“I have never cared much about celebrities,” recalls Charles Chapman. “I was not one to stampede amongst crazed crowds to get a glimpse of a star or to get a famous person’s autograph.” So he was surprised when, in 1982, he jumped at the chance to meet a local celebrity. Neighbors had invited Charles over for a dinner of red beans and rice and, being a quasi-recluse in those days, Charles hesitated until he found out that another dinner guest would be the actor who portrayed the diabolical Dr. Blood. Charles had seen this character on television each October for the past 7 years, hawking Terror Tours at the Louisiana State Fair in Shreveport. “I had watched this mysterious, white-masked man in a black cloak ‘maliciously, deliciously delivering his frightfully florid’ Haunt spiel all across the dial,” recalls Chapman, who describes himself at the time as a quiet, three-piece-suited, run-of-the-mill architect, “And I guess I was intrigued.”

It must have been the mystery surrounding the Dr. Blood character that peaked Charles’s curiosity. Who was this guy? What did he look like in everyday clothes, and behind the mask? Where did he come from? Did he have a real job, and what compelled him, whoever he was, to be Dr. Blood? “How could I resist?” shrugs Charles, who jumped at the opportunity to meet Drew Edward Hunter, the man behind the mask. Little did he know that meeting Drew that night would alter the very frame of reference in his life, propelling him into becoming a theatrical boo-biz pro. “We have made a great team for twenty years; the Doc, Drew and I, and it is astounding to look back and realize the influence that we have had on each other,” reminisces Charles. “We’ve learned a lot along the way.”

The Gas Light playhouse was located on the state fairgrounds, and the attraction could only run during the Fair’s hours for ten days in October (which did not necessarily include Halloween). Drew called upon his many years of prior horror experience haunting school carnivals, churches, garages and even attics as a child, and his work on horror plays that the troupe had done previously. Drew knew he could stage an effective Haunted Attraction, but he needed something to make his show stand apart from the plethora of other Haunted Houses in the area, and to pull the Fair attendees to the obscure location of the theater. Drew’s focus was on creating a host character, a spokesman, if you will, for the attraction, and he named him Dr. Anton Blood. Drew perceived the Doctor as a collector of the public’s collective “fears,” both the symbolic materializations of human paranoia as well as traditional monsters. Perhaps not the most original name, Dr. Blood was chosen to be memorable and Drew knew that “Nobody can forget blood, now can they?” (Note: The first name of the character was later dropped.)

The character that Drew created sported a very traditional look for the time: all black, with a floor-length cape and a white half-mask, inspired by the Phantom Of The Opera. Not just any Phantom mask, but a near copy of the Hammer Film’s Phantom as portrayed by Herbert Lom. That mask had only one opening to see out of and so did Dr. Blood’s. To complete the look he wore striking gargoyle jewelry, high boots, a lightweight cape that would billow at even the slightest breeze, and for a while even carried a hand-carved dragon’s head cane whose eyes glowed red at the touch of a secret button.

“The good doctor was intended to serve as a marketing tool that first year,” recalls Drew, “and, because nobody else would, I wound up portraying the character. I never imagined that I would continue to portray the Doc for hundreds of media events for over 20 years!” Just as important as the character’s visual image was the character’s performance. Fortunately, Drew brought some acting ability to the character and performed as the demented Doc for the press as needed. Drew gave Dr. Blood a suave, smiley, scary style, liberally punctuated with Woody Woodpecker-gone-mad maniacal laughter. The overall effect was that the Doc was just this side of a complete mental meltdown (and you would not want to be around when it happened!).

With the entire community theater group at his disposal, many talented actors and technicians spent untold hours turning the existing theater into a haunted environment. One such theater person was Judy Rathert, a longtime friend on the theater’s Board of Directors. She was indispensable that first year, and helped spearhead the Shreveport Dr. Blood show for years after Drew moved to Dallas. In addition to the theatre members, dozens of local folks who had no live theater experience answered the published call for help. One of those individuals, a gentleman named Randy Fair, eventually became the show’s director and continued with the Dr. Blood event for a decade.

The first Dr. Blood show was groundbreaking in its intensity and effect. The cast and crew were excited about its uniqueness but totally unprepared for the audience reaction. On Friday, October 17, 1975 at 1 PM, the first of eleven seasons at the Louisiana State Fair started with Dr. Blood’s Exposition of Fear. “The very first ‘tour’ became so caught up in the illusion of fear that they literally tore down the exit in a stampede to get out!” recalls Drew. “These panic-stricken patrons then talked about how wonderful the show was for years afterward.”

The attraction included the Sacrificial Alter of the Aztecs, the Picture of Dorian Gray, the Remains of Count Dracula, the Garden of Deadly Insects, the Revival of Frankenstein’s Creation, and a Living Werewolf, “safely” chained into an “escape-proof cage.” Journalist John Renshaw called the attraction “Shreveport’s own Grand Guignol” and reported this on the event: “Sound effects assault your ears from all directions as these busy people scurry back and forth, in and out of secret entrances. Makeup? You would not believe!”

