A new voice is welcoming visitors through the doors of the Witch's Dungeon Classic Movie Museum in Plainville this season, and it belongs to Mark Hamill. The Star Wars actor recorded a fresh lobby greeting for founder Cortlandt Hull's museum, which is celebrating its 60th anniversary in 2026.
According to the New Britain Herald, the recording will play in the museum lobby throughout the 2026 season. Hamill's relationship with Hull goes back decades: the two first met backstage in 1981, when actress Florence Lacey introduced them while Hamill was starring as Mozart in Amadeus, per the Herald's reporting. The friendship has endured ever since, with Hamill visiting the museum and Hull making trips out to Hamill's home in Malibu. Hamill has even given Hull a keepsake from Hollywood history: a star from a 1977 dinner held for the original Star Wars cast and crew following an early screening of the film, the Herald reports.
That connection to Hamill isn't the museum's only Star Wars touch. Near the end of the tour, inside the museum's sci-fi room, a figure of R2-D2 greets visitors, according to the Herald.
A Teenage Hobby Becomes a Hollywood-Backed Archive
Cortlandt Hull founded the Witch's Dungeon in 1966 at just 13 years old, a detail the Herald's reporting confirms alongside the museum's 60th-anniversary milestone this year. His passion for classic monster movies had deep roots: Hull is the great-nephew of actor Henry Hull, who starred in Universal's 1935 film Werewolf of London, and of Oscar-winning actress Josephine Hull, according to Wikipedia. That family tie to the first film werewolf reportedly sparked young Cortlandt's fascination with horror cinema, and it inspired his father to help him build the museum's first display building that same year.
The quality of Hull's work didn't stay amateur for long. Oscar-winning makeup artists Dick Smith, known for his work on The Exorcist, and John Chambers, who created the makeup for Planet of the Apes, became Hull's mentors, according to Connecticut Public Radio. The two gifted Hull original actor life-casts and taught him techniques that brought studio-level accuracy to his wax figures.
Vincent Price, June Foray and Decades of Celebrity Support
Hamill's new greeting continues a tradition that stretches back long before Star Wars ever entered the picture. Prior to this year's recording, the museum had already gathered custom voice tracks from Hollywood figures including Vincent Price, actor John Agar, and voice actress June Foray, according to Atlas Obscura. Foray, famous for voicing Rocky the Flying Squirrel and several Disney and Looney Tunes witches, lent her cackle to Zenobia the Gypsy Witch, the museum's signature hostess figure that Hull hand-built as a teenager, Youth Journalism International reports.
A figure at the museum wears Price's original suit from 1953's House of Wax. In 1992, Universal Studios formally granted the museum official licensing rights to reproduce and display character likenesses from its classic monster film library, an agreement supported by Price, Hamill, and the families of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, according to the museum's own history published by The Witch's Dungeon.
King Kong Restoration Marks the 60th Anniversary
Among the museum's more than 20 life-sized figures, each paired with its own set pieces and audio clips detailing characters, films and actors, one restoration project stands out this anniversary year. A King Kong figure created by Marcel Delgado in 1933 has been owned by Hull for more than 50 years and was recently restored by Kelly Mann specifically for the museum's 60th anniversary, per the Herald's reporting.
The figure's platform was recreated by Jeff Srodulski, and its draperies were crafted by Jodi Dickson, according to the same account. It stands next to a model cast from the original stop-motion armature and is paired with an audio track in which Robert Armstrong's character, Carl Denham, declares that Kong was a king and a god in his own world but became nothing more than a captive spectacle in civilization. The Herald notes that the figure traces back to a mid-1960s plan by Don Post Studios to build a 15-foot King Kong for a Canadian wax museum; Hull's figure is one of only two that remain from that effort, and he received it directly from Don Post Sr.
From a Bristol Backyard to a Year-Round Plainville Museum
The Witch's Dungeon wasn't always in Plainville. It started out at Hull's home on Battle Street in Bristol before later moving to the Bristol Historical Society, and after operating in Bristol for more than 50 years, the museum moved to its own building in Plainville in 2021, according to the CTMQ account of the move. The larger space gave every figure its own backdrop. The museum is also open year-round.
Today the museum is open Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays at 103 E. Main Street in Plainville, per the Herald. Beyond its wax dioramas, the museum also houses original props from E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, The Exorcist, and Planet of the Apes, underscoring its function as a legitimate film archive rather than a simple haunted house.
National Recognition and How to Visit
The museum's staying power has drawn attention well beyond Connecticut. Entertainment Tonight recognized the Witch's Dungeon in 1996 as the longest-running classic movie monster exhibit in the United States, a distinction later reinforced by features in The New York Times and National Geographic, according to the museum's own published history.
Admission costs $15 per person and helps fund ongoing artifact restoration, according to FOX61. Those interested in visiting can call 860-817-6095 or check preservehollywood.org for details, per the Herald's reporting.
