alien

When it comes to scary movies, the motion picture academy has historically been a bit squeamish. Horror has been a cornerstone of the industry since the beginning, but Oscar voters have rarely embraced it. Only one horror film has ever won best picture: 1991’s “The Silence of the Lambs.” Even “Sinners,” which made history this year with a record 16 nominations, couldn’t close the deal.

Now, though, horror has gotten inside the house.

Opening Saturday and running through July 25, 2027, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures’ new exhibition, “The Horror Show,” explores more than a century of horror, from silent-era landmarks “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” (1920) and “Nosferatu” (1922) through “Psycho” (1960) and “The Exorcist” (1973) to “Midsommar” (2019) and “Weapons” (2025). Drawn from the academy’s collection and 62 private lenders around the world, it brings together costumes, props, prosthetics, creatures and production art.

An original facehugger from Ridley Scott’s “Alien” (1979), part of the exhibition’s collection of creatures and production materials from the sci-fi series.

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

Introducing the exhibition at Thursday’s press preview, Robert Englund, who played the razor-fingered Freddy Krueger in the “Nightmare on Elm Street” films, recalled how the genre was once regarded in Hollywood. “Back when I started, we would sort of get the lousy table in the commissary by the kitchen door,” he said. Now, with the academy mounting an exhibition devoted to horror and the genre continuing to thrive at the box office, Englund added, “I think we’re getting some respect.”

Rather than a simple chronological tour through the genre’s history, the exhibition is organized into six themed “chambers” devoted to Gothic horror, psychological horror, science, slashers, religion and ghosts, with settings ranging from a shadowy crypt to a killer’s house and a haunted living room.

Storyboards from 1973’s “The Exorcist,” a clapperboard from 1976’s “The Omen” and the original Necronomicon from 1987’s “Evil Dead II” are among the artifacts in the exhibition’s religion-themed chamber.

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

Senior exhibitions curator Jessica Niebel says the idea was to walk a line between a traditional museum exhibition and a haunted-house experience.

“Horror films are about evoking an emotional response and we’re hoping the exhibition will do the same,” she says. “These are all original objects and they tell a story. We wanted to place them in an environment that brings them to life and activates them.” (The museum advises parental guidance; a smaller, family-friendly “Zombies!” exhibition is next door.)

So what’s lurking inside? Here are 10 sights worth braving. Read on, if you dare.

See Bela Lugosi’s original Dracula cape

Bela Lugosi’s original cape from 1931’s “Dracula,” on public display for the first time after undergoing an extensive restoration.

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

Nearly a century after Bela Lugosi first swept it around his shoulders, Dracula’s cape doesn’t need much introduction. Worn by Lugosi in Universal’s 1931 “Dracula,” the simple black cape became as inseparable from the character as his hypnotic stare and Hungarian accent, establishing the visual language of the screen vampire for generations to come. Lugosi, who had first played the Count onstage in 1927, kept the cape after filming and continued wearing it for stage and public appearances until his death in 1956. Now part of the Academy Museum’s collection, the nearly century-old garment underwent an extensive restoration before “The Horror Show.” Remarkably, this is the first time it has ever been put on public display.

Come face-to-face with Hannibal Lecter

Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter costume and restraints from 1991’s “The Silence of the Lambs” are on display, including the serial killer’s unmistakable mask.

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter, the brilliant psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer at the center of Jonathan Demme’s “The Silence of the Lambs,” is unsettling enough standing perfectly still. When he has to be moved, the precautions are extreme. Hopkins wore this orange prison uniform, straitjacket and muzzle when Lecter is transported under heavy security, strapped upright to a hand truck. Costume designer Colleen Atwood devised the ensemble, while Ed Cubberly created the famous fiberglass muzzle, deliberately leaving it uncoated to evoke the look of dried, taut skin. Seeing the outfit up close is a reminder of just how little Hopkins needed to work with: Even with virtually his entire body immobilized and much of his face obscured, Lecter somehow became more frightening.

Trace the evolution of the Xenomorph

A towering Xenomorph created by Legacy Effects for 2024’s “Alien: Romulus” offers an up-close look at one of horror’s most enduring monsters.

