Horror a Grind for LA ProPoint

The folks at LA ProPoint Inc. won’t mind if their latest project results in blood-curdling screams. In fact, they are betting on it. The Sun Valley designer, manufacturer and installer of stage rigging produced two effects that are part of the Goretorium, a year-round horror attraction conceived by Eli Roth, the writer-director of slasher pics “Hostel” and “Hostel II.” The Goreotorium is set in a haunted Las Vegas hotel and features LA ProPoint’s the Meat Grinder, a 12-foot-diameter spinning tube through which visitors pass on a walkway. Within the interior of the tube are red-painted mannequin limbs – arms, legs, heads, torsos. The company also built the Elevator, which provides an experience of shaking, vibrations and flashing lights, making visitors think they are plummeting multiple stories down an elevator shaft. The attractions were completed last month, and now the company is looking for similar work. “There are these permanent haunts that are popping up and we are beginning to hear more about them,” said Mark Riddlesperger, founder and president of LA ProPoint. The work wasn’t easy given the Goretorium’s location on the second floor of a shopping center on the Las Vegas strip. LA ProPoint had to devise a pneumatic airbag system to dampen the vibrations of the spinning grinder so as not to disturb other businesses. And there wasn’t much room to work with on the Elevator attraction. “It is only six to eight inches off the floor but gives the sensation you are falling a great distance,” Riddlesperger said. LA ProPoint became involved with the project through the Goretorium’s creative director, Keith Kaminski, a Burbank resident who Riddelsperger and his business partner Jim Hartman knew when working at Universal Studios. Kaminski did the conceptual designs and prepared storyboards for the entire attraction. “He came up with the concept, and we came up with the technology and engineering to make it happen,” Riddlesperger said. – Mark R. Madler