Terror Tram: The Director's Cut @ USH HHN'06 (Halloween Horror Nights 2006, Univ. Studios Hollywood)
Channel: DanHarkless ﴾Halloween, theme parks, YTPs, & more﴿
Date: 2023-01-02

2006 was the first year at Universal Studios Hollywood's Halloween Horror Nights where they let guests walk through the famous backlot.  Normally you'd only get to ride through these areas in a tram.  It was a real treat to get to walk right next to the original Bates Motel and _Psycho_ house exterior sets, with Bernard Hermann's brilliant score playing in the background.  

And I hadn't done the backlot tour since they added the _War of the Worlds_ (2005) destroyed-neighborhood portion (nor had I seen the film), so it was quite stunning to see it for the first time here, and to get to walk through such a high-budget post-apocalyptic landscape.  And that's not even to mention the roaming zombies, pretty talented Norman Bates impersonator, and other cool-looking (if sometimes thematically wedged-in) monsters.

I had always wondered why the local Halloween haunts, at least while I had been going, had never done a good apocalyptic flesh-eating zombie maze à la George Romero's "Living Dead" series, so this attraction satisfied that craving nicely (only lacking the feeling that the zombies are relentlessly pursuing you, as is their wont).

In any case, this 30-minute video is an uncut capture of the experience.  When I uploaded the original pre-remastered version in 2006, YouTube limited video lengths to 10 minutes, but now I'm able to upload it without separating it into 3 parts.  If you'd like to skip past the less interesting sections on the tram to and from the backlot, see the chapter list below (or in the timeline).

Note that in the departure tram video with The Director's backstory, the clip portrayed as being from his film _The Widow's Eye_ is actually from _Un chien andalou_ (1929), the surrealist short film by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí.  Trigger warning for simulated trauma to the lady's eye in that, but it's actually a (deceased) cow's eye that gets cut in the close-up insert shot.  

On the tram back, there's a trip through the since-demolished The Mummy's Tomb attraction, a retheme of the Universal Studios Tour's old spinning Ice Tunnel.  It's difficult to see in infrared mode, but after the tunnel rotates for awhile, black lights turn on, revealing previously invisible hieroglyphs on the tunnel walls.  The reason everybody yells during the "final cut" part and I suddenly duck my camera down is that "blood" is being squirted on us in the dark.

I am not a fan of Universal's squirting fetish; a corpse-eating zombie also squirts me during the walkthrough portion, but luckily misses my camera and contact lenses.  At USH HHN 1997, a monster in the Monsterquarium maze knocked one of my contacts completely out of my eye with the stupid water-squirting schtick.  Aside from potentially destroying people's cameras, or destroying their ability to see clearly on the (long) ride home, this practice seems unsanitary and potentially infectious, so I hope one of the silver linings of COVID-19 is that they'll stop using these fluid-contact "scares".

Shot October 14, 2006, in the Scare Zones at Universal Studios Hollywood's Halloween Horror Nights 2006 event.

[Remastered version, with camera stabilization, and 1080p60 upconversion.]

BOOKMARKS / CHAPTERS:
0:00 Boarding Yvette's tram; camera set down for a moment.
1:50 Tram departs for backlot.
3:19 The Director: Pavel Pranevsky backstory video.
6:17 Arrival; tram disembarkment for backlot walk.
7:12 "Send In The Clowns" scene.
7:53 Bates Motel scene (oops, missed the slate with the official name).
9:15 Alfred Hitchcock's cameo.
9:55 "Beauty Is Only Skin Deep" scene.
10:54 "A Man's Best Friend Is His Mother" scene: Psycho house.
11:39 "There Goes The Neighborhood" scene: zombies.
12:12 Zombie squirts me.
15:43 Boarding Justine's tram; non-IR shots; "He got me in the face!!" (squirter?).
23:37 Return tram departs.
24:26 Road closed: detour through old "Mummy" set.
25:17 The Mummy's Tomb (spinning tunnel).
27:14 "Universal's Madman Maniacs" video.
30:01 Exiting the tram; line-times sign.
30:28 End screen, credits, and channel / playlist / video links.

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This video contains excerpts of the following CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) sources:

ForFilm Creation (https://www.youtube.com/c/ForFilmCreation):
* "SMOKE FOG 10 MINUTS // Free download link" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFwfMsHUccA)