King of Prop Never Says Die

Prop maker David Baker will go to great lengths to throw an unforgettable Halloween party.

His skeletons, the type you would find in the corner of a doctor’s office, always make party-goers’ skin crawl, and the pneumatic-powered zombies he and his five-person crew create can be designed to pop out of nowhere to scare the wits out of those unlucky enough to trip their switches.

“The best props are anything that moves automatically,” said Baker, 36. “Anything that catches your eye.”

Baker, a lifelong Ventura resident, has been throwing Halloween parties at his workshop in the Ventura Avenue area off and on since 1979. His next party is scheduled for next year.

In addition to his elaborate parties, Baker has also built props for television production companies. During a recent taping of the Stacy Keach series “Mike Hammer: Private Eye” that films in Ventura, a skeleton and a witch’s caldron designed by Baker were used to transform a downtown thrift store into “Claudette’s Occult Shoppe.”

Baker is also responsible for dressing up the annual Halloween parties of Hollywood screenwriter Shane Black (“The Long Kiss Goodnight,” “The Last Boy Scout”) at his Hancock Park home in Los Angeles.

What started out as Black’s “Haunted Housewarming” has turned into one of Halloween’s most sought-after fright fests.

Baker shies away from gore to show his party-goers a good time. Instead he makes props with the element of surprise in mind.

“We like to go for the spook factor,” he said. “No blood and no guts.”

He also strives for realism, making a rough sketch of every prop before moving on to the building phase.

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How far is Baker willing to go to get a prop to look like the real thing? Baker once snuck inside the casket room of a funeral parlor to get ideas on how to build a more authentic-looking casket.

Now Baker surrounds himself with talented people who do everything from crafting faux headstones out of plastic foam to manufacturing animated props that appear to come to life.

“We’ve always wanted to set our Halloween parties apart from parties with crepe paper and cardboard punch-outs,” Baker said.

The team figures out whether the character will move by air or motor, what it will look like and what the desired effect will be.

“Anything to bring the dead to life,” Baker said.

Helping him make the characters look good is Baker’s cousin, Debbie Livingston of Ventura who has been designing and making costumes since the first party.

Another of his longtime partners is Karen Bateman, an emergency room nurse at Ventura County Medical Center.

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“One of the most enjoyable things for me is just seeing everything go from the raw materials to the finished product,” she said.

Bateman met Baker in 1981 and has joined him on many scavenger hunts over the years looking for anything with prop potential.

“Dave scavenges all the time,” Bateman said. “It might look like nothing today, but we’ll turn it into something tomorrow.”

The most difficult thing each year, she said, is finding a new idea that can be turned into a prop.

But look around the cabinet shop owned by Baker’s father, where most of the Halloween work is done, and there seems no end to the team’s creativity.

“When I was a kid we used to just go door-to-door on Halloween night,” said John Gentry, 63, of Ventura, Baker’s fourth-grade teacher and a first-year participant in the Halloween fun. “This is like Hollywood stuff.”

Baker instills loyalty among those around him by producing memorable effects. His favorite is a zombie named Jake who, when a human throws the switch, appears to dig himself out of his grave.

“We try to create all our own characters,” said Baker, placing a hand on the head of his favorite faux friend. “We’re adding their flesh and their hair and their clothes, and each one gets a personality of its own.”

Added Tim Montgomery, 37, of Ojai, the mechanical engineer of the bunch: “Jake’s the first mechanical prop we made that works good.”

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