Halloween Horror Nights 35: Inside Universal Orlando's 10 haunted houses

Based on the first three films adapting author Clive Barker’s grotesque novella — “Hellraiser” (1987), “Hellbound: Hellraiser II” (1988) and “Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth” (1992) — the house takes visitors on a grisly journey into a realm where Pinhead and his tormented Cenobites (a group of extra-dimensional, sadomasochistic beings) derive hellish pleasure from causing hedonistic humans plenty of pain.

Enter a room just as Frank Cotton (a lead character in the films), kneeling in a circle of candles, begins to solve the Lament Configuration puzzle box, unleashing his doom as guests literally walk through the evolving box to meet skinless living victims and our favorite Cenobites in elaborate leather costumes.

Pinhead, reminding everyone that “your suffering will be legendary,” often lords over the environments, and guests can expect scare moments with the Chatterer, Butterball and the female Cenobite (she was never given a name in the movies) and even a nightmarish puppet of the Engineer (ripped from the first film).

Most clever about the house design, it features rays of light shining through broken wall slats of the rooms, a peek at the Labyrinth and deliberately open sightlines through parts of the maze. So, for example, a guest sees a man kneeling with bound arms outstretched in the distance and eventually gets to witness his bloody dilemma.

By far the most authentic and disgusting house this year through sheer gore (did I just walk through hanging human intestines?) and Mr. Barker’s terrifying characters, it still never quite attains the gross heights of last year’s Terrifier house.

However, it comes close, thanks to a torture chamber’s worth of scenes spotlighting hanging body parts, entrail-splattered walls and most memorable to the movies, chains tearing away flesh from the human body.

Halloween Horror Nights’ long-time association with Netflix’s popular sci-fi, supernatural series ends after creating a total of four houses over the last eight years with one final effort celebrating the show’s fifth and final season.

Guests take a walk through the last eight episodes with the Hawkins gang by visiting the Wheeler house, Hawkins Memorial Hospital, Hawkins National Laboratory, the MAC-Z military base, the Upside Down and finally the Abyss. Demogorgons, Demodogs, Vecna and the Mind Flayer provide the monsters, while virtually all of the principal characters appear along the route.

The highlight by far ushers guests into one of the largest rooms at HHN 35 for the scene in which Will finally turns his powerful connection to Vecna against the monsters.

A full-size Demogorgon is suspended in midair, its body contorted as Will telekinetically breaks its limbs. Rather than simply hiding another Demogorgon for a jumpscare, Universal built the encounter as a large theatrical tableau using moving scenic elements, animatronics and effects.

Fans will be satisfied with this loving tribute to “Stranger Things,” while those unaware of the series will find some cool elements and monsters but will be totally lost in the story.

Equally important for fans, those looking for a loving and artistic goodbye to the series should stop by the central lagoon (along Central Park on the Hollywood side) at select times for Stranger Things: Return to Hawkins for a 13-minute water and effects show set to rock music that relives all five epic seasons highlighted with video projections of key moments.

A fantasy journey showcases the solo career of one of rock’s most influential performers, delivered as a dark yet loving homage through iconic imagery, music and mythology and playing out as an immersive horror spectacle filled with skulls, bats, snakes, monsters and demons.

Guests enter a Gothic dungeon where Ozzy has been imprisoned until his followers release him, with the song “Straight to Hell” blasting away before sending them into a succession of surreal album-inspired worlds.

Although a scene of a bat ripping the head off of a robed believer certainly drips with irony for the all-knowing Ozzy fan (remember his 1982 incident), they quickly appreciate multiple actors dressed as Ozzy the werewolf for his “Bark at the Moon” album, with strains of the hit tune being drowned out by growls and howling.

Next, the song “Crazy Train” becomes a chaotic transportation sequence, ushering guests into increasingly fiery and nightmarish train cars and welcomed by an elongated and monstrous conductor version of Ozzy.

The finale brings guests into a fiery throne room, where Ozzy appears as the Prince of Darkness beside imagery inspired by “The Ultimate Sin.”

The final scene will be the most impactful of the night, with a human actor portraying Ozzy as the Prince of Darkness sitting on his throne from his final concert and a life-sized dragon with the lead singer’s facial features (from Boris Vallejo cover art for “The Ultimate Sin,” album) perched next to him.

Worth also mentioning, to spotlight the fantastic designers, are a pair of ponds at the start of the house presenting reflections of Ozzy’s face in various moments of his career.

I doubt any other theme park would bother to offer this level of detail. Surprisingly, most audience members I watched did not even notice the brilliant effect.

However, two small issues with the Ozzy house make it fall short of perfection.

First, as I was told, one of the signature scene pieces displays an animatronic version of Ozzy transforming into a bat.

