LOS ANGELES — Oct. 31 is director Rich Correll’s favorite day of the year.
Years ago, while other kids were out gathering treats, 10-year-old Correll was busy at home creating full-blown Halloween environments: gauzy mazes inhabited by movie monsters, graveyards with zombies, skeletons hanging from trees. Then there was the year he ran a black cable from his house to a neighbor’s chimney so a witch could fly between the homes. You get the picture.
“I used to invite my whole class over and everyone else in the neighborhood,” Correll says. “My dad thought I was a bit crazy, but my mom indulged me — she thought I was being creative.”
Today, Correll, who has directed episodes of such TV hits as “Hannah Montana,” “The Suite Life of Jack and Cody” and “Cory in the House,” continues to create scary Halloween mise-en-scènes. For the past 10 years he’s produced Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Mansion party for 1,500 guests, transforming the pad into “the largest private haunted house in the country” and the surrounding 6 1/2 acres into the land of the walking dead.
But Correll’s favorite Halloween event is decorating his own 1926 French Tudor home in Los Angeles that he shares with his wife, Beth.
“Hugh’s party is for adults,” Correll says. “Ours is devoted to kids and families.”
And what a party it is. Correll, a noted film historian and collector, uses it to showcase his collection of horror movie artifacts. With more than 1,900 items — including makeup effects, sci-fi movie memorabilia and 1,700-plus masks and life-cast figures — he has his very own Halloween prop house from which to select.
“It’s the largest grouping of horror movie artifacts in the world,” claims Correll, who plans to display his diabolical collection in a new interactive Las Vegas venue, Haunted Hollywood, next summer.
His horror film pieces, valued at $6.5 million, vary in theme from a butler in the guise of Alfred Hitchcock to a T. rex head from “Jurassic Park.” Freddy Krueger’s hat and prized razor-finger gloves and a full-size Dracula made from a life-cast of Bela Lugosi are among his favorites.
Correll caught the Halloween bug as a child actor. He played Richard Rickover, friend of the Beaver, actor Jerry Mathers, on the popular ’50s TV show “Leave It to Beaver.” During breaks, show makeup artist Bob Dawn would take Correll and Mathers to Universal’s makeup lab, where they watched designers create masks for the horror movies.
“They were just throwing out stuff right and left,” recalls Correll, whose first piece in his collection was a Mr. Hyde face from “Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” salvaged from a studio trash bin. “That mask worn by Boris Karloff started the whole thing.”
Each Halloween, many of Correll’s sci-fi creatures and scary masks come alive at his home. Correll and about 50 of his Hollywood pals work on and off for about a month to transform his home into a spooky mansion complete with a haunted graveyard in front.
Children and adults line up along the brick pathway leading to the house, then peer into ground-floor French windows, each framing a ghoulish scene. The themes change annually, but the late Heath Ledger’s evil Joker, accompanied by Batman, and chain-saw-wielding Leatherface are three of the characters scheduled to appear this year.
Periodic air-cannon explosions, as well as the sounds of organ music, rattling chains, tortured groans and ghoulish laughter can be heard by neighbors blocks away.
“It gives people something to do while they are waiting to get candy,” the director says. “Lines can get pretty long.”
Yes, indeed. About 7,300 people attended last year’s house of horror, with lines snaking for 2 1/2 blocks.
After braving a graveyard filled with zombies and otherworldly creatures, the crowd files into the home’s spacious entry hall, outfitted like a creepy mausoleum but with barrels of candy. Correll guesses he spends up to $800 on candy.
Friendly neighborhood children dole out the treats, as creatures lurking in nearby halls wait to surprise Correll’s visitors.
