The banner hangs outside while the treasures of the Haunted Mansion hang inside.
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Frights! Camera! Action!
The Haunted Mansion Goes Hollywood
From the Classic Attraction to a Hollywood Block-Buster

The Disneyland Gallery is now home to a wonderful new exhibit - Frights! Camera! Action! This new show - which runs in conjunction with the third year of the Nightmare Before Christmas overlay, Haunted Mansion Holiday - traces the course of both the quintessential Disney attraction and the new live-action film staring Eddie Murphy. With such broad appeal to a wide-range of Disneyland collectors and “haunted movie�? devotees it blends just the right amount of legitimate gallery exhibit and synergistic merchandising opportunity.

Lacking, perhaps, the wide-range of interest that last year’s exhibit Grim Grinning Ghosts had with the cross-over Disneyland/Tim Burton collectors, The Haunted Mansion is most certainly the star of this exhibit - which will run until January 4, 2004 - as the gallery’s walls and display spaces are packed with original attraction concept art and vintage maquettes hung side-by-side with hand-drawn and computer generated movie art and props. As a Mansion fan I really like that. I like having the opportunity to see some of the relics of the company on display. Having the opportunity to get close to the Rick Baker masks for the ghouls or having the time to study the detail in the maquettes sculpted in 1968 for the characters in the Great Hall’s Ballroom scene makes this exhibit more about the subject and less about selling it. Although it sells itself pretty well.

The attention to detail is very nice to see as guests move from gallery room to gallery room, you notice that the rooms are not only theme specific - but - they have their own specific soundtracks as well adding to the ambiance. It’s also nice to see that the array of art on display - from both the WDI archives and from the movie - was chosen for more than its retail value through the Print on Demand system. Again, not every image will appeal to everyone - but - I’m sure that there is a collector for every image.

I’m impressed - as always, that the range of artists and their images crosses the “usual�? into the obscure. Almost every Haunted Mansion fan would want a print of Ernie Prinzhorn’s Haunted Mansion Marquee concept art - but there are those amongst us who will just as quickly find wall space for any one of Rolly Crump’s concept items from the Museum of the Weird. It takes all kinds to make a fan-base, and I think that if anything truly impresses me about this show - as with the gallery shows of the recent past - is that it isn’t built around profit - but art and history. They have found the right mix of reverence and retail.

There is so much to see and read and study that it’s a must see for any Mansion fan’s visit to Disneyland. It’s a unique look into the creative decisions - and those who made them - that went into crafting both ride and the film, drawing generously on the similarities inherent in creating both forms of entertainment. The show takes its guests through each of the gallery’s four display rooms featuring a different aspect of both the ride and the film in each. The Disneyland Gallery is a unique exhibit and merchandising space, and with the continued popularity of the Print on Demand system, shows with this artistic and merchandising scope are a perfect fit for the venue.

As guests enter the gallery they are greeted by the Mansion’s quirky suit of armor - and can read that the film-makers studied original Imagineering concept art from the late 1950s and 1960s to get the feel for the attraction as a film setting. We learn that they were inspired by art and sculpture created more than 40 years ago to create a film setting with as much spirit as the attraction itself. The Haunted Mansion is firmly rooted in the past as this action-comedy-adventure writes a new chapter in the Mansion’s legacy. We also learn that the ride went through several incarnations for more than a decade before it opened to the public in 1968.