Holmby Hills, Calif., Oct. 26, 2001–Ghosts, goblins, gargoyles and…bunnies?
Okay, I’m not a habituate of the Playboy Mansion of the magnitude of a Jimmy Caan or even a Fred Durst, but I’ve been to Hugh Hefner’s legendary West Los Angeles estate once or twice. The pajamaed publisher’s pleasure palace is usually decked out as the ultimate SoCal headquaters for centerfold-chasing and indulging in the hedonistic high life.
But on this autumn night, as All Hallow’s Eve approached, the mood was definitely…off. I’ve felt parts of my anatomy tingling at Hef’s pad before, but this time it was my spine.
The mood was set early on as I pulled my car into the circle driveway and was greeted by the site of a pair of glowing-eyed gargoyles perched atop the Mansion’s roof–and not just a pair of cheap plastic molds with a lightbulb inside. These stony, ugly fellows actually belched smoke, turned their heads from side to side and actually fluttered their massive wings. On a nearby tree, a not-quite-dead corpse swung herky-jerky from a noose, just paces away from a towering guillotine.
And then there was the lawn, where you can usually spot some of Hef’s hoarde of nubile 38-22-36 houseguests playing croquet or engaged in some other outdoor activity. Instead, I cast my eyes over a somber graveyard awash in green light, filled with headstones bidding adieu to the dead.
Worse, the only woman in sight was wearing a bridal gown dripping in blood, looking as if Gene Simmons had just done her makeup and giggling maniacally over the occasional grave. In the distance, a pair of towering, shadowy behemoths–ogres? demons?–loomed menacingly. As I backed away from the impromptu cemetary, another corpse vaulted out of his grave, hung over my head in midair, then settled back in for a restless eternal slumber.
Just as I was about to order the valet the give me my car keys back NOW, a sign of normalcy, at least by Playboy Mansion standards: Shapley Shanna Molaker, the one-time Miss USA and current Dennis Quaid consort who will grace Playboy’s pages as Miss December 2001, sashayed by in a tiny white bunny-logo tee with a microphone in hand, leading a camera crew from E!’s popular Wild On… series on a tour of the ghoulish grounds.
Shanna, like myself and a select group of other L.A. media types, had been invited to participate in a private showing of Hef’s newly haunted stomping grounds, which over six days had been coverted into the ultimate haunted house just in time for his hot, hot, hot Halloween party, which typically draws a crowd of costumed celebrities and centerfold sometimes wearing little more than a coat of bodypaint and a smile.
And if Shanna wasn’t afraid to explore further–or just in case she was and didn’t have Dennis around to hold her hand–how could I resist coming along?
We gathered at the tennis court, where a spooky mini-mansion had been erected and a throng of young kids led by Hef’s boys Marston and Cooper anxiously awaited admission as their moms, including Hef’s friendly ex and current next-door neighbor Kimberly Conrad, hovered nearby. The kids soon entered the house and a chorus of bloodcurdling screams and screeches soon followed. Nevertheless, they all emerged unscathed a few minutes later, itching to go back inside.
They had to wait for an equally raucous group–rowdy for different reasons–got their tour, as Hefner himself showed up clad in a trademark red smoking jacket, silk pajamas and slippers (the obvious price of which only made me realize how pathetically lame my own Hef-inspired Halloween wardrobe of a year ago would’ve looked to the Real Deal himself).
Not surprisingly, the publisher, who was touring the haunted house for the first time, was surrounded by a buxom bevy of barely-clad Bunny types, as well as a continigent of shall-we-say-more-mature ladies and gentlemen, which made me wonder if the surgical-scrub-wearing woman at the door was a actually a real doctor, just in case the action (inside or outside the house) was too much for some weak hearts.
The squeals and yelps from that crowd were as enthusiastic as those from the kids, and yet somehow I suspected they were for slightly different reasons. But when the breathless Bunnies emerged on Hef’s arms, the publisher looked as pleased as his progeny, giving a thumbs up to the creative crew behind the haunted house and issuing his verdict: “Wonderful!”
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Then it was my turn. Shanna had already went in, so without her hand to rely on I grabbed the arm of my somewhat reluctant gal pal–did I not mention her in my slight distraction?–and ducked inside. What I saw was both amazing and frightful to behold. The maze-like house was home to a plethora of rooms, each with its own macabre motif.
In one room, a jailed woman in a cell pleaded for help as she munched a half-eaten rat. Another was a gauntlet of plastic body bags filled with mishapen human remains. There was a circus-gone-wrong room entirely devoted to scary killer clowns, with one razor-toothed Bozo rushing at his intended victims. An arrangement of corpses in coffins seemed creepy but harmless, until they all lunged at us at once.
There was a tot’s playroom filled with haunting dolls that played second-fiddle to a live, knife-weilding Chucky from the Child’s Play films–okay, that was REALLY creepy–and my personal favorite, the Rat Room, where the lights went out as we were warned of a thunderous hoarde of rodents heading our way. Amidst the roar of high-pitched squeeks, you could actually “feel” the vermin skittering across your feet.
At last we emerged on the other side, and a far-from-shaken Shanna was already doing a live shot in front of the camera describing the bloodcurdling scene. Once our hearts had slowed down, we had to agree with Hef’s Ebert-like assertion. It was thumbs up all the way.
The bloody bride was still cackling as we slipped by the cemetary via one last attraction–a mortuary filled with skeletons, a couple of which reached out and grabbed us–and unwound as best we could in the foyer of the Playboy Mansion, which was filled with hundreds of elaborate latex Halloween masks all culled from a private collector, including full-scale statues of the Star Wars saga’s Jedi Master Yoda, Arnold Schwarzenegger as the cyborg assassin of The Terminator and Robert De Niro as Frankenstein’s Monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
When we asked what the whole thrilla magilla cost, we were told that it was a Playboy state secret, although one insider suggested about $2 million for the two-night attraction
Whatever the pricetag, I was certain that the next night’s guests–which included Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, Dennis Quaid, Chris Noth, LeAnn Rimes,Jason Biggs, David Spade, Michael Madsen, L.A. Lakers owner Dr. Jerry Buss, NYPD Blue’s Henry Simmons, motivational guru and Shallow Hal co-star Tony Robbins, Andy Dick, Johnny Knoxville, director Charlie Matthau, Scrubs star Donald Faison, CSI’s William Petersen, director Michael Bay, Martin Landau, Craig Kilborn, Gary Busey, Crispin Glover, Carmen Kass, Kylie Bax, Montel Williams, director Gary Marshall, Neil Patrick Harris, Jamie Pressley, Weird Al Yankovic, Nicolette Sheridan, Paul Sorvino and Ally McBeal’s Peter MacNicol, partying in uninhibited Playboy style away from the prying eyes of media types like me–agreed with Hefner that it was well worth it. Thanks, Hef. Your tricks were a real treat.