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Our thrashing doors were actually a last minute project that turned out to be a great effect. Originally I was going to add a rotted vampire that was half human and half bat to our second FCG mausoleum, but with time running thin in mid October I didn’t have time to mold, and cast the parts necessary for the vampire, nor to build the wall of flames I was initially planning to construct. So the thrashing doors were the answer to the prob. The thrashing doors were an off shoot from the Scare Factory’s “Cellar Door” and their chained coffins, but I didn’t want to copy them, and never seeing a set of thrashing morgue doors, I figured it would be a quick prop with both visual and noise appeal. It worked out perfectly, and tied in with the reapers speech and added more then I could have ever wished for. It did however shake the entire cemetery structure, but no one noticed. |
The thrashing doors consisted of 2 pneumatic cylinders located behind the handles of the doors. They are connected to the same air input, but when fired quickly, they had very different movements due to differences in the air flow thru the tubing. Once the frame of the cylinder housing was complete, the doors were quickly framed up, painted and added to the mausoleums frame. I designed this frame to fit perfectly into the existing frame, which assured the doors would never warp or bind on any of the moving parts.
With the doors in place, thick chain was added across the opening and ran thru the handles giving the appearance that there was something behind those doors that was really struggling to escape.
So the thrashing doors proved to be a real quick and dirty prop that was easily constructed but highly effective. Check out the pics below.
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