Learn how to spook up your party with these Halloween Decorations – Zombie Ticket Takers for my Catacomb Cinemas! These ghoulish zombies are a great addition to any party to spook up your big party!
My husband, Jim, and I work for months planning and decorating for our Halloween parties. Last year for our Movie Monster Munchies themed party, we turned our basement into a movie theater
complete with walls covered in curtains, a large movie screen, and a ticket booth with zombie ticket takers. In order to hang the curtains, we built a huge frame of PVC pipes and hung black sheets from floor to ceiling around a large portion of our basement.
A large white sheet became our movie screen and we built a shelf to house a movie projector. We ran classic monster movies during the parties. Store bought Halloween props were added throughout the theater to enhance the creepy ambiance. We really wanted to add a ticket booth and ticket takers and knew we would have to create them ourselves.
We found great instructions for building a human figure out of PVC pipe at Spooky House Productions website. We used their instructions and built our frame.
We added some extra PVC pipe pieces to the base to create “feet” then we added some volume around the chest by wrapping it in bubble wrap. Pool noodles were used to pad the arms to give them some shape. We cut a hole in the bottom of a store bought zombie head and fit it over the “neck” pipe and did the same with some store bought hands.
The ticket takers needed uniforms but actual uniforms were too expensive, so we bought these Mr. VIP Valet costumes. A few changes was all it took to make these costumes the perfect fit. We removed the name badge and reworked the hat by cutting off the rim so it looked like a pill box hat. Black pants were attached by suspenders (ribbon and pins) and black shoes purchased from a thrift store made the outfit complete.
The ticket booth was created using a foam core science project board. We just bent the flaps backwards and set it between two curtains. A piece of black cardboard worked as the counter top. We printed a large “now showing” sign and mounted it on cardboard and hung it from the PVC pipe frame (that was holding all of our curtains.) A clear sheet of acetate was taped to the bottom of the sign then attached to the counter.
Classic monster movie posters were hung on the walls of the stairway leading down into the Catacomb Cinemas.
Our theater entrance was marked by this 5′ long sign. I designed it and printed it on copy paper and had it enlarged at my local copy shop. It was mounted on cardboard and hung at the bottom of our basement stairs. I wanted the sign to look like it was lit up so I painted it with glow in the dark paint and illuminated it with a black light.
All of our guests enjoyed hanging out in the theater. We showed classic monster movies to the adults, classic Halloween cartoons to the kids and horror movies to the teens. We were so happy with how our theater turned out and were so glad our guests loved it too!
Fantastic! I'm planning a movie theater haunt this year for our local ToT's. You have some great ideas. Thanks for sharing them.
Have fun! When I asked the kids what they like best about our party, many said being able to watch movies in the theater. They all think it's really cool.