“Anything with a vampire or a killer or 'massacre' in the title, we're involved with,” B.J. Winslow, proprietor of Dapper Cadaver, the premier “death-related” prop house, tells me proudly. “I'm just happy to come to work every day and see an entire wall of my business piled floor to ceiling with corpses.” Corpses so realistic they were recently awarded a medal by the forensic training department of the U.S. Air Force, one of Dapper's many forensics clients. They've provided ghoulish decor for everyone from the Playboy Mansion to the White House, but their full range of body parts, implements of torture, caskets, preserved “specimens,” skeletons and taxidermy is for rent or sale to the public. Although Dapper offers big-ticket props like autopsy tables, dinosaur skeletons, iron maidens and vintage embalming equipment, customers can engineer small-scale scares with prop blood by the gallon, budget-priced mutilated heads, prosthetic bullet wounds and advice from seasoned professionals. 7572 San Fernando Road, Sun Valley. (818) 771-0818, dappercadaver.com.

—Skylaire Alfvegren

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