HOW IT STARTED - Efran Halloween Productions

In 1969, we were living in Rochester, New York. That year we hosted a Halloween party for members of the University of Rochester Psychology department. Our house had a dark hallway, the walls of which were covered with an ugly wallpaper. We decided that it would be an ideal area to decorate for the party. As a summer camp counselor, I had learned how to make a “cave” using brown wrapping paper that had been wet, painted, crinkled, and dried. When the paper is opened up, it has a rock-like texture and, because it retains its shape, it can be fashioned into the “walls” of a cave. So, our hallway became a cave. Within it, we used fishing line to dangle a miniature model of a witch “flying” on her broomstick. After the party, we left up the Halloween decorations for several months because (a) some people who were not at the party expressed a desire to see them, and (b) we were not in any hurry to re-expose the miserable wallpaper.

The next year, although there was no party, people kept asking how we were planning to decorate our hallway. Having just been to Disneyland (for the first time), we decided to adopt the theme from “The Pirates of the Caribbean” ride. Our version featured a central (Styrofoam) mast, nautical netting, a “hatch” that lit up, making it look like there was a cabin below, a rum barrel, and a ship’s steering wheel. When people came to see the display, we played a recording of “Yo ho, yo ho” from the Disney ride.

For 1970, our theme (“2001”) was outer space. It was a blacklight creation with glowing, rotating planets (suspended on fishing line). Visitor heard “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” playing in the background.

EARLY VENTURES

In 1971, our son was born and we moved to Philadelphia. Thus, we were too busy with moving and parenting chores to worry much about Halloween. However, in 1974, when Daniel was a bit older, we created an animated, miniature haunted house. It was a big success. The front door opened and closed, the window curtains blew open, and visitors could peer inside and see Frankenstein’s monster lying on an operating table.

We had displays for the next several years, but they were relatively modest creations. In 1975 visitors looked into a mirror–actually one-way glass–and, as the lighting changed, their face was slowly replaced by a creature mask from the other side of the glass. In 1976, a creature in a robe was seated in the hallway and scared trick-or-treaters by suddenly rising up and ?coming to life. In 1977, because we had been invited to a costume party, the whole family dressed as Jawas with lighted eyes peering out of hooded brown robes.

By 1978, we were ready to consider resuming the Halloween traditions we had started in Rochester. In fact, that year’s display was a recreation of our blacklight outer space diorama. This time, in addition to the moving planets, there was a Martian landscape (fashioned out of a product called “Mountains in Minutes,” sold mostly for model train enthusiasts). It featured a glowing volcano and waterfall. It helped that we had found some crude 4’X8′ scenery flats being thrown out down the street. We “rescued” and repurposed them for our own needs.

Both 1979 and 1980 featured hallway creatures–a space alien the first year and a werewolf the next. In 1981 we reprised our wrapping paper cave, this time containing a gigantic dinosaur skeleton. The Styrofoam dinosaur bones came as a kit that you put together. When assembled, its size was impressive. We augmented this with a smoke effect, using a liquid carbon dioxide cannister that we rented.

In 1982, I dressed in a lab coat to portray a mad scientist. I borrowed a rat from the University’s psychology lab. With a piece of standard magician’s equipment–a chafing dish or Dove Pan–I would combine various “ingredients,” set the mixture on fire, close the lid, and produce–Voila!–a live rat. This was the first of our creations that required repeated performances. I produced the rat for each group of trick-or-treaters.

During one of these performances, the rat escaped and went scurrying around the house. I feared that it might get sucked into the furnace, turning my fake cooking into an all-too-real event. I wondered how I was going to explain my inability to return the rat in the condition it was in when I borrowed it. Fortunately, I caught the rat–the star of our show–enabling the performances to continue without further mishaps.

The following year (1983) we built our show around an old steamer trunk that we had in our attic. We drilled air holes in the rear of the trunk and removed the shelf. Daniel’s friend Justin Sheetz was limber enough to fit inside. We arranged chains around the trunk that looked like they were preventing it from opening. For each performance, we described the trunk as containing a safely secured monster. At those words, there was a spark and the chains separated and pulled away. Then, the trunk opened and Justin (in a monster outfit) stood up. The narrator then used a starter pistol to shoot the monster, who sank back into the trunk as the lid closed behind him. This, too, was a performance that had to be repeated for each group of trick-or-treaters. Also, this was the first year we kept track of how many trick-or-treaters visited–there were 135. Poor Justin spent much of the night in the trunk, with only occasional breaks. Luckily, he was a good sport and his parents, who lived down the block, were very trusting.

