Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. You should know the name Bob Burns. If you don’t then you will by the time I’m done with you, by God!
Now, Bob isn’t a famous journalist or actor or director. He’s not a well-known make-up man or a radio personality. In fact, if you just look at his credits his biggest claims to fame are assisting on builds for INVASION OF THE SAUCERMEN and IT CONQUERED THE WORLD, playing a gorilla on a ‘70s TV show called THE GHOSTBUSTERS and puppeteering Mac in the McDonald’s Mac Tonight commercial from the ‘80s.
Bob Burns may not be famous, but he’s icon to a small group of people that includes Peter Jackson, Dennis Muren, Rick Baker, Greg Nicotero, Howard Burger, Guillermo del Toro and basically any monster fan. The best title for Bob would be something between Film Historian and Alpha Geek.
Bob is one of us. I’ve had the very good fortune of getting to know both him and his awesome wife Kathy a little bit, having spent time with them in Philadelphia (we both did our cameos in The Lovely Bones around the same time) and back in LA. You will not meet a nicer, friendlier more down to earth couple than Bob and Kathy.
But it’s not just that Bob is the crazy-awesome Uncle you wish you had growing up, the one that’d tell you off-color jokes and let you watch horror movies when the parents were away, that sets him apart. He’s also amassed a helluva collection of movie history.
I’ll get to that in a minute. I’ve toured his famous “basement” that is really more of a reformed garage at his Burbank home and I’ll share some pictures from that in a bit.
Besides his amazing collection of props Bob is known for his Halloween shows. Starting in the late ‘60s he’d throw a little something special on for the Trick Or Treaters. It began with wearing a mask when answering the door and ended up firing up the imaginations of monster fans across the world.
A documentary has been made on these special shows called BOB BURNS’ HOLLYWOOD HALLOWEEN, spearheaded by KNB’s Greg Nicotero. I have two pieces of good news (treats) for you. The first piece is that the documentary is freakin’ great and the second is they’re releasing it in chapters (for free) on their site (which can be found here) with every week of October bringing a new segment.
I usually wouldn’t advocate watching a documentary this way, but this one is almost constructed to be watched in segments. The documentary isn’t so much about Bob, but in the shows he put on. The documentary is broken up by show; from a jaw-dropping brilliant low-tech live Jekyll & Hyde transformation to the War of the Worlds tribute which included a 40 foot long spaceship built into the side of his house to make it look like it literally crashed landed into Bob’s abode.
These are all in bite-sized 10-15 minute sections and are a mixture of talking heads and home video (be it 8mm, 16mm or, later, actual video) footage of the shows being planned, constructed and executed. The biggest chunk of time focuses on the last of the shows, an extremely detailed recreation of Howard Hawks’ THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD he did in 2002.
Why should you care about these hand-made suburban haunted house shows? Well, if you’re here you’re a movie geek and you’re going to shit when you see how Bob and friends recreated The Time Machine, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Exorcist and Alien. That’s one reason. Another is that it wasn’t just Bob and some carpenter friends putting these things together. Rick Baker, who worked on The Exorcist with the legendary Dick Smith, first sought Bob out at the age of 13 and helped him on his early Halloween shows. And he came back that Halloween to help execute his own movie work. Another regular helper was the legendary Dennis Muren.
So, you have these genius monster makers who take their Halloweens and give it to Bob and the kids of this neighborhood all through the ‘70s. Suddenly what was at first a few dozen neighborhood kids turned into a few hundred. By the time the final show in 2002 was done there was a 2 hour wait to go through Bob’s spookhouse.
There’s an overall feeling of a snowball rolling downhill with this documentary. Bob and Kathy start out super low-tech and as they gather more and more talented friends they come up with bigger and more decadent shows until they’re building sets that damn near mirror each movie being represented down to the smallest detail. The head of CBS who worked on THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD has a moment where he talks about how it’s like stepping into a time machine walking around the halls of the arctic base again.
If you’re at all like me this documentary will hit all your joy buttons. It’s inspiring in a way. I have zero artistic talent whatsoever. I couldn’t build a table or paint a portrait or sculpt a creature out of clay if my life depended on it. But watching this doc makes me want to put on a show like Bob. On my best day I couldn’t deliver half the show Bob could on his worst, but it gives you that feeling of wanting to try.
As John Landis says in the documentary, Bob has 9 million step-children. I can’t imagine how many imaginations he jump-started with his shows, but the man had an impact. Now you can be one of Bob’s kids!
The first part of the documentary introduces you to Bob and gives you the origin of his Halloween show. That’s what’s on the website now and in the coming weeks you’ll see the shows grow more extravagant and your geek bone will be tickled pink.
I don’t know what that means, actually, but I think it’s a good thing.
Speaking of geek bones I want to show you some of the stuff Bob has in his collection. I toured his house a little over a year ago and now I want to share some of that with you.
Most of his props are donated, but he does have a great story on how he acquired the original George Pal Time Machine at an LA thrift store.
That story is in the documentary, so I’ll let Bob tell the whole thing.
Bob has props and costumes going back to movie serials, including the early Captain America serials.
Bob has a piece from every period of science-fiction, fantasy and horror. The stuff that got me were the ‘70s and ‘80s props since that’s the era I grew up in. I’ll throw a ton of pics in a row below. You’ll see an alien from The Abyss, one of the evil Mogwai as well as the terrified stunt Gizmo from Gremlins (I think it’s used whenever Gizmo opens the blinds at the end of the first movie), the Drop Ship and Queen Alien head from Aliens and some American Werewolf stuff that I’ll get to in just a minute.
Yes, that’s an ARACHNIPHOBIA spider sitting on Gizmo’s chest.
The American Werewolf stuff quite literally took my breath away. I can say I’ve pet the David Werewolf. I also got a picture of Bob with the Werewolf. Now, time has been a bit rough on the foam rubber, but I’ve heard the KNB boys did a patch job on David and he looks as good as new.
You can’t have David without Jack. I’m sorry I called you meatloaf, Jack!
Those are nice, big recognizable pieces from the movie, but there’s a smaller prop that is just as known and freaked me out quite a bit.
Bob pointed out that it’s darker than in the movie and that’s because John Landis reused it for Thriller. Since it went from being David Naughton’s hand to early ‘80s Michael Jackson’s hand they had to darken the complexion.
Of the filmmaker donated pieces there are a couple of notable props. I’m sure you can figure out who donated what when you see ‘em.
Probably the centerpiece of Bob’s collection is King Kong. He has the original armature that Willis O’Brien built. In other words, he has Kong’s skeleton.
Sideshow Collectibles took scans and made a detailed collectible recreation a couple years back because of this piece. You might also remember seeing Peter Jackson holding it at the New York King Kong premiere. It was his date, but no word on if the armature let him go past first base.
That’s just a small sampling of Bob’s collection. It speaks volumes of the man that he doesn’t horde these prizes away. Quite the opposite. He loves giving tours of his stuff and watching like-minded people getting their geek on.
If you want to see more of his stuff you can track down a copy of the book IT CAME FROM BOB'S BASEMENT which is a movie geek must-own anyway.
I’ll leave you with a picture of me and Bob sitting under his row of Alien heads (he has one that was used in each Alien movie starting with Ridley Scott’s). And no, I don’t usually wear shirts with my pseudonym written across the top.
I’ll make sure to throw a link up to each new piece of the documentary as it becomes available. It’s movie nerd crack. You’ll love it.
Part One of Bob Burns’ Hollywood Halloween is here, just click on the video tab!
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
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