Location: Hollywood, California, USA
Address: 1660 N Highland Ave.
Date: June 2019
Website: thehollywoodmuseum.com/
The Hollywood Museum in Los Angeles has so many movie props and memorabilia that they fill every nook and cranny. Since it is the Halloween season we thought we would revisit their basement and a few classic horror movie icons.
First off is an old classic, Frankenstein. While the novel was written in 1818, we are talking movies here. This Frankenstein was played by Boris Karloff in the 1931 film and is seen above with his bride from the 1935 film Bride of Frankenstein.
There were life masks of Boris Karloff and Bela Legosi. Bela Legosi had played Dracula and along with Boris was part of Universal Studio's classic monster movies.
Another early creature that scared audiences was the great ape, King Kong. The original King Kong was a stop motion model. The museum had various King Kongs on display.
Flying ahead a few decades there were some birds from Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. We are not sure if these were just props or former movie stars preserved for future generations.
While not a movie monster herself, Elvira became very popular in the 1980s as a host presenting B grade horror movies. Horror movies have never really gone away, but the 80s saw a group of classic horror villains rise to stardom and appear in numerous sequels.
Michael Meyers changed Haloween night forever and gained his place as one of the greatest characters in slasher film history. Michael escapes from a sanitarium and visits his hometown for a night of fright and murder. Jamie Lee Curtis stars as a babysitter that Michael is stalking while wearing a plain white mask. So far there have been eleven Halloween films.
The next mask wearer to terrorize teenagers is Jason Voorhees from the Friday The 13th movies. He drowned as a boy and is best known for wearing his hockey mask while slashing his way through twelve (or is it only eleven?) movies. This franchise just has to make Friday The 13th: The 13th.
The next horror franchise to arrive in the 1980s started with A Nightmare On Elm Street. This movie starred Freddy Krueger who terrorized teenagers in their dreams. Johnny Depp's Hollywood dreams came true after being one of Freddy's victims. There have only been nine movies in this series but there was a Freddy vs Jason cross-over movie made.
In the late 80s came Chucky. He was a psychotic, knife wielding doll from the Child's Play movies. Only 8 movies made so far. He did find love in Bride of Chucky just like Frankenstein did over 60 years before him. If you have ever seen videos of dogs wearing costumes, and we know you have, the Chucky costume is one of the best.
The museum is crammed with movie props and costumes from many other films. There was this stick figure from The Blair Witch Project. The Blair Witch Project grossed almost 250 million dollars on a budget of less than 500 thousand. It's shaky hand held camera work caused as much tension and fear as it did nausea.
After having a role in A Nightmare On Elm Street, Johnny Depp spent a lot of time making movies with a Halloween feel to them thanks to director Tim Burton. Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas is both a Halloween and a Christmas classic. Johnny's Sweeney Todd costume was on display.
We headed upstairs again to escape from the horrors we had seen in the basement. We did spot a couple more monsters up in a corner. Mike Wazowski and Sulley from Monsters Inc. are a little less creepy than the hundereds of items you can find in The Hollywood Museum's dungeon.
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The Hollywood MuseumPost # 292
