“The maze is really creepy, like being in a cemetery at night,” Newell comments. “The fact that the contestants are exploring the biggest maze imaginable is scary enough, but it has a malevolent personality, and one of the ways it operates is to make all who enter doubt their sanity. You become increasingly vulnerable, unhinged and inhuman. Each time you’re badly frightenend in the maze, it strips another layer away until you’re raw.”
As darkness descends and the competitors are drawn deeper into its folds, the maze literally closes in, enveloping and attacking them. As with both the dragon and underwater tasks, the realization of the “practical” maze became a collaborative effort between John Richardson’s special effects team and the visual effects group headed by Jimmy Mitchell.
Richardson and company engineered several sections of the labyrinth, which stood 25 feet high and 40 feet long. These computerized hydraulic walls were designed to move independently of each other, swelling and surging at the actors on command.
“The maze has a heavy steel substructure, which could literally crush the actors if something went wrong,” Richardson cautions. “We had various failsafe devices in place to ensure that this never happened…although when you see the fear on the actors’ faces, I’m pretty sure it’s genuine!”
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