character to another, and it involved wandering in "endless corridors" full of doors, behind one of which lay the character's worst fear. Cue the dry ice, and check out the visuals:


Through Endless Corridors


I would be genuinely surprised if the Mansion Imagineers did NOT have some acquaintance with Dark Shadows, and the "Dream Curse" sequence lasted long enough to be seen even by someone only casually checking in on the show now and then.

I'm not so sure about influence on the final COD per se, but influence specifically on that Davis concept sketch seems like a distinct possibility. Note that like "The Dream Curse," Marc's sketch features a hallway of floating doors with only the blackness of nothingness between them, lit by hanging chandeliers. 


I don't want to push this thing too hard, but
even the design of those chandeliers is similar.


It falls well short of proof, but there is enough to at least be suspicious.  If the sketch was inspired in any way by "The Dream Curse," it simply means we see Marc doing the same thing twice.  He takes the door from The Haunting and draws a green goon smashing through it.  He takes the floating doors from Dark Shadows and puts a rattling padlock on one and a Looney Tunes hole in another.


A Couple of Guys Who Really Like Their Boo's

Don't get me wrong.  There's nothing wrong with Boo.  Marc's doors would have been scary, and what Davis is here doing is nothing more than developing Ken Anderson's ideas.  He and Marc were on the same page in this area.  We recall that Anderson conceived of a hallway of "locked doors, too dangerous to enter" in his Ghost House, and when he actually got around to painting that sort of door for the Sleeping Beauty Diorama, he created something that comes from the same imaginative world as Davis's chained-up door.


This was actually built. You have no zombie breaking through, but if you were around back then and got up close and looked through the peephole, you saw some of Malificent's goons in there staring back at you, thanks to a neat trick using tiny mirrors to reflect back your own eye as the "eyes" of the goons!  That gag and Davis's sliding panel and peeping eyes are two chips off the same block.

Anderson was fond of grabby hands, too.  He was going to exploit this gag quite a bit in his Ghost House, even naming a recurring character after it, "Hairy the Arm."  You will recall that Hairy was going to give your tour guide some difficulty.


Anderson also gave some thought to grabbing at the guests themselves.




Brr Fer Sure

Rolly Crump was one Imagineer who didn't think much of this Anderson/Davis approach.

"The concept of a haunted house was there from the beginning. Some favored the 'old dark house' tradition of sliding panels, clutching hands,
and so forth. Others saw it as a spoof, with lots of gags instead of scary stuff. I wanted to do something entirely different, something with a
tremendous amount of fantasy."                                                       —Jason Surrell, The Haunted Mansion: From the Magic Kingdom to the Movies (NY: Disney, 2009) 26.
                                                                                                             
We know that part of that fantasy involved making the house itself seem to be alive, as in Cocteau's Belle et la Bête (1946).  I would argue that at least that part of Rolly's fantasy was partially realized, even if the concept was adapted from the soberly conservative Haunting rather than from the phantasmagorical Belle. For all their differences, both films showcase a house that is supernaturally alive.  One suspects that Rolly reacted positively to at least this aspect of Wise's film.  You have to think that Mr. Spooky Atmosphere himself, Claude Coats, did too, although he's not on the list of Imagineers who saw it at the private showing.


Gurr and Brr

The Brr vs. Boo issue may have been exacerbated by the decision to use a conveyance for the guests rather than leaving the attraction a walk-thru. As we all know, Bob Gurr's brilliant omnimover system solved the ride's logistics problem, but the doombuggies left no time for guests to soak up a story, room to room, and the elaborate effects so carefully worked out by Rolly and Yale Gracey had to go.  I wonder if the Imagineers also worried that Gurr and Brr might not mix, that the system moved people too quickly for subtle atmospherics (or should I say, "atmosfearics"?  No, I guess I shouldn't).  The omnimover system is obviously perfect for a Boo approach, but could people get creeped out by ambiance alone while being shuttled from scene to scene in a pod vehicle?  We know the answer is "yes," but I doubt it was self-evident beforehand.  It is true that Adventure Thru Inner Space did a good job sustaining a sense of awe and wonder throughout, but omnimovers seem like a natural fit for a science fiction setting.  You would need some kind of pod vehicle to shrink down and enter a snowflake.  In the Haunted Mansion, on the other hand, these pods would be passed off as some sort of "perpetual levitation" supplied by the ghosts, an iffier proposition to begin with.  Whether omnimovers would cooperate in sustaining a tone of traditional supernatural terror in a haunted house environment remained to be seen.
In any event, the Boo approach would probably have seemed the safer choice.