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

Nearly half a century after Ridley Scott’s “Alien” introduced H.R. Giger’s nightmarish vision to moviegoers, the creature still looks like nothing else in science fiction. The exhibition brings together original Giger artwork depicting the alien egg and an original facehugger from the 1979 film, the spidery parasite whose method of reproduction helped make “Alien” a landmark of body horror. There’s also an original drawing by James Cameron, who took over the franchise with 1986’s “Aliens.” But the hardest thing to miss is a towering Xenomorph created by Legacy Effects for 2024’s “Alien: Romulus.” Up close, its elongated head, skeletal body and glistening double set of jaws reveal just how much unsettling detail goes into a creature often glimpsed onscreen in darkness.

See Dracula’s armor go from page to screen

Eiko Ishioka’s blood-red armor for Gary Oldman’s Count Dracula in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 “Bram Stoker’s Dracula.”

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

Before Gary Oldman’s Dracula became a pale, bewigged count, he was Vlad the Impaler, encased in one of the most striking costumes in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 “Bram Stoker’s Dracula.” Eiko Ishioka designed the blood-red battle armor with a ribbed surface evoking both exposed human musculature and an armadillo’s shell, while the pointed helmet foreshadows the wolf Dracula later becomes. Displayed alongside several of Ishioka’s original design drawings, the armor offers a fascinating look at how her ideas evolved from pencil on paper into something almost anatomical. Ishioka, a celebrated Japanese graphic designer making her first foray into Hollywood costume design, won an Oscar for her work on the film.

Log on to the original ‘Blair Witch’ website

Visitors can explore the groundbreaking viral promotional website for 1999’s “The Blair Witch Project,” which blurred the line between the film’s fictional story and reality.

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

Long before viral marketing had a name, 1999’s “The Blair Witch Project” was using the still-young internet to convince moviegoers that three student filmmakers might actually be missing in the woods. Directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez created the film’s promotional website in 1998, filling it with fake police reports, evidence photographs and an elaborate mythology while carefully avoiding any suggestion that their story was fictional. They posted on message boards and continually updated the site before the film’s release, helping turn a tiny found-footage horror movie into a grassroots phenomenon. Here, you can sit down at a chunky late-’90s computer and explore the original site yourself. Nearby is one of the movie’s crudely constructed stick figures — a reminder that sometimes a few twigs and some twine are all it takes to lodge an image permanently in the culture.

Meet the slashers

Costumes and props from some of horror’s most notorious killers fill the exhibition’s slasher chamber, including Candyman, Ghostface, Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger and Art the Clown.

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

Slasher movies have always depended on a memorable killer, and the genre has produced some of horror’s most instantly recognizable figures. Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, Ghostface and Art the Clown are gathered here in full costume, looking less like museum pieces than a welcoming committee you’d rather not encounter. Nearby cases turn slasher movies’ grisly tools of the trade into artifacts, with masks and weapons from “Saw,” “Us,” “M3GAN,” “The Black Phone” and other films. It’s a reminder of how little a slasher movie really needs to get under your skin.

Open the Babadook’s book

The handmade “Mister Babadook” pop-up book created by illustrator Alex Juhasz for Jennifer Kent’s 2014 “The Babadook.”

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

Sometimes the scariest special effect is a pop-up book. In Jennifer Kent’s 2014 “The Babadook,” the sinister children’s book “Mister Babadook” heralds the arrival of the top-hatted creature that terrorizes a widowed mother and her young son, while giving physical form to the grief consuming them. Kent turned to illustrator Alex Juhasz to create the handmade book, drawing inspiration from the eerie silhouetted animation of German filmmaker Lotte Reiniger from the 1920s. Opened to one of its more elaborate spreads, the original prop is both beautifully crafted and deeply unsettling, its seemingly innocent children’s-book mechanics revealing a grinning black figure and the ominous command: “LET ME IN.”

Take a selfie with Norma Bates

A re-creation of the mummified Mrs. Bates from Alfred Hitchcock’s immortal “Psycho” gives visitors a chance to pose with Norman Bates’ dearly departed mother.

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

The Academy Museum wanted the original mummified Mrs. Bates head from Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho,” but there was one problem: She was too fragile to travel. The Cinémathèque Française, which owns the 1960 prop, declined the museum’s loan request. “I was really disappointed about that, but it’s totally understandable,” Niebel says. “We probably wouldn’t have lent her if she were in our collection.” So the museum commissioned Oscar-winning makeup artist and sculptor Mike Hill, fresh off his work on Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein,” to research and create a full-body Mrs. Bates instead. Unlike the many delicate original artifacts elsewhere in the exhibition, this one was made to let visitors get close and take home their own slightly unsettling family portrait. Just don’t get too close. As a nearby sign warns, “Mother isn’t quite herself today — do not touch, she needs her space.”

