WATERLOO - It's a late afternoon on a sunny, warm day in August, and Rhondi Easley of Mason City is on a farm outside of Waterloo. But she's far from having a breezy time.

Instead, Easley, 17, is being pushed through a dark haunted house filled with monsters and saw-wielding maniacs jumping out of every corner.

It's all in an attempt to turn her from a mild-mannered high school senior into a horror-film scream queen, courtesy of the show "Made" on MTV.

"I always wanted to do acting," Easley said.

"Made" is an MTV show that takes high school students and transforms them into someone completely different. Past shows have "made" a tomboy into a beauty pageant contestant and a popular jock into a figure skater.

She's being taught to act like a "scream queen," a la Jamie Lee Curtis in "Halloween," by her "Made" coach, filmmaker Mark Borchardt. The method is simple: The way Easley learns how to scream is to be scared, and the way she learns to be scared is to face her fears.

That's where Waterloo's The Heart of Darkness haunted house, which was up and running Friday just for the shoot, comes in to the picture.

"We're the scariest haunted house in the Cedar Valley," said Donita Schults, who runs The Heart of Darkness with her husband, Kevin. She donned red contact lenses and vampire teeth for the all-afternoon affair.

Family and friends volunteered their time as monsters, deranged clowns and demon doctors, just as they do when the haunted house officially opens in the fall. Except for an additional building, which will be finished in time for this year's Halloween season, everything was up and running just for Easley, who reportedly wasn't a huge haunted-house fan.

It's unclear when the "Made" episode will air, though it's likely to be close to Halloween.

As for MTV cementing The Heart of Darkness's fame, Kevin Schults was fairly confident the network would put his haunt on the map.

"They have hours and hours of footage," he said. "So, we've got to get on TV for a couple minutes."

Contact Amie Steffen at (319) 291-1464 or amie.steffen@wcfcourier.com.