Howdy, tenderfoot! Looking for a hog-killin’ time? Hatchet & Chains: Demon Bounty Hunters is sure to be an ace-high attraction at Universal Halloween Horror Nights.
…oh, sorry. I was just practicing my wild West lingo for the haunted house I’m most excited to experience at HHN this year! As a huge fan of the previous Slaughter Sinema incarnations (and a wannabe cowboy myself — peep the author byline), I couldn’t have been more excited to learn Hatchet and Chains, originally featured in Slaughter Sinema 2, are returning for their very own spaghetti Western feature.
As you might have guessed from the name, Hatchet & Chains: Demon Bounty Hunters takes guests along for the ride as Hatchet and Chains face off against a horde of body-snatching demons. I sat down with some of the incredible minds behind this haunted house to learn everything there is to know about the lore, characters, and scares, and to say I’m dying to experience it would be a huge understatement.
Ready for your crash course in all things Hatchet, Chains, and the wild, wild West? Warning: this haunted house is not for the yellow-bellied.
The Story
Let’s start with the titular demon bounty hunters. This odd couple consists of Hatchet, himself a demon, and Chains, a bounty hunter who can understand demons.
“Hatchet is the undead,” explains senior show director Charles Gray. “He has the immortality power, but he’s that strong silent type,” “And then you’ve got Chains. He’s the voice of the two. He’s gruff, always has a quip, always complaining.”
How did these two come together, you ask? According to Charles, Chains actually saved Hatchet’s life. Since Chains can see and interact with demons, it only made sense to partner up in their bounty hunting pursuits.
“That was like a natural pairing: I saved your life, and now we’re working together,” Charles explains. “In my head, they’re episodic. Every week there’s gonna be a new adventure.”
Like many Western tales, the story of Hatchet & Chains: Demon Bounty Hunters is spurred on by the changin’ times. On the outskirts of a small cowtown, an old woman is bitter about the arrival of a new train station in town. Naturally, she summons a horde of red-hot lava demons from the local Hell’s Well to wreak havoc.
Rather than possessing the townsfolk spiritually, these demons specialize in possessions of a more violent sort, ripping open your mouth and crawling into your body. This physical possession has three forms: demon, flesh, and, as Charles describes it, “hodgepodge.”
“When you encounter the demons with human flesh, the flesh is dangling off and malformed,” he shares. “In the final third of the adventure, we see that the demon flesh is falling off. So they’re taking metal pieces and clamping them on to hold the flesh together.”
“There’s a lot of cool puppet moments, which is super fun,” adds art supervisor Claudia Guerra, who worked as a lead set dresser for Hatchet & Chains: Demon Bounty Hunters. “There are different lighting effects with UV tying that ghostly element into it.”
And they’re not just violent demons; they’re violent demons with a plan. Their goal is to board the cattle trains and burn their way across the country. Enter: Hatchet and Chains, here to fulfill the Western genre trope of saving the town.
The House
When you enter Hatchet & Chains: Demon Bounty Hunters, you’ll find yourself in the local town depot. As you weave past the bunk beds — and past a gruesome fireplace scene where Chains has already gone to work on a lava demon — you’ll see that the bounty hunters have rounded up the horses to head into town.
“We try to make these spaces look really functional and really authentic, ” shares scenic designer Dylan Kollath. “There will be windows you can look through and you’ll get a glimpse of the different parts of the town that you’re gonna see later as you journey through.”
That journey will take you into all of the town’s must-do attractions: the town fellowship hall, the Horse-Toothed Saloon (the “house of ill repute” from Slaughter Sinema 2), the undertaker, and, of course, the cemetery. Body-snatching lava demons and corpses — now there’s a match made in hell.
As you make your way through the town, you’ll see signs of the rampaging demons marring the landscape, like deep scratches on the wall and molten cracks under the earth, marking the demons’ fiery path. Of course, there are also hatchets stuck in the walls and chains hanging from the rafters, signs of our favorite bounty hunters’ handiwork.
If you pay close enough attention to some of these signs, you can actually track the demons and even spot their victims before the rest of your party. “There are trails of blood that you can follow from beginning to end through the scenes,” Charles explains. “For the normal fan, they might not even notice it. But if you’re taking a Behind the Screams: Unmasking the Horror Tour, you’d be like: ‘There’s the blood; oh my gosh, it’s up on the roof. The body’s on the roof!’”
“There’s definitely a lot to see in there,” adds Claudia. “We did include a subplot story — pieces that fit the puzzle together between two people we included, so that would be a cool thing for people to notice.”
In addition to the subtle, Hatchet & Chains: Demon Bounty Hunters also deals in the jaw-dropping. At one point, a train car will appear to speed past right before guests’ eyes.
“Our video team absolutely went above and beyond to create this,” Dylan notes. “The effect is so cool when people walk into that room and see it for the first time — it really looks like the train car is there and it’s moving.”
“And we have a big surprise — I’m not gonna say what it is — in the finale,” adds Charles.
To all of that, I say: yippee-ki-YAY! I’ll be counting down the days until I can saddle up and step into Hatchet & Chains: Demon Bounty Hunters. In the meantime, don’t mind me. I’ll just be here barkin’ at a knot (killing time).
Want to read up on more Halloween Horror Nights lore? Click here! For more behind-the-scenes details, take a Behind the Screams: Unmasking the Horror Tour.
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