My All-Time FAV.
My all-time favorite prop did something I wasn't sure if I could do it or not, but it worked very well for 3 1/2 years until a kid wrestled with it when I was not in the room.
The wine cellar here is well beneath the surface of the earth. I envisioned a really effective prop that I could seemingly do the "impossible" with, if I could do it?
THE last place most people would ever be expecting a device to come at them from is probably when they are under the ground inside the wine cellar.
That was a part of my own challenge to myself.
There is a rough hole in the side wall of the wine cellar. It looks as if it just dead-ends after the first few feet, but it actually then goes straight "UP",it was an air vent, then they built the house over top of this vent?? (How would that ever work? ?
I sawed a hole in the floor,found the opening in the dirt ,this vent is rough stones mortared together,but good enough for me to use!
I first lined this rough chimney with 8inch PVC. Inside the PVC was where my mechanical stuff would slide using small wheels on 4 sides of a "trolley" which would also hold some other items. I made more than one "Trolley" to spread out the contact, making it all work better-longer.
I had hinges along the frame and covering on top of everything to give my creature more believability.
gravity would keep it going downward a garage door opener would bring it back up again.
A steel cable running through the body would make the torso bend when it was supposed to as the cable became shorter with the distance the creature traveled.
I would have a young woman stand beside this hole in the wall as i told a story ,part true,part fictional about a young woman disappearing from this room.
Anyone could take a peek into that hole,but everything was up above that level out of sight until I pushed the remote control in my shirt pocket, it would drop down ,turn,making itself horizontal as it traveled from the hole, it then entered the room, then turned more to it's Right toward where the girl was standing.
Sometimes it would even slap the maniacal I had hung on the wall right there.
What was the "Monster?" An Octopus tentacle.... black, shiney with pink suckers. THE LAST thing anyone should have been expecting to see coming from that hole in the wall!
Peoria PBS captured it on film, as it scared a local15 yr.old girl who had never seen it before.
