That’s Where ‘It’ lives…
The line uttered by Bill Denbrough appropriately titles the ‘IT’ experience on Hollywood Blvd. In less than 10 days Warner Bros. turned an empty parking lot into a 5000-sq. ft. structure. The haunted house on 29 Neibolt street now towers over the Hollywood Blvd & Vine St intersection.
My excitement for the movie trounced my aversion to haunted house experiences. I signed up six of my friends and scheduled the drive to LA. I threw on some white sneakers, and a baseball tee, one of Bill’s outfits from the upcoming movie. I was ready to face ‘IT’.
The time for our appointment came and we were immediately led to the front of the house. A yellow raincoat clad boy with a red balloon waited; it was Georgie, our tour guide. We had about 5 minutes for pictures outside the house before Georgie let us in.
photo credit: Ana Becerra
If you’re planning on visiting and don’t want to be spoiled, you should stop reading now.
Our Georgie opened the front door and led us into the dark creaky house. Nerves kicked in as the door slammed shut behind me. We went up a spiral staircase where Georgie gave us specific instructions about our journey through the house; “Don’t touch anything unless I tell you so.” The actor maintained character and addressed us in an eerie childlike voice throughout the experience.
photo credit: Ana Becerra
The first room featured clowns that led to a small coffin. Pennywise’s laughter got louder and the room seemed to get smaller. The clown statues around the room appeared to be staring back at us. A creepy lullaby directed our attention to the small coffin and a feeling of dread took hold while we idly waited for something to happen. As we looked around frantically we noticed one of the clowns was missing. Screams (possibly my own) set the tone for our visit as former clown statues shrieked and ran around the room.
photo credit: Ana Becerra
“Let’s get out of here,” a scared Georgie said as he led us to the next room. A map of the Derry sewer system lined the table where horror magazines and Justice League comics sat. Georgie’s boat, S.S. Georgie sat next to the slide projector on the work table. This is where I was truly able to appreciate the detail that went into the experience. Our actions appeared to trigger the props around the room. One of our members approached a TV set before it came to life with a sinister clip on a loop. The slide projector came to life with images from Denbrough family trips before Pennywise’s face is revealed under Bill’s mother’s hair, as seen in the trailers. The next door took us down a narrow staircase with hands sticking out from the walls.
The bottom room greeted us with three doors that members of our group opened one at a time. Fear, the thing ‘IT’ feeds on, was the driving force in this room, a room very similar to one used in the movie. The last door lead us to a roach-infested bathroom recreating Beverly’s iconic encounter with a blood spewing sink. The pace picked up shortly after and a series of scares led us into the sewers before the big finale.
photo credit: Ana Becerra
“You’ll float too”, echoed through the sewers. An encounter with Pennywise tied the experience in a neat bow before our group of Losers made it out of the sewers. Bill Skarsgård’s Pennywise costume in the film was the same one worn by Pennywise in the experience.
While it is marketed as a 20-minute experience, our group was roughly in and out in about 11 minutes or so, but for IT to be a free experience, it’s well worth it. The event is SOLD OUT, however there is a stand by / walk up line. The experience will run through September 10, from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.
You can sign up for the waitlist online.
The penultimate season of Tales from the Crypt (1989–1996) aired its first three episodes on October 31, so it’s understandable that at least one of those three stories is set on Halloween.
Sandwiched between “Let the Punishment Fit the Crime” (Russell Mulcahy, Ron Finley) and “Whirlpool” (Mick Garris, A. L. Katz & Gilbert Adler) is the most severe episode of the bunch. Maybe the entire series? William Malone and Dick Beebe’s “Only Skin Deep” traded the show’s typical sense of fun for startling amounts of bleakness and kink.
“Only Skin Deep” is, apart from the Crypt Keeper’s intro and outro, noticeably unfunny. There are no considerable attempts at making the viewer laugh. Come to think of it, if those bookends had been replaced, and there was more of a sci-fi element in the story, HBO could have easily squeezed this tale into that successor anthology, Perversions of Science (1997). In Crypt, though, “Only Skin Deep” is much too grim for an audience that had become accustomed to campiness and levity.
What makes “Only Skin Deep” feel dark, among other things, is its protagonist. Showing up to a Halloween party where he’s not welcome, and where his former girlfriend (Diane DiLasco) is attending, Carl Schlag (Peter Onorati) first comes across as your standard bitter ex. You soon realize it’s much worse than that, once Carl threatens Linda (“You know, silly me, thinking I gave you what you deserved. If I’d have done that, I’d have killed you”). Now, I haven’t forgotten that Tales from the Crypt was teeming with vile men who did women harm. Yet Carl’s brand of misogynistic menace hits differently—it borders on being too realistic for this kind of series.