Marc Wins, Mansion Loses?

Another reason I think Marc Davis was a convinced Boo man is that by the time they built the Orlando Mansion, they knew that Brr worked well enough in the COD, and yet Marc finally got his way there with one of the doors.


(The fingers are gone now in Florida, but that's another discussion, a
rare example of WDI taking a hands-off approach to classic attractions.)

The moment you notice the hands you're startled and frightened.  A desperate guy with superhuman strength is merely a few feet away and is likely to get through to you any second.  Those are his hands, dude.  Fear of the Known.  Disneyland never had anything like this, and obviously there is nothing like this in The Haunting.


Damage

I realize this may not sit well with some WDW purists, but I've never liked the hands.  They're an unnecessary Boo in an otherwise flawless and seamless performance of Brr.  In an earlier post, I compared them with the hands on the Conservatory coffin, noting that it all implies that the house itself is a coffin from which the spirits wish to escape.  But the two gags are also different.  If a corpse came to life, everything you see in the Conservatory scene would make sense.  No additional miracles are needed.  An ordinary man might very well be able to push up the casket lid in his desperate efforts to switch to decoffinated.  And obviously his frustrations are with that, not you.  But who or rather what is this thing that is able to bend a solid wooden door?  And what is motivating him to do it?  Your presence?  This is much more threatening.

But it's not just the hands themselves. Precisely because of this effect, the other bulging door (there are two in the COD) has to be done differently than the ones in Anaheim if both doors are supposed to exist in the same reality.  In the COD at DL the doors bulge out unnaturally but do not separate from the frames (they're latex).  In WDW, Tokyo, and Paris, the bulging doors clearly do bend out of the frames.  There's a green light back there to make sure you notice.

top: WDW by MasterGracey, lower left: Phantom Manor; lower right: Tokyo

That's a rather trivial variation, no?   No.  For me, the difference is immense.  In the real world, a door this thick and solid could never bulge out like they do in Anaheim without some separation from the frame, but the others look the way you would expect them to look if an ox, say, or a rhinoceros were on the other side giving it his all.  One is a miracle; the other tells you that something enormously strong is pushing on the door, which is remarkable but falls short of the miraculous. The effect of the effect is therefore quite different. The DL doors are like the stretching room, eerie and impossible, a disquieting metamorphosis; the others are merely alarming.  With them you're waiting for a snap and a crash as the door falls down flat before you. Very little resemblance to the door in The Haunting remains, in my opinion.

As I see it, the damage this does to the whole COD is not inconsiderable. The cacophony of threatening sound effects in the WDW HM translates into scary creatures trying to smash down the doors; the same sound effects at DL are only possibly that.  The saving grace for WDW/Tokyo/Paris is that the hands door is positioned at the very end of the COD, so you don't know until then what is back there.  At DL, you are never given any clues whatsoever as to what is behind those doors. The sounds might even be emanating from the house itself, a building possessed by spirits. Demonized doors, remember?  "Breathing doors" is a phrase that can only be used at Disneyland, and that's a pity.  Look, I'll just say it:

The original Corridor of Doors in Anaheim is in a
class by itself, and it is far and away the best one.