Get grossed out by Monstro Elisasue

The spectacularly gross Monstro Elisasue bust, created by makeup and special-effects artist Pierre-Olivier Persin for Coralie Fargeat’s 2024 “The Substance.”

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

By the time Coralie Fargeat’s 2024 “The Substance” reaches its gloriously grotesque climax, Demi Moore’s Elisabeth Sparkle and Margaret Qualley’s Sue have effectively fused into the spectacularly deformed creature known as Monstro Elisasue. The exhibition puts designer Pierre-Olivier Persin’s bust of the creature alongside the syringes, vials and other medical paraphernalia from the mysterious Substance kit that sets the movie’s nightmare in motion. Fargeat has described body horror as a “weapon of expression” for confronting the pressures placed on women’s bodies, particularly as they age. As Fargeat puts it in the exhibition’s wall text, she wanted audiences to see that women’s “pearly smiles are made of so many horrendous things that we have to keep within ourselves.”

Make your escape through the Blood Room

The Blood Room, streaked and splattered with cinematic gore, provides the only way out of “The Horror Show.”

(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

Fittingly, there is no clean getaway from “The Horror Show.” Every visitor must exit through the Blood Room, a gruesomely immersive space whose walls are streaked, smeared, splattered and practically dripping with the red stuff. To get the gore just right, Niebel turned to Oscar-winning special makeup effects artist Howard Berger, a veteran of such splatterific films as “Evil Dead II” and “Kill Bill.” Berger worked with the museum and its fabricators to create the room’s layers of fake blood, varying the colors and consistencies to suggest everything from dark, dried stains to fresh blood still running down the walls. Just when you think you’ve made it through, the exhibition has one last gruesome touch: To escape, you have to push your way through a set of bloody butcher curtains.

“The Pineapple” promised to be intense, but even hours before the show had begun, it had me startled.

I was warned, via a waiver attendees must sign to experience the production, to expect “intimate, and/or aggressive physical contact,” “confined spaces and passageways,” and that I may be asked to crawl, kneel or lie down. All of it would happen in a show that I was cautioned would present simulated violence or “disturbing imagery.”

As much as I love participatory, immersive theater — productions that often rely on some form of audience participation — “The Pineapple” was providing me with a checklist of things I generally avoid. It was a feeling that only grew when I reached the waiver’s end, and signed off that I was OK with claustrophobia (I am not).

What had I done?

None of it, though, had fully prepared me for what Candle House’s “The Pineapple” actually was. By the time the hourlong experience in North Hollywood had reached its conclusion, I had been straddled by a woman who forced a gloved finger down my throat, outfitted with hooded, vision-impairing face masks, grabbed by the wrists as they were taped together, ordered to crawl toward a blood-stained room, and spooned or kissed by multiple male performers.

“The Pineapple” is a secretive hourlong show that seeks to disorient attendees.

(Sona Earnest)

“The Pineapple” is a buzzed-about show among the tight-knit immersive community, one that fits into the medium’s long tradition of productions designed for a sole audience member. A short run last year in New Jersey sold out. Candle House has such a devoted following that its L.A. shows have been selling out almost as instantly as they are announced. While it’s thus far been shrouded in secrecy — “The Pineapple” will not even release a program or cast list until its run has concluded — it comes highly recommended from acquaintances who saw it on the East Coast. I was alternately excited and apprehensive to take part, and my editor would like me to note that I pitched this story on my own accord.

“The Pineapple” in its limited online description promises an alien encounter. Sign up, and an email will tell you that it will “change your life.”

For the passionate crowd of immersive enthusiasts who may want to experience “The Pineapple” and are worried I just spoiled the show, I call nonsense. For one, I believe audiences should know exactly what they are paying for, and two, I do not think “The Pineapple” can be properly spoiled. It was at times otherworldly, in moments psychedelic, and while there were scenes in which I felt fear, there were also others in which I laughed. While “The Pineapple” flirts with horror, torture and conspiracy nuts, it also provides space for Jimmy Buffett’s “Margaritaville.”

