Hollywood Horrors Come to Natural History Museum

ByGreg Aragon

If ancient dinosaur bones and bubbling tar pitsaren’t scary enough, the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County (NHMLAC)now has a new exhibit that will bring guests up close to some of the creepiestcharacters of all time.

Entitled “Natural History of Horror,” the newexhibition links science, history, and the art of movie making by exploringscientific discoveries from early experiments in animal electricity to theexcavation of King Tut’s tomb. It was these discoveries that inspired some ofHollywood’s most iconic movie monsters.

The display, located at the Natural HistoryMuseum (NHM), features 17 objects from the museum’s own collection, and fourghoulish figures that starred in movies from Universal Pictures: “Dracula,” “Frankenstein,”“The Mummy,” and “Creature from the Black Lagoon.” Visitors will discover thescientific inspiration for each of these classic monsters through rare movieprops, film footage, hands on interactives, and specimens.

“It made sense that our classic monsters wouldbe shown alongside the scientific artifacts from Natural History Museum’scollections, as they give background on the science that inspired theircreation,” says Holly Goline, Universal film executive. “These iconic monstershave such an enduring legacy across generations of fans, so having them be partof this exhibition at a museum we all know and love gives guests theopportunity to see these stories come to life in a new way.”

Just in time for Halloween, visitors to theexhibit will have the opportunity to explore the origins of the monsters thatinspire horror films to this day, and at the same time, get up close to rarely-seenobjects from the NHM’s impressive Hollywood collection.

A highlight of the exhibit is the costume from“Creature from the Black Lagoon” movie that was released in 1954. Designed byMilicent Patrick, the monster was inspired by real animals, both living andextinct. To create it, she looked at reptiles, amphibians, fish, and atillustrations of life in the Devonian period, roughly 400 million years ago.

Alongside the iconic movie poster, there aresilicone copies of the creature’s full-body suit and the original mask. Next tothis, the museum is showing a fossilized fish with unusual limb-like fins thatlook ready to crawl from the ocean onto solid ground, that was once believed tobe the ancestor of all land animals. The Creature that Patrick designedreflects this imagined link between land and sea.

Another famous monster on display isFrankenstein. Dr. Frankenstein’s quest to reanimate the dead was based in parton the work of a real 19th-century scientist named Luigi Galvani. When theFrankenstein movie was released in 1931, many censors thought it too graphicand some scenes were cut. One of these scenes features the Frankenstein monsterin shackles. These original shackles are part of the exhibition.  

The Frankenstein display is paired withspecimens and scientific instruments that show how early experiments withelectricity led the way for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and the film based onher novel.

Dracula is also spooking guests at the museum.This display tells the story of how vampire legends existed centuries beforeBram Stoker published his 1897 novel Dracula. Scientists believe that deadlydiseases from this era may have inspired the vampire myth we know today. Theexhibition demonstrates these connections through artwork and illustrationsfrom the 1830s paired with film stills and an actual prop bat from the film.

Dracula was one of the first horror films withsound. In the exhibition, an interactive Foley table display invites visitorsto explore the sounds of horror and the techniques that early Foley artistsused to create them.

The last famous monster on exhibit is The Mummy.Museum visitors will have an opportunity to view the wrappings from the 1932movie, which were worn by actor Boris Karloff. It took eight hours to apply hismakeup and the 150 feet of bandages he was wrapped in. The film was inspired bythe discovery of King Tutankhamun’s tomb, which was opened by archaeologists in1922 after lying untouched for over 3,000 years. Wrappings and other objectsfound in Egyptian tombs will help tell the real story behind the discoveriesthat gave rise to the idea of the mummy’s curse in popular culture.

The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles Countyis located at 900 Exposition Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90007. “The NaturalHistory of Horror” runs through April 19, 2020. Admission to the museum is$6 – $15. For more information, visit: www.nhm.org. 

More from Arcadia Weekly