A Shadow of His Former Self

It would appear that Davis either changed his mind or had his mind changed for him by an opposing consensus among the Imagineers, who wanted to stick close to The Haunting.  Ken Anderson would probably have been in Marc's corner, but Ken had been off the Mansion project for a decade. Marc didn't walk away from the table absolutely empty-handed, however.  In addition to the unfortunate concession at WDW et al, shades of Davis's grabbing hand are still to be found in all of the Haunted Mansions, even at Disneyland.  I mean literal shades: the shadow hand in the clock room.  In earlier posts, I have argued that (1) the shadow hand was probably inspired by old horror movies like Nosferatu, and that (2) there isn't necessarily a creature behind you casting the shadow, because the shadow could be all there is.  I'm not abandoning either claim, but it now seems undeniable that the more immediate inspiration for the shadow hand is to be found in Marc's sketches. Just take away the actual hand.


This effect can be read as a compromise; if so, it was a happy one. In fact, if you want an illustration
of the gray area exactly half way between Brr and Boo, I can't think of a better one than this.


* The COD is indubitably a Brr,  but it's so good,  perhaps we should call it a Brrrr.   See how beautifully versatile this terminology is?
If it's an exceptionally good Brr,  dub it a Brrr or even a Brrrr.   Likewise,  if something suddenly scares you so badly that you wet your
pants,  that's no ordinary Boo;  that's a Booo.   Four o's if you also soiled yourself.   Five, they had to call 911.   Six, you're now #1000.





33 comments:

  1. After watching an episode of "Castle: Secrets & Legends" I believe I have found a possible inspiration for Disney's Haunted Mansion:

    The Morris-Jumel Mansion in New York City was built in the Greek-Revival style with a pediment supported by 4 columns:

    http://www.morrisjumel.org/visit/photo-tour/

    There is a legend of a Black Widow Bride (who later married Aaron Burr):

    http://scandalouswoman.blogspot.com/2009/10/guest-blogger-audrey-braver-on-eliza.html?m=1

    And there is a history of ghostly hauntings:

    http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/classics/haunted_crimescenes/20.html

    There's also an Octagonal Room:

    http://www.morrisjumel.org/tour/the-octagon-room/

    And seances:

    http://www.essortment.com/haunted-mansion-morris-jumel-house-ghosts-52081.html

    The mansion itself is located near a graveyard:

    http://macaulay.cuny.edu/eportfolios/drabik11/6-2/historic-cultural-institutions-overview/

    And finally, one of its ghosts made news in 1964:

    http://www.hauntedhouses.com/states/ny/morris_jumel_mansion.htm

    So, decide for yourselves: Could the Morris-Jumel Mansion be a possible inspiration for Disney's Haunted Mansion? Or is it all your imagination, hmm?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Interesting, but much of it evaporates under scrutiny. The HM was modeled very directly and completely on the Shipley-Lydecker house in Baltimore, so the appearance of the house is irrelevant. Also, I didn't see a "Black Widow bride" in Eliza's biography, i.e., a woman who murders her husbands for their money, but there are suspicions that she purposely let a husband die of his injuries so she could re-marry another man, so...sorta kinda. The Trinity Church cemetery is "close by," but in context that may mean little more than that they didn't have to travel very far to bury her. The house does have an octagonal room, which was unusual, and it is thoroughly haunted, according to many reports. Inspiration for the HM? Hard to tell. Could be, but nothing compelling points to it, IMO.

      Delete
    2. According to Google Maps (https://goo.gl/maps/k2mUY), "close by" means about 3/4 of a mile - a pleasant 15 minute walk. There are definitely interesting similarities, and it's not impossible there was some influence, but I'd be inclined to say it's coincidence. Anyway, wasn't the black widow bride aspect a more recent invention?

      Delete
    3. Yeah, that's another problem. There's a full half century between whatever inspired the look of the building and whatever inspired the Black Widow bride character.

