Any Universal Studios tourist worth their weight in candy rock-salt knows Stage 12 — but the historic filming location can be seen like never before at Halloween Horror Nights 2024.
An original haunted house with an all-female cast, “Universal Monsters: Eternal Bloodlines” can be found inside the famous building on the studio’s sprawling California backlot. Built in 1929, Stage 12 has been around for almost a century and is still among the most culturally significant film stages in the world.
“I’ve talked about it a lot, but I don’t think you can talk about it enough,” the event’s creative director John Murdy told IndieWire during opening night. “The fact that we’re doing a house this year on the very soundstage where ‘Frankenstein’ was filmed in 1931, where ‘Dracula’ was filmed in 1931, where ‘The Bride of Frankenstein’ was filmed in 1935, et cetera. That’s just so cool and something that could only happen at Universal Studios Hollywood.”
Stage 12 was also home to horror flicks like “Creature from the Black Lagoon” (1954) and the kid-friendly “Casper” (1995). It’s been used to make scads of American blockbusters in other genres too, including “Scarface” (1983), “Back to the Future” (1985), “Batman Returns” (1992), and “Jurassic Park” (1993). The maze for Halloween Horror Nights 2024 lets audiences take in the cinematic hall — ghostly lit and enormous — before ushering them through a new cross-over story from the Universal Monsters. It’s headlined by The Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula’s Daughter, She-Wolf of London, Anck-Su-Namun from “The Mummy” (1932), and a pesky descendant of the Van Helsings, of course.
Courtesy of Halloween Horror Nights/Everett Collection
“When you walk into a sound stage, you absorb the energy of all the people who came before you that were trying to do the same thing, just in a different way,” said Murdy. “They were making a film. Now we’re doing it as part of Horror Nights.”
The creative director, who practically grew up at Universal Studios in Los Angeles, has been working for the company since 1989. Horror Nights exists on both coasts (as does the “Eternal Bloodlines” attraction, albeit with a far lesser setting in Florida), but the Hollywood backlot in particular has “always held a special fascination” for Murdy.
“I can’t walk past the ‘Psycho’ house without stopping,” he said. “I’ve walked past it thousands of times in my life, but I stop every single time and I stare at it and I go, ‘That is from Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1960 thriller.’ It’s just amazing.”
At Horror Nights 2024, the house and Bates Motel appear only as photo opportunities along the walking route for the infamous Terror Tram (albeit complete with an Anthony Perkins impersonator, so that’s something). But like Stage 12 did for “Eternal Bloodlines,” the “Psycho” set recently served as the backdrop for another of horror’s iconic women — as seen in Ti West’s “MaXXXine” earlier this summer.
“Everybody’s been telling me about that recently,” said Murdy, who has yet to see the A24 film. “But for me, that’s nothing unusual. I mean, working on the Terror Tram in the backlot, there’s film crews to my left, to my right, everywhere you go, which is great for production. The backlot has got production all over the place. I am never surprised by what I encounter.”
Halloween Horror Nights runs on select dates at Universal Studios Hollywood from September 5 to November 3.