The two times I went through the house, an abundance of smoke obscured the craftsmanship of the team’s work, and I could barely see the humanoid bat. Less smoke and much more illumination would do wonders to bring the creation to visual life.

Second, the final version of Ozzy sitting on his throne was portrayed by a scare actor who did not really look like Ozzy. A much better option might have been an animatronic version with a holographic face of Ozzy that would offer a more supernatural visage of the icon telling fans, “I love you all.”

Director Ryan Coogler’s four-time Academy Award-winning horror film gets adapted into a haunted house, taking guests back to a 1930s Clarksdale, Mississippi, soon to be overrun by vampires.

After an introduction to Elijah and Elias Moore, the Smokestack Twins, the story moves from a farmhouse full of bloodsuckers to the opening night of the brothers’ blues-music-infused, Black community hangout Club Juke under assault by Irish vampire Remmick and his ever-burgeoning, fanged minions.

The entire experience centers on the reimagining of one of the major scenes in the film, featuring entering the corrugated-metal building to hear Cousin Sammie, “Preacher Boy” Moore, performing “I Lied to You” with a reproduction of a 1932 Dobro Cyclops resonator guitar.

Surrounded by an eerie glow of a fiery backdrop and shadows of humans dancing above him, chaos ensues when vampires enter the club. The potent signature effect of the house displays Remmick flying toward the guests, claws and fangs drawn out in attack mode.

Guests will survive the night to watch a sunrise and the evil creatures in silhouette bursting into flames in a video backdrop.

Outstanding production design greets a story almost discernible without having seen the film, thanks to just enough dialogue and character narration. If anything, it should make guests immediately want to watch the movie.

Based on the new, sixth Evil Dead film, rather than an overview of the franchise, the story centers on Alice Price, a grieving widow who goes to stay with her late husband Will’s family at their isolated, deteriorating vacation home in the woods.

Unfortunately, the Price family has a history with the Necronomicon, aka the Book of the Dead. As the ancient tome unleashes its influence, members of the Price family are possessed one by one, transforming the house into a maze of Deadites, mutilation and escalating chaos.

Guests move through foreboding staircases, cramped rooms, ruined interiors and grotesque scenes as Alice struggles to survive relatives who are no longer human.

For those who have not seen the film, the action relies mainly on jumpscares from humans in various states of possession.

However, a few standout moments will draw gasps, including an animatronic puppet dog with glowing eyes named Max and, as seen in the film, Alice turns a construction-site jackhammer on the charred Deadite corpse of her husband Will, recreating one of the film’s most vicious final confrontations.

And, offering by far the best house entrance of the night, the walk up features an enormous, flaming red and yellow Evil Dead Burn title floating in the darkness, accompanied by a gruesome, still-talking severed Deadite head surrounded by a crashed vehicle, trees, fog and a sweltering red glow. It plays like the franchise’s signature opening credits suddenly coming to life.

After his debut at Halloween Horror Nights 21 and now escaping from a lengthy prison stay for torturing his producer, famed late-night horror movie host H.R. Bloodengutz, aka Larry Kurtzberg, returns to Carey, Ohio, and the WKNB studio on Halloween night to offer up select scenes of seven of his favorite schlock scary films … and get some revenge.

For each movie, guests get the host’s quick video introduction on an old-style television set before walking through a live-action snippet for “The Legend of Horseless Hollow” (a comedic inversion of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”); “A Monsters’ Night Out” (classic monsters partying in a tiki bar); “The Grayscale Graveyard” (a black-and-white old-school zombies in the graveyard tale); “Cult of the Pumpkin Lord” (a callback to HHN’s Wicked Growth and the Pumpkin Lord); “Conjure the Funk” (occult horror meets 1970s disco); “Skoolhouse Resurrection” (HHN’s creepy schoolhouse mythology); and “The Madness of Dr. Pumpkinspyce” (a mad-scientist spoof culminating in the creation of the “Frankenspice” Monster).

Creatures rule the house with appearances by a large dancing werewolf drinking a piña colada (a tip of the snout to the Warren Zevon song), a blue-skinned vampiress having a female snack, a horned monster feasting on a massive pumpkin and a disco-dancing female zombie.

Better yet, at the end of the house, Universal nostalgia buffs may also recognize Eddie, the shaggy humanoid werewolf that terrorized audiences for years in the finale of Universal Orlando’s Horror Make-Up Show.

This is my second favorite haunted house this year due to the variety of production designs crammed into one spot, the infusion of dark humor (Mr. Kurtzberg’s torturous antics), themed scents (a strong pumpkin spice odor surrounds Dr. Pumpkinspyce) and the lighting that clearly complements the gantlet of groovy ghoulies throughout.