Performers
As Mr. Renshaw pointed out, theatrics and actors were a major component to the Dr. Blood formula even in the early years. “Whatever you do, train and treat your cast well,” explains Charles, who later became instrumental in coordinating actors for several of the Dr. Blood shows. “Make schedules. Communicate. Run the show like a good stage production, and make sure your actors know when they’ve done a good job. Keeping good actors is always a tough job, but cultivating great pride in the actors’ performance will translate into energetic and effective actors and into a core cast that will return year after year.”

One way to encourage the best from the performers is a Guest Exit Poll. Station an official staff member at the show exit and ask guests what they consider to be the top scare. With the show fresh in their memory they will usually be very emphatic about what frightened them most. Tally up the responses nightly and, after closing, announce to the cast in the dressing room the scare with the most comments. Soon the cast will be competing, in a positive fashion, for the top scare of the night.

Drew tells the tale about how the local newspaper’s theatre critic and his wife attended a press preview of “Dr. Blood’s Hideous Maze of Terror” in 1977. They loved the show and screamed at all the right times. A few days later, the critic’s review praised the effectiveness of the staging of the Haunted House. But soon after, the critic called Drew and told him that what really convinced him that the show was effective was his wife. “He told me that she’d awakened, screaming, during the night after the press preview, clawing his back with her fingernails,” chuckles Drew. “He even showed me the scratch marks to prove it!”

Red River Revel
From 1977 to 1980, Dr. Blood had a love-hate relationship with the Red River Revel, Shreveport’s 8-day fall arts and entertainment festival. On October 14, 1977, in an attempt to get as much exposure as possible for Dr. Blood and the Haunted Attraction, Dr. Blood led his cast in a “Parade of the Macabre.” The following year, in front of a crowd of over 300, Dr. Blood “died” the knot in a not-to-be-missed marriage ceremony, complete with flower ghouls, a beast man, and a bride in a coffin with a plaque reading “Just Buried.” In 1979, Dr. Blood led a “gore-us” line of living dead beauties singing “A Pretty Ghoul Is Like A Malady” at the “Dr. Blood’s Fall Fright Fashion Extravaganza.” (In 1989 the Doctor hosted a similar fright fashion show in the posh Dallas Apparel Mart to a very sophisticated, thoroughly shocked audience. Then the final straw (or brain) that broke relations with the Revel was in 1980 when Dr. Blood literally cut the “Fear” out of a member of the audience.

Dr. Blood appeared in 1980 on the television show PM Magazine, and showed off his best jack o’ lantern carving talents in an old graveyard in Shreveport, using a hundred-year-old carved stone sarcophagus as a table. In 1987 Dr. Blood appeared as an official judge during the Gong Show auditions in Dallas; the Doc gonged an “Elvis” off the stage to the cheers of an appreciative crowd of over 1000.

The Doctor’s New Clothes
In 1987, Charles made a suggestion, much resisted by Drew at first, which changed the way Dr. Blood would look forever. The original Dr. Blood wore a typical gothic black outfit, cape, and a white half-mask that looked rather like a smudged layer of plaster of Paris. In person it looked OK, but when photographed for the media it often appeared to be an uninteresting white void. “Dr. Blood’s personality, as Drew performed it, was more of a macabre Las Vegas show person than a Phantom of the Opera wanna-be,” explains Charles. “So I suggested that he wear white (he is a doctor, after all), accented with red sequined blood drip motifs (he doesn’t really cut you up physically), and a shattered mirror-tile mask that would glitter like a mirror ball in a ballroom whenever stage lights hit it. He would be blinding, and in a foggy environment, the mask would project light rays in all directions! Drew fought the idea for a long time, but finally realized that these innovative enhancements would make the Dr. Blood character quite unique in the realm of horror hosts. So to this day, Dr. Blood’s diabolical darkness lurks just beneath a glittering, theatrical facade - which actually renders it even more sinister!”

Costume and makeup standards for the actors are always a headache. Dr. Blood’s approach has ranged from the fairly traditional living dead, rotting and decomposing style, to the not so traditional and unique, and Charles’ influence was also felt in the costumes of the actors. In a significant departure from most Haunted Attractions, influenced by the Doctors’ new duds, some of the standard Dr. Blood characters also changed to primarily white costumes. The idea here is to play with the minds of the guests, bringing the feeling of the clean, white look of hospital wear without being actual hospital garments. Glitzy blood red trim and fragmented mirror medallions accent the costumes to help strengthen the tie-in with the Dr. Blood theme. Don’t be afraid to try something different! Be daring! Get away from those stereotypes and create a new look - just for your show.

Pulling Up Roots
In 1985, Drew and Charles moved to the Dallas area to work as the Creative Design Department for Classic Attractions, Inc., a company that owned and operated attractions in Grand Prairie and San Antonio, Texas. While with this company, the Dr. Blood team had the exciting opportunity to design and create two new wax museums (each including a Dr. Blood horror section!) and two Ripley’s Believe It or Not!® museums. Drew and Charles also staged Halloween at the Wax Museum, a huge production that lasted for six seasons.