In 1984, we had a room of suspended masks, mysteriously glowing in the dark. And, in 1985, we used bicycle cables to animate a full-size model of a detached head that seemed to speak in halting fashion. (The head was constructed by Daniel’s friend, Jordu Schell, a very talented sculptor, who has gone on to work in Hollywood in the field of special effects. He also contributed to a few of our other Halloween presentations).

Although 1984 and 1985 did not require any live actors, our 1986 “Midnight dinner” did. The locus was our dining room table and two diners were the “victims” of various strange happenings. A cake pan that was lifted revealed a head, a bottle of wine turned black, and a plate of spaghetti seemed to have crawly objects within. This little scenario was accompanied by spooky music but there was no dialogue. The effects were primitive compared to later efforts. However, there was a simple effect that turned out to be unexpectedly effective. At one point, the lights when out for an instant and when they came back on one of the diners (portrayed by Elsa Efran) appeared to have turned into a witch. This was accomplished by having that diner sitting in a rotating desk chair with a witch mask fastened to the back of her head. When she spun around during the momentary blackout, it seemed like she had “disappeared” and been replaced by the witch. Our midnight dinner skit was performed 31 times during the course of the evening for a total of 187 guests.

For 1987, I managed to borrow a green laser from the University’s physics department. (Of course, being a different department, they had no knowledge of how close I came to broiling one of the school’s lab animals years before.) This was before very low power lasers were being sold in stores for presenters to use as pointers. We constructed a large, green “space pod” with a rotating mirror on top that scattered laser beams around the foggy room. The pod was about 7 feet tall, made of Papier-Mach‚ covering a chicken wire frame. (At first, we tried to use a huge weather balloon as the framework, but this soon exploded, sending wet clumps of Papier-Mach‚ in every direction.

We had rented a theatrical fog machine for the occasion because this was long before affordable fog machines were being produced for the Halloween market. I thought this display was pretty impressive. Thus, I was taken a bit aback when I overheard the conversation between two young visitors–probably about 10 years old. One mumbled to the other, “Aw, it’s just a laser” as if these were common household items.

THINGS GET OUT OF HAND

Beginning in 1988, all of our Halloween shows were skits that included various special effects and were performed multiple times by a live cast. In other words, things were increasingly getting out of hand. The theme for 1988 was “Phantom of the Opera,” followed by “The Joker” in 1989. Both of these were pantomimes–in other words, no dialogue. That changed in 1990, with a skit about spiders featuring a narrator and a scientist. After a spider grows to a large size and escapes from the “growth chamber,” a large cloth spider dropped down from the ceiling above where the audience was situated. It was a somewhat cheesy effect, but effective because it was unexpected. This was before large fake spiders were readily available at Halloween and novelty stores. Thus, we had to make our own.

1991 brings us into what I like to think of us the “modern era” in terms of Efran Halloween presentations. Each year, the shows were becoming increasingly sophisticated. They all involved dialogue and a basic plot line. We tried to build six or seven special effects into each year’s offering and we developed a “following” that eventually included the children of parents who themselves had visited as kids. In 1993, we added a second night of performances because we could no longer accommodate everyone on a single evening. The record for number of performances was 47, and the size of the audience had grown to over 650, serviced in groups of 10 or so at a time. Even though Halloween costumes and decorations had become increasingly easy to purchase over the years, our sets, outfits, and props were never the traditional store-bought displays. Nor was this a haunted house. Instead, each show was an original, 10- to 15-minute live production. For the early shows, visitors stood to see the show. Later, we obtained some camp-style benches so that the audience could be seated.

I don’t need to say much about the shows from 1991 until 2005 because there are videos of those events. Watching these are not the same as being physically present, and some of the effects do not show up well on video because of the specialized lighting, the lack of ability to shoot from wide angles, and so on. Nevertheless, these may help bring back memories for those who attended.