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Blood Noir Opened at Halloween Horror Nights 35 With a Sword Swallower Who Swallows Vampire Hunters' Weapons, Scored to Lady Gaga and Queen
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Blood Noir Opened at Halloween Horror Nights 35 With a Sword Swallower Who Swallows Vampire Hunters' Weapons, Scored to Lady Gaga and Queen

Michael Travels
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Universal announced this year's Nightmare Fuel in July with one sentence about a vampire ridden metropolis. Sword swallower Auzzy Blood announced his own casting on Instagram later that month, though neither he nor Universal said what he would actually do in the show. It has now opened, and the answer is that he swallows the vampire hunters' weapons.

Nightmare Fuel: Blood Noir debuted with Halloween Horror Nights 35, which held its official opening night on August 28. The day after opening night, WDW News Today published a scene by scene account of the whole thing, which is the most detailed public account of what the show actually contains so far.

Key art for Nightmare Fuel: Blood Noir. A black and red distressed poster with a snarling pale vampire face at the top, glowing red eyes and long fangs, with a dark red circle like a blood moon to the left of it holding a city skyline silhouette. NIGHTMARE FUEL is set in jagged white capitals across the middle with BLOOD NOIR beneath it in large dripping red capitals. Below the type, a rain slicked noir street between buildings with several caped figures on it.
Key art for Nightmare Fuel: Blood Noir, the sixth edition of the recurring Nightmare Fuel show. Image: Universal Orlando Resort, via WDW News Today

Quick facts: Nightmare Fuel: Blood Noir plays at the theater that used to house Fear Factor Live, the venue beside Men in Black: Alien Attack. Showtimes are 8 p.m., 9:30 p.m., 11 p.m. and 12:30 a.m. Halloween Horror Nights 35 officially opened August 28, 2026, after a separately ticketed Premium Scream Night on August 27, and runs select nights through November 1, with 10 haunted houses.

Fair warning before you read on: what follows describes the show start to finish, including how it ends.

What the show is scored to

Nightmare Fuel has run on pyro, stunts and aerial work since it started in 2021, and past editions were scored to rock, metal and electronica. Blood Noir builds its scenes around specific licensed tracks by Lady Gaga, Teddy Swims, Billy Idol, Queen, Nirvana and Simon.

Night falls on a noir styled city, and a narrator introduces the protagonist, an angelic figure. She is nearly attacked by a vampire before fire wielding vampire hunters turn up. Along with a second human, she ends up sheltering among the vampires, who dance to Lady Gaga's "Teeth," some of them spinning from a chandelier.

She then realizes she may be in trouble, dodging vampires doing parkour and trampoline stunts. The first vampire she met protects her instead, and the two dance to Teddy Swims' "Lose Control" with a run of lifts. He bites her, and the dance ends there.

Wide view of the Blood Noir stage lit in purple and green. A multi level urban tenement set fills the background with shuttered arched windows, staircases, laundry strung on lines and a green lit water tower. One performer hangs from a vertical rig high at the right with a second performer inverted just below them in an aerial duo. Around ten dancers are low on the stage floor in crouched poses and several more stand on the raised level of the set behind them, with lighting truss and speaker stacks overhead and audience heads in silhouette along the bottom.
The Blood Noir stage, an aerial duo working above a floor of dancers on the multi level city set. Photo: WDW News Today

The hunters then prepare to strike with a run of fire tricks set to Billy Idol's "Rebel Yell."

The sword swallower

Auzzy Blood, the sword swallower whose casting was announced in July, appears in this year's edition as a vampire the hunters are holding captive.

To a snippet of Queen's "I'm Going Slightly Mad," he frees himself from his chains and swallows some of the hunters' weaponry. A hunter catches up with him and tries to stake him, and he bites her instead.

A tattooed performer stands center stage bathed in deep blue light and haze, wearing a studded black leather harness, black leather trousers and heavy boots, with a pale sash at the hip. His head is tilted fully back and he is lowering a long curved blade down into his throat, gripping the handle above him with one raised arm. A small stand holding chains and more blades sits beside him, and his shadow is thrown across the stage floor.
A performer lowers a curved blade into his throat during the show. Photo: WDW News Today

The other human is tortured next, hanging from chains in the air, and the protagonist gives in to her new appetite and joins the killing. She then performs on aerial silks while the other vampires dance below her on the floor to Nirvana's "Heart-Shaped Box."

The Blood Noir stage lit in purple and orange. A performer in dark costume is suspended high in the center inside a large open framework hanging from the rigging, shaped like an inverted bell of pale curved bars. Two groups of about five dancers each are posed in harness costumes on the stage floor to the left and right with arms raised, a shape resembling a body lies flat center stage, and the tenement set with shuttered windows and a brick building rises behind them.
A performer suspended in a hanging frame above the stage during the show. Photo: WDW News Today

How it ends

Her fellow vampires then put the protagonist in a cage. The Vampire Queen rises into the air alongside her, and the pair perform to Simon's "Down" in what WDW News Today describes as a dance, or a fight for dominance. The hunters return with fire, and they lose the fight once Auzzy Blood's character gets hold of one of their weapons.

The Queen and the protagonist fight one more time, and the protagonist's lover hands her the stake she kills the Queen with.

Then the twist. The narrator turns out to be a winged demon, his silhouette showing in one of the set's windows, and he laughs as he delivers the closing line: "In this city, the nightmare continues, and only death can wake the dreamer." The full cast returns for a final number that reprises many of the stunts.

What Universal said, and what it did not

Universal's July announcement described the show in a single line: "Embark on a dark musical journey and resist temptation as death-defying stunts lure you deeper into a vampire-ridden metropolis."

The pre-opening marketing gave up little beyond that, and the July coverage of the announcement added no scene detail. Attractions Magazine, reporting live from opening night, called it "an intense, visually striking show set in a vampire-ridden metropolis" that mixes "seductive vampires, vampire hunters and death-defying stunts with strong performances."

Blood Noir is the sixth edition of Nightmare Fuel, which debuted at Halloween Horror Nights in 2021 and spent its two most recent years on a dark circus theme under the Nocturnal Circus and Circus of Decay names. None of the five previous editions was built around vampires.

Sources

Image credits: Blood Noir key art, Universal Orlando Resort, via WDW News Today; all show photographs, WDW News Today.

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