At the fair in Shreveport, Drew’s attractions had been guided tours since 1975. Trained performers acting as guides led groups of no more than 20 guests through scripted and timed scenes. “It was an incredibly effective method of presentation, and the guests loved the personal attention, shocks and scares, but our throughput was absurdly low,” recalls Charles. “When we staged our first Halloween show at the Wax Museum, with already a history of huge crowds for their prior Halloween promotions, we had to adapt to the more common self-guided tours simply to be able to accommodate all the guests.” This was a sacrifice of the individuality and personalization of the tours, but one Halloween night, with the help of self-guided tours, over 10,000 people made it through the attraction in six hours! “Our new guests did not have any other Dr. Blood productions to compare it to,” recalls Drew. “Everyone left happy, laughing and screaming.”

During the 1986 installment of Halloween at the Wax Museum, “a pregnant woman went into labor in the mummy’s tomb, about halfway through the show. Fortunately the stage manager at the time was also a nurse who assisted the woman and her husband as they waited for the ambulance. When asked why they had come to the Dr. Blood Show when his wife was co close to delivery, the husband grinned and replied, “To induce labor! Dr. Blood is a doctor, ain’t he? We were tired of waiting.” One day during Drew’s tenure with Classic Attractions, his boss told Drew to give a tour to a gentleman named John Wood of Sally Industries. The two discussed lighting and special effects and even remarked that it would be interesting to someday work together on a project. This chance meeting started an acquaintance that would last several years.

You would have to categorize the overall style of the Dr. Blood Haunts as chaotic. Even the permanent walk-through exhibits at the Wax Museums in Dallas and San Antonio presented patrons with visual and aural overloads. From the first scenes to the last, guests were confronted with originally composed music, creative effects, elaborate sets, ultra-realistic wax figures, participatory gags and dramatic lighting. Even without any live performers, the overall impression was that of an environment on the brink of madness. “Whenever I saw guests inside our shows with wide, wild eyes and a look of near panic on their faces,” explains Charles, “I knew we’d done our job well!”

In 1992, Drew left Classic Attractions and he and Charles started a Haunted Entertainment firm of their own called VORTA, Inc. (named after the Vortacism art movement that felt everything should have an art angle). “The business was the logical progression of our combined abilities and experience,” explained Charles. “I had been an architect for years, which helped with the construction and drawing end of the business. Later I broadened my scope to include script writing, show layouts, character development, logistics and costume design.” Drew specialized as a muralist, scenic designer and artist, theatre director, and writer. In the following 5 years, Vorta created several Haunted Attractions, decorations, soundtracks, costumes and characters for theme parks in the Six Flags chain, as well as special events for amusement parks in Dallas, Houston, Chicago and St. Louis and privately owned Haunts as well.

The Bradens
At the Chicago National Halloween, Costume and Party Show in 1995, Drew met Gene and Betty Braden, owners of the highly successful “Nightmare on Grayson” attraction in San Antonio, Texas. At that time the Bradens were looking into expanding into the Dallas market. After purchasing a wonderful old freight (or is that fright?) loading facility just northwest of downtown Dallas, the four teamed up to create the most original, professionally staged and frightening fully-themed Halloween attraction in the Metroplex. What emerged from this collaboration was Dr. Blood’s ScreamScapes!®, featuring The Terrortorium in 1996, with the addition of The Necrotorium in 1997-1999, and the Hallucinatorium in 2000.

Each year Drew and John Wood would exchange pleasantries at the IAAPA convention, which was in New Orleans in 1996. Sally Industries was expanding into a new building, and Drew was tired of the roller coaster ride that is self-employment. So in 1997 VORTA went on hiatus and Drew took a fulltime position, as Design Director of Haunted Attractions at what is now Sally Corporation in Jacksonville, Florida. Just this year, Drew was promoted to the Design Director over the entire design department of the corporation. Drew is in charge of art direction and designs for Sally’s newest Dark Rides: the interactive Ghost Blasters and Scooby Doo Rides - a job any Haunter would envy.

In 1998 Drew Hunter was kind enough to agree to co-chair the inaugural year of the International Association of Haunted Attractions (IAHA). Along with co-chair Ernie Romegialli and the rest of the volunteer board, they identified common issues that affected Haunters of all kinds and plotted a course for the future. Drew was voted in as the first president of the association the following year. He continues his support for the organization by being an active member of the executive board.

How very different things would have been, had it not been for a neighbor’s invitation for red beans and rice 20 years ago. Or if Charles Chapman, the quiet, three-piece-suited, run-of-the-mill architect had not been curious enough to explore the mystery of the man behind the mask. What an incredible 20-year journey these two unlikely partners have traveled, the lives they have touched, the excitement that have had. All because of a marketing tool for a playhouse fundraiser. All because of an original host character, created out of thin air by the ingenious mind of Drew Edward Hunter. A host character that became a haunting legend, and I “fear” that we have not seen the last of the incredible Dr. Blood!

Leonard Pickel is the editor of Haunted Attraction Magazine, and partner in the dark entertainment firm of D.O.A. He can be reached or 704-366-0875, or by email at Leonard@hauntedattraction.com Check out the D.O.A. web site at www.DOAhaunting,com