Editorials
Disney’s (Mostly) Unsuccessful Attempts at an ‘ALIEN’ Attraction
Ever since Roger Ebert’s famous dismissal of the original as a haunted house in space, the Alien franchise has seemed a natural fit for theme parks – at least as natural as a series based around an allegorical rape monster can be. It did take a while for anyone to connect those dots, however.
In 1993, Alien War, a combination of live theater and immersive sets, opened in the basement of a London mall and became a minor legend. Re-Animator’s Stuart Gordon directed the ride footage for the spectacularly subtitled motion simulator, Aliens: Ride at the Speed of Fright in 1997. Alien vs Predator vs You, sadly an indoor laser tag arena and not a handy instructional video, gave fans a socially acceptable way to say “game over, man” in 2009. A cutting edge hybrid of 3-D movie and stunt show in the vein of Universal Studios’ T2 3-D: Battle Across Time was designed and never built (below), though Alien vs Predator did eventually earn a few mazes at Halloween Horror Nights. This summer, wax museum/hall of dead-eyed stares Madame Tussauds (London) will be opening new experience Alien: Escape, in honor of the latest installment.
But the franchise’s most enduring theme park appearance is still its first and most unlikely.
Since 1989, Xenomorphs have been harassing tourists daily on The Great Movie Ride at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, maiden name Disney-MGM Studios. To represent science fiction and horror, the grunge-caked, claustrophobic corridor of the Nostromo was lovingly reproduced down to the drinking bird. That alarm blares. Ripley cradles her flamethrower. Monsters hide among the machinery. It’s an impressive scene and certainly reaffirms Alien’s place in film history – and it’s a surprising fit for a park that also has a musical devoted to The Little Mermaid within spitting distance.
More surprising is that Disney wanted to bring the Xenomorph into its theme parks even sooner, and much more violently.
When Michael Eisner joined The Walt Disney Company as CEO and chairman in 1984, the theme park division accounted for 70% of all income. And that was with dwindling attendance. It didn’t take long for Eisner to realize where financial security was hiding, and where more money could be made. After his son, eventual director Breck Eisner, turned down a chance to visit Disneyland on account of its total lameness, Michael decided to go after the one demographic the company could never quite nab – those crazy teenagers.
Disney went straight for the cultural jugular and partnered with George Lucas to build Star Tours, a technologically marvelous motion simulator into the world of Star Wars. The greenlight didn’t come from any department head or Imagineer or even Michael Eisner himself. He left it up to 14-year-old Breck; if he thought the idea was cool, that was good enough for his dad. Disneyland cost $17 million to build in 1955. Star Tours cost $32 million when it opened in 1987. But it didn’t matter – Breck was right. Star Tours broke attendance records held since The Haunted Mansion opened its creaky doors in 1969.
Eisner didn’t want to lose the momentum and charged Imagineers with designing another blockbuster thrill ride with another attention-grabbing license. Enter Nostromo.
As early as 1974, Disney toyed with the idea of a ride-through shooting gallery. The first attempt amounted to little more than a working title – The UFO Show – and a few concept renderings. The idea was mothballed until Disney had a promising new sci-fi franchise on the horizon in 1979. The Black Hole flopped. But it wasn’t long before another promising new sci-fi franchise arrived in 1982. Tron flopped harder. After the success of Star Tours, the next attempt wouldn’t gamble on an unproven property.
Nostromo would’ve enlisted guests on a rescue mission into the alien-infested spacefreighter of the same name. Boarding APCs, brave tourists would take aim at the Xenomorph hordes with appropriately heavy artillery mounted to their seats.
While an exciting prospect to readers of websites with words like “bloody” and “disgusting” in the name, the old guard of Imagineers, most of whom worked with Walt before he died, were downright disturbed. They couldn’t imagine little kids blasting away at R-rated nightmare beasts a few feet from America Sings, a show where an animatronic eagle explains patriotism in song. All it took was a few words to Eisner and Nostromo self-destructed. The shooting gallery-on-wheels concept would eventually become Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin in 1998, with brighter, less horrifying extraterrestrials to fill full of lasers.
But not all Imagineers were so averse to Alien. The centerpiece of Disney-MGM Studios was to be a massive ride celebrating the history of cinema and all its genres. Originally, designers wanted a different property to check the sci-fi and horror boxes – something a bit lighter. But Universal beat Disney to the licensing punch and secured the rights to a Ghostbusters attraction for its competing studio park up the highway.
With Alien still on many minds after the Nostromo project, Disney formally licensed the franchise for theme park use. 28 years and six movies later, the Alien scene still makes children cry on The Great Movie Ride. It turned out so well, in fact, that Imagineers wondered what else they could do with the series and where they might put it.
