Last Friday I made the drive from San Diego to Los Angeles to visit the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. The trip up took about two hours and a little change, frankly faster than I had expected, and was well worth it.

The exhibit The Horror Show is broken up into sub-genres that each have their own room: Religious, Scientific, Gothic, Psychological, Ghost, and Slasher horrors. As you wander from room to room, you are presented with artifacts and history of some of the principal films from that category. (Though I found it a miss in the Slasher section that there was no mention of Italian giallo, which clearly was a predecessor to the slashers of the ’80s and onward.)

Some of the exhibits are quite old, such as the cape worn by Bela Lugosi in Dracula (1931) or the original mask from Creature from the Black Lagoon, while others come from very recent horror films such as the lovely flower gown from Midsommar.

Chatting with a couple of ladies who were also visiting, I mentioned that I had driven two hours to see this little preview (the exhibit officially opened the next day), and one asked, “Why didn’t you take the train?”

I have to confess that it simply had not occurred to me, and perhaps it would have been better if it had. True, I would have had to pay for all-day parking at the station, but even with public transit at the L.A. end, it may very well have saved me time. The drive home proved to be much more of an endurance test than the drive up, as it took me about four hours to make the return trip.

Still, it was a fun day: I have a couple of new tee shirts that I got from the museum store, and it was good to get away and be pretty much in my head for a day.

 Here is a model fo the creaure from the film The Host.