This past summer, Daily Dead had the opportunity to head out to New Orleans to visit the set of The Purge television series (you can read our two-part reports on what we learned HERE and HERE), which is currently airing on the USA Network every Tuesday night at 10:00pm EST. While we were able to divulge most of our activities on the set visit previously, there was one set in particular that we had to keep under wraps until now: the “Carnival of Flesh,” which fans will get a chance to experience tonight. And it was just as badass as it sounds.
Production designer Sharon Lomofsky gave us a grand tour of the provocative locale, breaking down how each area of the “Carnival of Flesh” allows characters on The Purge to live out some of their disturbing fantasies in a myriad of ways. As we walked through the different areas, Lomofsky gave us a taste of what’s in store, explaining, “We have the French Revolution set up, so you can kill some aristocrats if you want to, and there’s the Spanish Inquisition area and a firing squad, too. We also have a caveman place people can use, and there’s a witch hunt tent, which is our hero location right now, where people can come and torture and burn ‘witches’ if they should want to. We originally had lists and lists of these different tents and setups, but you only have so much room and money to work with, so we couldn’t do all of them. Plus, we also wanted to focus on things we thought would be visually arresting for viewers.”
The “Carnival of Flesh” itself feels like everything you’d expect from a normal midway experience, save for the fact that there are booths where you can rent out a variety of weapons, and there is also an oversized auction area where visitors can bid on potential victims held in gigantic cages as well. “These are people who have been captured, who are generally innocent, and then they’re forced to do this cattle walk up to the platform where they’re basically treated like animals, and people bid on them to do whatever they want to them. Which, of course, is incredibly timely given where we are today. But we just wanted to capture this feeling of people having no sense of autonomy over their own value, and I think this setup reflects just that.”
As someone who relishes all the details that come along with world building, whether it’s stuff we see in films or on the small screens inside our homes, there were numerous intricately conceived points of interest contained within the “Carnival of Flesh” that I couldn’t help but get caught up with while perusing the highly detailed set (I mean, they even had branding and merchandising for the carnival down pat, plus Skee Ball!). Truth be told, I’m not sure how far things will go during the next few episodes, especially with the introduction of this malevolent locale, but considering just how many different possibilities have been brought to life within this “Carnival of Flesh,” I’m very excited to see all the murderous mayhem to come on The Purge television series as it continues its 10-episode run through October on the USA Network.
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"THE PURGE – Episode 104 "RELEASE THE BEAST" (Airs 9/25): Jane must leave the office. Lila consoles Jenna. Penelope is thrust into the Carnival of Flesh."
Spoiler warning:
Heather A. Wixson was born and raised in the Chicago suburbs, until she followed her dreams and moved to Los Angeles in 2009. A 14-year veteran in the world of horror entertainment journalism, Wixson fell in love with genre films at a very early age, and has spent more than a decade as a writer and supporter of preserving the history of horror and science fiction cinema. Throughout her career, Wixson has contributed to several notable websites, including Fangoria, Dread Central, Terror Tube, and FEARnet, and she currently serves as the Managing Editor for Daily Dead, which has been her home since 2013. She's also written for both Fangoria Magazine & ReMind Magazine, and her latest book project, Monsters, Makeup & Effects: Volume One will be released on October 20, 2021.
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