Tomorrowland was beginning to look an awful lot like yesterday by 1990, but a vast (read: expensive) reinvention was in the works. Dubbed “Tomorrowland 2055,” the project would’ve revitalized the respective lands at Disneyland and Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom with a Jules Verne-inspired makeover. One of the aging attractions on both chopping blocks was Mission to Mars, a theater-in-the-round effects show that used to take visitors to the moon until astronauts actually did that.
A group of enterprising young Imagineers saw an opportunity. Keeping the same infrastructure, a new show with modern effects could be built in its place. A show that would lock guests in a room with a barely restrained (audio-animatronic) carnivorous creature, then set it loose in the dark. A show set entirely in the cynically incorporated world of Alien.
Eisner loved the concept and the cost-efficiency. Alien Encounter was underway. The design team got to work creating the binaural audio that would convince everyone in the audience that the Xenomorph was leaning over their shoulder and their shoulder alone. Mixed perfectly with low-budget effects like dripping water and hot bursts of air, it would’ve been the most intense attraction Disney had ever attempted.
If only everyone at Disney was onboard. The old guard that nixed Nostromo had the same reservations over Alien Encounter. The project team argued that brand familiarity made the storytelling easier and, considering it would be Disney’s first true horror attraction, allowed for a much-needed safeguard against complaints; if unsure guests recognized the Alien name, they knew what would be in store. Eisner ultimately sided with the Alien Encounter team on the Star Tours principle – nothing draws crowds like a hot property.
But the opposition wasn’t about to let a Xenomorph loose in the same park as It’s a Small World. Undeterred, they covertly enlisted someone Eisner might be more apt to listen to – someone who happened to be around the offices overseeing the design of an Indiana Jones ride anyways.
George Lucas agreed – Alien was too harsh for the Magic Kingdom – and convinced Eisner of the same.
The Xenomorph has been confined to The Great Movie Ride ever since.
Work on Alien Encounter did continue, however, dropping the franchise ties and eventually opening in 1995 as ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter at the Magic Kingdom in Florida. The development in between was fraught with uneasy compromise, budget cuts and other assorted confusion. Despite having a synonym for “fear” right there in the title, guests complained en masse about the attraction’s intensity. Why? They never thought it would be so scary.
Hard to make the same mistake with the Alien name on the marquee.
Looking at ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter, the signs are still there. It’s a story of a faintly sinister corporation abusing technology it doesn’t understand as well as it should to the detriment of guests/humanity. An enormous animatronic alien appears, escapes and menaces tourists. It snorts, drools and crawls on them.
To its credit, ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter was the first Disney attraction to splash its riders with the arterial spray of a slain maintenance man.
Twice a month Joe Lipsett will dissect a new Amityville Horror film to explore how the “franchise” has evolved in increasingly ludicrous directions. This is “The Amityville IP.”
A bizarre recurring issue with the Amityville “franchise” is that the films tend to be needlessly complicated. Back in the day, the first sequels moved away from the original film’s religious-themed haunted house storyline in favor of streamlined, easily digestible concepts such as “haunted lamp” or “haunted mirror.”
As the budgets plummeted and indie filmmakers capitalized on the brand’s notoriety, it seems the wrong lessons were learned. Runtimes have ballooned past the 90-minute mark and the narratives are often saggy and unfocused.
Both issues are clearly on display in Amityville Karen (2022), a film that starts off rough, but promising, and ends with a confused whimper.
The promise is embodied by the tinge of self-awareness in Julie Anne Prescott (The Amityville Harvest)’s screenplay, namely the nods to John Waters’ classic 1994 satire, Serial Mom. In that film, Beverly Sutphin (an iconic Kathleen Turner) is a bored, white suburban woman who punished individuals who didn’t adhere to her rigid definition of social norms. What is “Karen” but a contemporary equivalent?
In director/actor Shawn C. Phillips’ film, Karen (Lauren Francesca) is perpetually outraged. In her introductory scenes, she makes derogatory comments about immigrants, calls a female neighbor a whore, and nearly runs over a family blocking her driveway. She’s a broad, albeit familiar persona; in many ways, she’s less of a character than a caricature (the living embodiment of the name/meme).
These early scenes also establish a fairly straightforward plot. Karen is a code enforcement officer with plans to shut down a local winery she has deemed disgusting. They’re preparing for a big wine tasting event, which Karen plans to ruin, but when she steals a bottle of cursed Amityville wine, it activates her murderous rage and goes on a killing spree.
Simple enough, right?
Unfortunately, Amityville Karen spins out of control almost immediately. At nearly every opportunity, Prescott’s screenplay eschews narrative cohesion and simplicity in favour of overly complicated developments and extraneous characters.
Take, for example, the wine tasting event. The film spends an entire day at the winery: first during the day as a band plays, then at a beer tasting (???) that night. Neither of these events are the much touted wine-tasting, however; that is actually a private party happening later at server Troy (James Duval)’s house.
