Thread: Prop suggestions

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Hey all.

Thinking of throwing together a quick/cheap prop in the next few days before Halloween. I have a dog crate (wire cage) that has a single swinging door on one side. I'm thinking of covering the crate with a sheet or tarp of some sort. Put some sort of creature/spirit inside with either a small battery op. strobe or just a dim maybe red light.

Ideally the door would somehow "pop" open....well, ideally the door would swing open and the creature would lunge out at the approaching tots...but no time, money for that this year. What I'm looking for is a quick/cheap solution to open and reset this swinging door. My air compressor tank has blown a hole in it so I'm looking for motorized ideas. I think I'd get more startle if I could find something to really make it pop...as opposed to just gradually opening, but I can't really think of a good electric option for this.

Any ideas?

BTW, worse case I'll just string it up and have a good time the old fashioned way but it would be nice to make it a little less manual.

Thanks for the great forum.

What about a solenoid (electric) for car doors with shaved handles to open and use a long tension spring to close the door?

The door popper may even have enough force to pull a piece of fabric with a mask attached to the door out toward the guests.

This Skeleton kitty would be so cool all corpsed up in there. Too bad ya cant get it for this halloween though

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Originally Posted by DeathDealer

What about a solenoid (electric) for car doors with shaved handles to open and use a long tension spring to close the door?

The door popper may even have enough force to pull a piece of fabric with a mask attached to the door out toward the guests.

Funny, I saw a young girl at a festival that had a "wombat" that she was showing people. Ended up being that prank where the door flies open with a piece of cloth attached. Got some great reactions. That might be the quick way to go this year. Although I'm sure it'd have to be manually reset it'd be worth it for the reactions.

I'd thought about a solenoid, but wasn't sure it'd have enough force to throw the door completely open. Although I hadn't considered a door popper...duh.
I'll look into that a little more.

Originally Posted by Glyphen

This Skeleton kitty would be so cool all corpsed up in there.

Thanks for that link. That would be perfectly creepy in this cage. Hmm? This may start a small pet cemetery (sematary) type thing. That movie always freaked me out a little.