      Delete
  2. As you mention the Sleeping Beauty walkthrough, it's notable that the version that exists at Disneyland now uses even more of a Boo in Ken Anderson's dangerous doors than the original. There are two doors with viewing portals there now. One has a constant stream of spears marching by. The other is simply a view into a cell, but periodically an evil goon pops into view (very fast paced and shocking, like a good pop-up ghost should be). I can't recall off-hand if there is an accompanying sound, but my instinct is that there is. Pure, uncut Boo.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I have always loved The Haunting, and The Haunting of Hill House ( the book) because once you have experienced them, you aren't really sure WHAT happened! To a lessor extent the same can be said for The Turn of the Screw. I like that the Haunted Mansion at some levels messes with you in exactly the same way.... I would miss Davis' wacky spooks, but its the mind tricks that keep me interested.

    ReplyDelete
  4. The WDW COD frightened me terribly (or eerily) the very first time I rode it. It was the fact that something supernatural was trying to get out and get me. Also, the fact that I was semi-ensconced in a ride vehicle in which *I* had no control made it even more intense.

    Thanks for a great post!

    ReplyDelete
  5. I grew up watching Dark Shadows in repeats in the early '90s on the then Sci-Fi Channel, and I remember being horribly creeped out by the Dream Curse episodes. Given the time period, it wouldn't surprise me at all if they based at least part of the COD on the curse episodes, since once of the things Dark Shadows did so well was fear on a small scale but believeable level (even though most of the gags fell flat...looking at you, cardboard gravestones!). I'm really not surprised that The Haunting was a possible influence. Brr scares have always been a favorite of mine rather than Boo scares, and The Haunting has terrified me every single time I've watched it.

    Once again, a great post, and much food for thought.

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  6. Great post! The idea that the doors themselves are possessed by ghosts really make a lot of sense, particularly with regard to the sound effects. The ghosts are disturbed by your presence and then, while trying to get out, find themselves stuck within the doors and walls. No wonder they're so angry! It would be silly to assume that locked doors would stop ghosts (or even that the doors are locked at all). I agree that the breathing doors are far scarier than the ones that come out of the frame. For me, just seeing a breathing door and the door knobs jiggling in conjunction with those creepy cries, laughter, and inhuman snarls; there's nothing you could show me would be more terrifying than what I imagine is behind those doors.

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  7. First-time commenter here!
    I just *adore* your blog. I happened upon it by accident a few weeks ago (I think I clicked a link from the sidebar of Vintage Disneyland Tickets) and have just now finished reading ALL OF IT (going back to 2010)! Needless to say, I'm ravenous for more.
    I'm such a fan of your postulations, writing rhythm, and general tone. Loved reading about: the ballroom dancers and how they were going to be (rather oddly) multiplied using mirrors, the original Ken Anderson plans, the WWII giant painted covers, the Lon Chaney, Jr. (possible) inspiration for the HBG, the stereoscopic images, the Ruddigore song (I freakin' love G&S and the first time I saw Ruddigore it made me think of the HM), and:
    After growing up going to DL semi-frequently, I recently had my first opportunity to visit WDW. The Mansion there struck me as inferior to the original (but still fun), and the one difference that bugged me the most was the bulging door that let light through and bent out of its frame! I felt that totally ruined that door!
    Anyway, I love that I can comment on this very recent experience on what is currently the most recent blog post here and be relevant, but let me reiterate, I'm a fan of all four years of posts. Cheers to you, HBG2!
    Hurry back...hurry back....

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    1. Thank you for all those kind words, Lorinne, and welcome aboard.

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  8. The Boo vs. Brr comparison is a good one, one that I hadn't really consciously thought of before. I think DL's Mansion's many Brr effects is why I like it so much. Traditional haunted houses with tons of pop-up Boos (like scare-actors that jump out and wave plastic pork at guests) were more annoying than scary; I have an acute fight or flight mentality and have been kicked out of attractions more than once for reacting violently to some poor schmuck in make-up popping out at me. I definitely prefer the more subtle Brr take, where it's more my mind screwing with me than being shrieked at or startled by props. A good Brr stays with you.