Weirdly though, following Troy’s death, the party’s location is inexplicably moved to Karen’s house for the climax of the film, but the whole event plays like an afterthought and features a litany of characters we have never met before.
This is a recurring issue throughout Amityville Karen, which frequently introduces random characters for a scene or two. Karen is typically absent from these scenes, which makes them feel superfluous and unimportant. When the actress is on screen, the film has an anchor and a narrative drive. The scenes without her, on the other hand, feel bloated and directionless (blame editor Will Collazo Jr., who allows these moments to play out interminably).
Compounding the issue is that the majority of the actors are non-professionals and these scenes play like poorly performed improv. The result is long, dull stretches that features bad actors talking over each other, repeating the same dialogue, and generally doing nothing to advance the narrative or develop the characters.
While Karen is one-note and histrionic throughout the film, at least there’s a game willingness to Francesca’s performance. It feels appropriately campy, though as the film progresses, it becomes less and less clear if Amityville Karen is actually in on the joke.
Like Amityville Cop before it, there are legit moments of self-awareness (the Serial Mom references), but it’s never certain how much of this is intentional. Take, for example, Karen’s glaringly obvious wig: it unconvincingly fails to conceal Francesca’s dark hair in the back, but is that on purpose or is it a technical error?
Ultimately there’s very little to recommend about Amityville Karen. Despite the game performance by its lead and the gentle homages to Serial Mom’s prank call and white shoes after Labor Day jokes, the never-ending improv scenes by non-professional actors, the bloated screenplay, and the jittery direction by Phillips doom the production.
Clocking in at an insufferable 100 minutes, Amityville Karen ranks among the worst of the “franchise,” coming in just above Phillips’ other entry, Amityville Hex.
The Amityville IP Awards go to…
- Favorite Subplot: In the afternoon event, there’s a self-proclaimed “hot boy summer” band consisting of burly, bare-chested men who play instruments that don’t make sound (for real, there’s no audio of their music). There’s also a scheming manager who is skimming money off the top, but that’s not as funny.
- Least Favorite Subplot: For reasons that don’t make any sense, the winery is also hosting a beer tasting which means there are multiple scenes of bartender Alex (Phillips) hoping to bring in women, mistakenly conflating a pint of beer with a “flight,” and goading never before seen characters to chug. One of them describes the beer as such: “It looks like a vampire menstruating in a cup” (it’s a gold-colored IPA for the record, so…no).
- Amityville Connection: The rationale for Karen’s killing spree is attributed to Amityville wine, whose crop was planted on cursed land. This is explained by vino groupie Annie (Jennifer Nangle) to band groupie Bianca (Lilith Stabs). It’s a lot of nonsense, but it is kind of fun when Annie claims to “taste the damnation in every sip.”
- Neverending Story: The film ends with an exhaustive FIVE MINUTE montage of Phillips’ friends posing as reporters in front of terrible green screen discussing the “killer Karen” story. My kingdom for Amityville’s regular reporter Peter Sommers (John R. Walker) to return!
- Best Line 1: Winery owner Dallas (Derek K. Long), describing Karen: “She’s like a walking constipation with a hemorrhoid”
- Best Line 2: Karen, when a half-naked, bleeding woman emerges from her closet: “Is this a dream? This dream is offensive! Stop being naked!”
- Best Line 3: Troy, upset that Karen may cancel the wine tasting at his house: “I sanded that deck for days. You don’t just sand a deck for days and then let someone shit on it!”
- Worst Death: Karen kills a Pool Boy (Dustin Clingan) after pushing his head under water for literally 1 second, then screeches “This is for putting leaves on my plants!”
- Least Clear Death(s): The bodies of a phone salesman and a barista are seen in Karen’s closet and bathroom, though how she killed them are completely unclear
- Best Death: Troy is stabbed in the back of the neck with a bottle opener, which Karen proceeds to crank
- Wannabe Lynch: After drinking the wine, Karen is confronted in her home by Barnaby (Carl Solomon) who makes her sign a crude, hand drawn blood contract and informs her that her belly is “pregnant from the juices of his grapes.” Phillips films Barnaby like a cross between the unhoused man in Mulholland Drive and the Mystery Man in Lost Highway. It’s interesting, even if the character makes absolutely no sense.
- Single Image Summary: At one point, a random man emerges from the shower in a towel and excitedly poops himself. This sequence perfectly encapsulates the experience of watching Amityville Karen.
- Pray for Joe: Many of these folks will be back in Amityville Shark House and Amityville Webcam, so we’re not out of the woods yet…
Next time: let’s hope Christmas comes early with 2022’s Amityville Christmas Vacation. It was the winner of Fangoria’s Best Amityville award, after all!
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