Scare School teaches the delicate art of scaring the daylights out of people
Lynton V. Harris, front center, poses with his students around a wax Elvis at Madame Tussauds. Photo by Clint Karlsen.
It’d be a transformation worthy of that achieved by the imaginative Dr. Frankenstein when he assembled his monster from all those creepy odds and ends.
To wit: Taking about a dozen-and-a-half normal, friendly, attractive, funny people and turning them, in the space of one week’s time, into creatures that’ll frighten the bejabbers out of anybody who visits the latest attraction at Madame Tussauds Las Vegas.
So, it’s probably fitting that the venerable wax museum enlisted for the project its own Dr. Frankenstein of sorts, Lynton V. Harris, chairman, chief executive officer and creative director of The Sudden Impact! Entertainment Company.
Harris — an amiable, casually dressed, casual-mannered man with a quick, sometimes earthy sense of humor — has produced fright-based live shows and interactive attractions all over the globe, including horror-themed exhibits for Madame Tussauds attractions in London, Amsterdam and New York.
Most recently, he helped to design the latest addition to Madame Tussauds Las Vegas: Chamber of Horrors Presents Monsters Alive! an interactive attraction based on classic Universal Studios monsters.
Last week, as a final tune-up before the attraction’s Memorial Day weekend opening, Harris put the actors he hired to staff the attraction through what he calls “Scare School,” a sort of five-day crash course in the nuts and bolts of scaring people senseless.
First things first: If you’re thinking Monsters Alive is anything like the haunted houses that sprout up in strip mall parking lots every Halloween — the ones populated by high school kids in bad makeup who jump out and say “Boo!” a lot — think again.
In fact, even mention the phrase “haunted house” to Harris and he responds with the pained sort of expression that’d normally be elicited only by slapping someone in the face with a dead rat.
“We don’t ever use (that phrase) in reference to our product,” he says, quite seriously.
Visitors to Monsters Alive enter a sort of old-time movie theater set. Then, as they walk through the darkened hallways, they encounter a mix of live actors and Madame Tussauds signature figures.
So, Harris notes, casting the right actors is essential. After two rounds of auditions, he assembled a cast of performers, most of whom have acting experience, but many of whom come from backgrounds in singing, dance or other types of performance.
“It’s definitely a mixture of personalities and backgrounds,” Harris says. “Then you bring them together, and people feed off each other. So what skills they lack someone else brings out of them and vice versa. You need a mixture, I think, to make it really dynamic.”
With his cast assembled, Harris last week set about teaching them the basics of the fright biz.
“Scare School is a series of in-class lectures and interacting with each other,” according to Harris — essentially, a sort of intensive acting class during which students learn about the psychology of suspense and horror and audience dynamics, participate in acting and movement exercises, and practice performance skills they’ll use in their new jobs.
“It’s an involved process,” Harris adds.
“Actors always turn up on day one and scratch their heads. And, by the end of the week, if it’s worked, we’ve molded them into an elite team of actors that go from thinking this might be a fill-in job to being one they’re proud of.”
The first day of Scare School also included a trip to Madame Tussauds so, Harris says, students would gain an understanding and an appreciation of their place in the Madame Tussauds tradition.
It was Dave Sharrow’s first visit to Madame Tussauds. What’d he think?
“It scared me,” he admits as his cast mates laugh.
But cast member Kelly Kimbrough understood.
“It seemed like (the figures) were breathing,” she says.
The classmates didn’t know it yet, but Harris had a few other surprises planned for Scare School, too, including a trip to the Stratosphere Tower where students were to board the tower’s thrill rides. Harris notes that he wouldn’t be surprised if a few of his cast members decided that they’d prefer to be on the giving, rather than the receiving, end of this whole scare thing.
That’s OK, too, he adds, because “some of our best actors are scaredy cats.” A primary focus of the Scare School curriculum revolves around not, as Harris puts it, “falling into cliches.” To Harris, eliciting a quick, superficial scare is easy, but leaving patrons with a lasting, deeper entertainment experience takes work.
“I can take eight people and put them in (the attraction) and turn out the lights and it’ll work,” he explains. “But you get a great cast in there and the audience goes, ‘That was awesome.’ Big difference.”
While cast members have diverse backgrounds, they share an enthusiasm for what they’re sure will be a fun gig and, in at least a few cases, a longtime love of Halloween and other entertainingly scary stuff.
Terese Kelly’s resume includes a variety of acting jobs, a few of which even revolved around horror-type themes. But, she says, “I’ve never done anything on this level. This is so fun to do.”
Kellie Karl calls herself the person who, at Halloween, will decorate the picture windows, the front door, the lawn, and even, she says, “the dog.”
“I love this kind of stuff,” she says.
Kurt Mayne even has a familial reason for being so happy that he landed the Madame Tussauds job.
“I’m a single dad, and my daughter is so behind this,” says Mayne, who, after learning he’d gotten the job, even settled in for a horrorthon of Universal Studios films featuring Frankenstein, Wolfman and Dracula.
For Harris, cast members’ success will be measured by how well they can entertain patrons, whether it’s by making them scream, laugh or cry or, even, just giving them the opportunity to laugh at others who scream, laugh or cry.
“The coolest thing is to stand in a corner in black clothes and watch people,” he explains. “It’s cheaper than therapy, watching the audience go through.”