Guests take on the role of survivors from a post-apocalyptic wasteland who attempt to find sanctuary in an abandoned zoo and discover that it has been divided among rival cannibal factions filled with hungry human killing machines in this original-world haunted house.

Survivors stroll through the aviary, a polar bear enclosure and a rhinoceros paddock, each featuring crazed humans dressed in animal-themed spiked armor, leather masks and rusted metal helmets as they wield weapons such as metal claws, swords and a chainsaw.

A very Tim Burton, Gotham-esque entrance to the zoo mixes with a Mad Max meets Island of Dr. Moreau vibe throughout, with the most ferocious and visceral moments found within the rhino area.

The story is not easily deciphered through the house’s visuals, but some moments shine, such as a victim impaled on a bed of spikes, a metal-masked blacksmith building a helmet, a cannibal wearing a rhinoceros head, a vehicle with a flamethrower turret and, a heart being torn out of a victim’s chest.

I bet this house would have been much more impactful with more illumination to inspect the urban decay design.

I had high hopes for this currently very relevant house that took guests into a world where robots and artificial intelligence were to deliver humans immortality.

Specifically, Bio Immortal Bionic Intelligent Systems corporation promised customers eternal life by putting them into cryogenic suspension until science could deliver the dream. Thousands of years later, the corporation is far gone, but its intelligent industrial facility still functions and is still trying to fulfill the directive.

The intelligently obedient robots that remain — referred to as Fleshbots — have concluded that keeping humanity alive requires replacing failing biological components with machinery while simultaneously grafting viable human tissue, appendages and organs onto mechanical bodies.

You can bet that each sterile white futuristic hallway or lab area has plenty of bloody research on display, with humans being disassembled, a viscous wall of oozing tissue, an appendage assembly line and an occasional human still in a freezer bag (the cheaper option for a cryogenic chamber), as well as showcasing those somewhat gooey and gloriously grotesque Fleshbots.

The jumpscares are frequent, but the trip is far too quick. I suggest trying to get through the house again to really appreciate the absolute twisted horror of this sci-fi survival tale.

In this original design, take a stroll through an extraterrestrial attack on a Southwestern farmhouse and barn where a group of aliens plucked right out of an Area 51 playbook are looking for Earth specimens. Of course, those who resist pay with their lives.

Our little, bulbous-headed creatures are a vicious lot who are now sporting razor-sharp teeth, long claws and some even with extended tentacles that will punch through a wall and eviscerate the human body.

Guests watch animals and their brethren getting grabbed and pulled up towards the mothership, a farmer with a shotgun attempting to fight off the creatures, a human in silhouette getting his arms torn off and, best of all, they get a jumpscare about every five seconds from the aliens popping out from a variety of crevices, doors and holes.

A nice touch to the evening was a real full moon backlighting the exterior of the homestead as guests entered a house that puts a spin on the alien abduction mythology.

Drawing on two decades of Halloween Horror Nights mythology, this impressive house revisits the origin of Jack the Clown and his violent history with circus owner and ringmaster Dr. Oddfellow.

Guests enter Oddfellow’s carnival, where Jack Schmidt is still a murderous performer beginning his transformation into the icon HHN fans know.

After discovering Jack’s homicidal tendencies, Dr. Oddfellow murders him and stuffs his body inside the Jack-in-the-Box, intending to end the threat.

Instead, the box exposes Jack to the supernatural Oddverse and magnifies his power. Jack returns, invades Dr. Oddfellow’s realm and gradually wrests control of the story itself, turning the carnival into an increasingly surreal neon landscape of distorted games, ferocious clown imagery and chaotic environments.

Their struggle escalates until neither can fully dominate the other. Ultimately, Jack and Dr. Oddfellow realize their combined power is greater than their rivalry. They unite chaos and control, creating the Infernal Carnival of Nightmares.

Impressive set design brings the Depression-era traveling carnival (complete with weathered sideshow posters, performer quarters and old-fashioned midway) and swirling Oddverse to life.

A constant narration from Dr. Oddfellow clearly explains the story, and multiple performance-driven scenes and moments of tech and puppet magic make this house a standout.

Diabolical moments include a live Jack putting on his makeup, Dr. Oddfellow stuffing him into the box with feet dangling, a tilted and spinning vortex hallway to traverse, the pair of adversaries discussing a deal atop an enormous version of the skull from Dr. Oddfellow’s Cane of Souls, and giant puppet heads of Jack and Dr. Oddfellow.

Fans loving the history of Halloween Horror Nights will redo this house early and often to catch Easter eggs such as visiting the Art Deco Shadybrook Rest Home and Sanitarium.