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    1. They're also harder to do well. Brr's are more of a creative challenge, I think.

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  9. Sad to read of the demise of the blast-up ghosts. I guess I didn't notice they were missing on my last trip (2008). I remember seeing them on the blueprints to which I had access for a while. Their working parts were shown in outline only (no operating details) and the whole mechanism was noted as being provided by "MAPO", which was explained to me as the "Mary Poppins Organization", a separate subsidiary funded by profits from that film and devoted to manufacturing animatronic effects machinery. I have since seen signs on collector sites designating MAPO operations, so I know it existed.

    Do your blueprints include these notes? Does anyone know if MAPO still exists? Can you enlarge on the topic?

    JG

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    1. This article will probably answer most of your questions:

      http://www.burnsland.com/adventures/2012/07/the-end-of-mapo-at-disney/

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  10. I think the WDW/Tokyo version of the HM used to benefit from the more overt doors and psychedelic lighting because the ride is longer for both of them. In DL the COD is the first major sequence once you're in the Doom Buggy, I there think it needs to be more sublet and understated because it's the beginning of the ride. In WDW/Tokyo there are/were the Library, Music room, and the Spider Stairs (now M. C. Escher stairs) which are all very atmospheric and are the beginning or "first chapter" of the ride, and they act as a lead in or preamble to their once crazier version of the COD. Since they "toned down" or altered the WDW COD to be more like the DL version, it seems kind of boring to me, it's too much subtle atmospherics for too long now, at that point in the ride it needs some "Boo"

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    1. The ending of the ride in WDW is longer too and a little more interesting too, it used to have this extra Paul Frees narration that no one ever talks about, it's kind of WDW's long forgotten effect. But after you pass the Hitchhiking Ghosts, you go under an arch with Little Leota and then there's a long incline before you reach the exit/moving walk way. This 30' long stretch is now silent but you used to hear these edited together bits of Ghost Host dialogue

      "Lurking at you side is an unseen ghost, urging you to stay... If you should decide to join us, "final" arrangements may be made at the end of the tour. I will remain behind and prepare suitable epitaphs for those of you faint hearted guest, who are already feeling a certain detachment from you mortal being... Now I will raise the safety bar and a ghost will follow you home (Hmm hmm hahaha) bone-voyage as we say... and rest in peace"

      The "bone-voyage" line used to be the signal for the Doom Buggy to open up, and it played though out the 1980's until the mid 90's when they had to have someone else do the new safety spiel at the end of the ride

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  11. I'm familiar with those lines as "studio out-takes," but this is the first I've heard that they were actually used.

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    1. I didn't realize they were considered out-takes until this Halloween... I bought the Haunted Mansion album on Amazon for a party this past year. It plays the Disneyland version of the audio as the main track, and then has a short clip that's considered the WDW variant, which is the part from the library about "famous ghost writers". I remembered thinking there was more at the end of the ride that was missing from this WDW track and noticed that the audio "was" included in these extra track on the album.

      The album I bought was originally released as a souvenir for the 30th anniversary of the DL Haunted Mansion, and at that time this end monologue had already been removed from the WDW version of the ride. It wasn't dialogue that was recorded with the intension of being part of the ride like the "ghost writers" clip, and I don't know if it was there from the 1971 opening in WDW, so in reality it was a lot of outtakes that some clever person edited together as filler at the end of the ride, and then when the new exit/safety spiels recorded they just got rid of it. I'm just really surprised how no one seems to remember it

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  12. I've often pointed up similarities between the Mansion and Dark Shadows here; I'm generally of the opinion that neither is likely to have borrowed from the other very much since they were both in development at the same time on opposite coasts. I tend to think that they were both shaped by the same zeitgeist and influences. Both Lyndhurst in Tarrytown, NY and Seaview Terrace in Newport, RI - houses that were used for exterior shots in the series - provided inspiration for the interior sets, but it’s hard to imagine that The haunting wasn’t an influence, as well.