And in “The Pineapple’s” best instances, it created a sense of personal intimacy with its performers. These were actors who may have earlier been needling at or attempting to push my boundaries. “The Pineapple” wants to toy with our trust, to create a safe space where it can intermix themes of abuse and empathy until their lines are blurred. Consider its waiver, then, not just a warning but an attempt to weed out those who may be offended or triggered.

“The Pineapple” tries to break us. And it charges nearly $250 for the privilege.

“How do I put this,” says the show’s core creator/director Evan Neiden when asked his intentions behind “The Pineapple.” “I think the show is designed to boil you. Like the lobster in the pot. It gets warmer and warmer and warmer and it’s slowly acclimating you to this new set of rules that keep changing to this new environment of degeneracy and conspiracy.”

“The Pineapple” teases an alien encounter. It is theatrical production designed for one guest.

(Sona Earnest)

Neiden, the 27 year-old founder of Candle House, has long specialized in one-on-one phone productions designed to be done from the caller’s home. While drastically different in narrative content, his horror show “Claws,” in which its solo guest acts as an emergency line operator, is good prep for “The Pineapple” as it also seeks to push people to the brink of comfort.

If there is an artistic thesis behind the work of the New York-based Candle House, it is to cast its audience as performers, but then poke, prod and disorient until they stop performing and start reacting on instinct — or, in theory, become unguarded. It’s an idea that simply to get through the day we are playing a role of sorts, tuning our conversations to please others, or presenting exaggerated, false or tidied-up versions of ourselves on social media.

“In an experience like this, you’re alone with the inhabitants of the world, and they’re all there as part of your hallucination, your dream and your journey,” Neiden says. “You don’t need to worry about presenting a certain way or being perceived in a certain way. All the characters in ‘The Pineapple’ are degenerates, and this show invites you to become one as well. That’s very hard to do if someone from the respectable, outside world is watching.”

The setup for “The Pineapple” is simple. I was playing a respondent to an ad for a meeting with an alien. But things quickly spiral beyond clear narrative recognition, as piecing together the story becomes a puzzle unto itself. And it will shift depending on how one reacts, as there are multiple endings. But know only that in its opening minutes we learn that we have been swindled and are now part of a ritual of sorts to summon said alien.

“The Pineapple” offers intimate actor interactions designed to push boundaries.

(Sona Earnest)

You may find yourself, as I did, raising your voice, as “The Pineapple” did light research on me. My career was insulted, and I was mocked for fumbling around while attempting to juice a pineapple with a woefully inadequate kitchen utensil. Neiden says many attendees try to break the show itself, to push back and see how far its narrative can bend. This is typically not how I play, wanting to experience a production as its designers have intended and thus I let “The Pineapple” take the lead rather than trying to force my will upon it.

I am not easily offended and never used the safe word provided, although there were instances where I came close, namely when my feet were being aggressively, unwelcomely massaged. And yet there were scenes in which I thought about deeply personal relationships I have had, specifically when a character asked me to think of a time when forgiveness or an apology was craved from someone I am no longer closely connected with.

“The Pineapple” then began to feel like a metaphor. As I moved from darkened room to darkened room, ridiculed in one, flirted with in another, a thread of finding one’s own personal paradise in a hellscape began to emerge. Is it aliens we are seeking, “The Pineapple” begins to ask, or simply perhaps purpose? The act of forgiveness, Neiden tells me, was on his mind when crafting the show.

“I never really felt like I fully understand it,” Neiden says. “What is forgiveness? Some people say it’s letting someone off the hook. Others say it’s releasing yourself of the burden of a grudge. And it’s a word wrapped in religion and politics. There are so many definitions of it, and we hear it everywhere — forgiveness and its counterparts of guilt, shame and accountability. What does it mean? The show doesn’t answer that.”

Maybe. That’s up to the audience, not its creator.

Days after I’ve seen “The Pineapple,” friends and peers keep asking if I enjoyed it, and I don’t think it’s a simple answer. It’s not for everyone. I’m not sure it’s even for me. Simulated torture is not my idea of a good time. But “The Pineapple” did wear me down, and it’s beautiful in the way it highlights the lonely anguish at the heart of Buffett’s “Margaritaville.”

As its small cast obsesses over a fabled alien encounter and seems willing to stop at nothing to find release in a divine being, be careful, “The Pineapple” argues, of the personal Eden you seek.

At least that was my takeaway. You might walk away with an entirely different message.

“Maybe you just fell in with the wrong crowd and got abducted by aliens,” Neiden says.