Mike Vosburg’s EC-style comic cover for “Only Skin Deep”, as seen in the Tales from the Crypt episode.
Despite donning a party mask for much of the episode, Carl can’t ever mask his true nature. The invitation did say “come as you are”, after all. That inability to change and be better, however, is why Carl ends up in such a karmic predicament. His outburst of anger at the party attracts the attention of one loner partygoer named Molly (Sherrie Rose, who was also in Season Four’s “On a Deadman’s Chest”). Her bone-white, featureless “mask” and body-bag costume don’t initially register as too strange, especially on a night like this. But at a party chock-full of colorful, cartoonish, and lighthearted ensembles, it does look out of place.
Darkness attracts darkness as Carl ditches the party and accompanies the mysterious Molly to her place. Which, by the way, should have been an immediate red flag. But perhaps she’s so hot, he doesn’t seem to mind the serial killer aesthetic. Resembling a warehouse that has been converted into living spaces, but never then decorated to remove the cold, industrial look, Molly’s home (or lair) is as gloomy as this whole episode feels. It’s like the set of a grungy music video, albeit a tad cleaner. The environments in a typical Crypt episode tend to be small, overfilled, and broken-in. Warm, regardless of any weird goings-on. All that empty space in Molly’s hovel, on the other hand, elicits a creepy feeling that Carl was unwise to ignore.
Tales from the Crypt featured more sex than it didn’t, but hands down, “Only Skin Deep” boasts the steamiest scene in the show’s history. Pushing it over the line, in addition to Onorati showing bare buns and the camera never turning down one of his pelvic thrusts, is the twisted dirty talk. Carl stays in the moment, whereas Molly unleashes charged lines like “the hurt, the anger, give it to me” and “take it out on my flesh like you want to”. It’s all quite kinky, as well as tied into the story’s theme of pain.
How else “Only Skin Deep” differs from other episodes is its twists. Or rather, its lack thereof. Nothing comes as a great surprise here, particularly because the deuteragonist’s ulterior motives are so obvious. By no means is Molly a wolf in sheep’s clothing; her face is a fright mask, she practically reeks of death, and she lives in what can best be described as a serial killer’s hideout. That last-act revelation of Molly’s mask really being her face is also nothing shocking. Cleverness is certainly not this episode’s strength.
A page from “…Only Skin Deep!”, as seen in EC Comics’ Tales from the Crypt.
While “Only Skin Deep” isn’t the most universally loved episode of Tales from the Crypt, it’s an interesting preview of William Malone’s future as a director. Most notably, he went on to helm House on Haunted Hill (1999) and FeardotCom (2002), the former of which was co-written by Dick Beebe, this episode’s writer. Dark Castle Entertainment, that genre house founded by Crypt producers Joel Silver, Robert Zemeckis, and Gilbert Adler, was instrumental in bringing out Malone’s gruesome, over-the-top vision in House on Haunted Hill. However, FeardotCom and Malone’s Masters of Horror episode, “Fair-Haired Child”, are the most stylistically compatible with “Only Skin Deep”.
As one might guess, this episode is nothing like its source material. The “…Only Skin Deep!” found in the pages of EC Comics is set during Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and save for its last couple of pages, is pretty sweet in nature. There, a man named Herbert is enamored with a woman he met five years prior to the present-day story. Every year, he has come down to Mardi Gras to see Suzanne, who’s always dressed as a hag-faced witch. Well, this time, Herbert plans on popping the question and marrying someone who is, for the most part, a total stranger. Suzanne accepts his proposal, but with one condition: they stay in costume until they’re officially hitched. You can probably see where this is going…
Once they are married, Suzanne remains incognito, even when she and Herbert have consummated their vows. A semi-predictive nightmare then rattles Herbert; he dreamt that Suzanne’s real face was as wizened as her mask. Finally, in his haste to find out the truth, Herbert winds up killing his new wife. Faceless and well on her way to bleeding out, the dying Suzanne manages to say she never wore a mask.
For more traditional EC-style ghastliness, your best bet is reading the comic. It’s wickedly sad. For something less conventional, as far as Tales from the Crypt goes, the role-reversing adaptation is worth watching. It’s not the best this show had to offer, although Malone’s visual style, plus the sexual abandon, does set the episode apart. If nothing else, “Only Skin Deep” leaves an impression that, even years later, shows no signs of fading.
Season Six of Tales from the Crypt can be streamed on Shudder, starting on June 5.
Tales from Tales from the Crypt celebrates the show’s Shudder premiere by singling out one episode from each season. So don’t even think about changing that dial, boys and ghouls. More spot-“frights” are to come.
Carl discovers Molly’s collection of human ‘masks’ in the Tales from the Crypt episode, “Only Skin Deep”.
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