    If DS had wanted to use a real corridor with doors in their dream sequence, they had an existing set they could have used. However, since the show was filmed as live (their tight schedule only allowed for one continuous take – it was filmed as if it was a stage play and then immediately broadcast as soon as filming was over) they couldn’t use the Collinwood mansion corridor set. They needed something temporary and portable that could be set up adjacent to whatever set the dreaming cast member was in when he or she fell asleep, so they could do a fade effect in the camera just long enough for the dreamer to jump up, run over, and appear on the dream set during the “Through sight and sound and endless terror” narration. The black background with doors (which provided rectangular frames for the Chroma key hallucination effects) was a natural choice.

    Also, my cat Nellie is named for Eleanor in The Haunting. It was tempting to name her littermate Theo, but it just didn’t suit him.

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  13. As usual, a great read!
    Looking forward to your new subject and wondering if you could sometime go in detail about the room between the Grand hall and the endless hallway.
    I'm Also curious to see some photos of the area under The seance circle at WDW.
    Again thank you for your blog.
    The Haunted Masion has always been a Masterpiece of illusion.

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  14. I'm glad that you said that ours is better. I love to know that one is best. I love to think the original is best even though I've never seen the others.

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  15. I'm glad I recently stumbled upon your blog! One time when I was on the ride with my cousin, sometime in the mid to late 1980s, perhaps around Halloween, there was a cast member in the COD dressed as a Dracula (this last bit may be whimsical imagination creeping into memory, but it's a pretty sharp image in my head) that was jumping out at people from behind the Doombuggies. Do you or anyone else remember anything like this happening?

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    1. The closest thing to that that I am aware of took place during the 30th Anniversary festivities in 1999. For the occasion they had several costumed cast members in various places in the DL HM, giving it the old pop-and-boo. There was a vampire character in the attic.

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    2. Thanks for the reply. I was in college in NY in 1999, so I wasn't there for that. I'm glad to know it did happen at other points in time, though, which at least gives me a bit of credibility that I'm not imagining it :-)

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  16. I recall seeing some concept art showing a ghost pushing through the wallpaper of the CoD and a second art piece showing a monster like creature also pushing through the door

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    1. The first piece only dates from the 1980s-90s, and the second sounds like one of the items in the post.

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  17. Really loving this blog!!

    I am of the opinion that the WDW version of the ride (interior rather than exterior) is the superior version, except I too always thought the CoD was the exception. You have stated what I did not realize. I’m glad they removed the hands as the Brr in the COD is much stronger than a Boo.

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  18. Always awesome. I absolutely love your writing style, plus of-course peerless information and insight.

    Chiming in again today with a couple questions: Are we sure Disneyland never had hands prying open the top corner of a door? I feel like that gag went away at some point. Do I really only recall this from Florida or Tokyo?

    Also, the photo of that toothy transom above the COD doors is so nice and clear. It is much harder to find a confirming image (I’ll keep looking), but isn’t that same metalwork pattern also found above the gate to the graveyard? Just past the caretaker and dog, we pass under an arch of a gateway into the graveyard; they are ‘outside’ the brick wall which support the gates, but we continue and enter through. The span overhead is mangled, distorted or crumpled as I recall, but looks just like that face….same grim grin, if I am remembering it correctly. This detail would firmly tie to house to the graveyard architecturally…anchoring them together in space and time.

    Thanks once more for all the ‘forgotten’ fun! (I will probably soon read all about this in another post or two as often happens here)

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    1. Thanks for the kind words. No, the hands have never been on the doors at DL. It's not possible, since the bulging doors are simple latex inside the doorframes. As for the metalwork over the graveyard gate, here's a picture. https://www.flickr.com/photos/29883059@N05/52545792310/in/album-72177720304225760/

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  19. Thanks, so yes, same motif. Interesting. Not so much distorted gates, but at angles I see. I take your word for it…thought I remembered hands in the right side. Didn’t imagine that all the doors would be latex.

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