Established 2015 (2015) Type Horror Museum Website Official website | Location Hollywood Founder Huston Huddleston | |
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The Hollywood Horror Museum is a upcoming 501(c)(3) nonprofit nonprofit, educational museum created in 2015 by Huston Huddleston and the creators of the Hollywood Sci-Fi Museum. Initially, its exhibits are slated to tour the world in 2016, and then become permanently located in North Hollywood, California, tentatively in 2018. It will be the world's first interactive educational horror museum covering film, television, art and literature, teaching the history of horror in filmmaking, makeup, special effects, and the psychology of "what scares us."
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Mission
The mission of The Hollywood Horror Museum is to educate, enlighten, and inspire people of all ages about the artistic, technical, psychological, historical, and creative aspects of horror in film in films, media, art, literature and pop culture.
Designed from the ground up, the museum intends to examine "what frightens us and why" without being a stereotypical "Halloween haunted house," by educating and involving guests, not frighten them away. As the genre of horror has become mainstream through Emmy-winning television shows like American Horror Story, The Walking Dead, and films like The Exorcist and Paranormal Activity, the importance of an institution that recognizes and studies its place in society becomes all the more needed.
Horror as an art form goes back hundreds of years, from church commissioned Bosch paintings, to novels and cinema. Never before has a museum attempted to present all aspects of horror, from the writings of Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Clive Barker, Anne Rice and Stephen King, to the classic Hammer films and modern horror icons like Pinhead, Leatherface, Jason Voorhees, and Freddy Krueger.
Board of Directors
The museum's current board of directors, as of 2015, includes:
Board of Advisers
The museum's current board of advisers, as of 2016, includes:
Design, development, and construction
The exterior of the museum will be a beautifully constructed facade of a 15th-century Romanian castle, reminiscent of the home of the real Count Dracula, Vlad the Impaler. It will have a drawbridge with vines crawling up the walls. Once inside, the interior will have paintings, sculptures, and a medieval suit of armor as organ music fills the air.
There will also be fun animatronic surprises hidden throughout the museum. Each exhibit will have touchpad computer screens and monitors, letting guests explore the exhibits they want to see. Exhibits will be narrated by the original cast and crew members, with new and archival recordings, well as interviews from historians and experts in film, art, history, science, medicine, costuming, and techniques of making horror. Music and sound effects will accompany each room, while guests – as well as museum staff – will be welcome to "cosplay" as characters from their favorite TV shows and films.
The museum will be constructed next to the Hollywood Sci-Fi Museum in North Hollywood, the anchor establishment of a shopping complex with a restaurant, theater, and more, located a single mass-transit stop from Universal Studios, City Walk, and the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.
On September 13, 2015, the New Starship Foundation, the organizing body of this project, kicked off its first crowdfunding campaign for this project via Kickstarter. It surpassed its goal of $21,600 by having 300 backers pledge $22,901 by the campaign's conclusion on October 12.