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As a fan of the fantasy-horror genre, and as a special effects creator of seventeen years, I’ve created some pretty cringe-worthy movie moments at Drac Studios. In high school, my inspiration for monsters, fantasy and the grotesque came from movies like Nightmare on Elm Street, The Dark Crystal, and Legend. I liked the way those movies started and ended, but Halloween (1978) is my all-time favorite – it scared me more than any other film. That one did some damage.

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If you are looking to duplicate some horrific effects this Halloween, here are some behind-the-scenes secrets on how to recreate those gruesome scenes on your own, how we do it in the studio and how to really make those heads roll.

Special effects creator Todd Tucker with a bit of fake blood and an unused Van Helsing design in the background.
(Copyright Bryan Beasley Photography)

Stage blood

From squirting blood to blood puddles, you can add fake blood to anything and it looks ten times scarier. Just pour a few spoons of red food coloring in a cup of Karo syrup. The oil has the consistency to make fake blood look thick and real.

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Passion of The Christ was one of the bloodiest films that I ever worked on. Director Mel Gibson wanted more blood during the scourging of Christ and we actually talked him into backing off a little bit! I came in as an actor at the end of the film. They CG-ed me into a shot doing all those whip-hits as a Roman soldier. I had to slam a whip into a bag in place of a body and catch its hooks on the bag. I tug once, then have it release on the second pull. With all the blood and effects, the crew knew these scenes would really make the audience cringe.

Animatronics

In the Anthony Hopkins thriller Hannibal, there’s a scene where a pack of boars eats a person. The crew found it difficult to work with real boars, since the animals couldn’t quite act and wouldn’t eat a bloodied gelatin mannequin. We decided to build a mechanical boar we could control from behind. It had additional remote control elements like nose twitches, eye blinks and ear wiggles. It could easily be worked with hand controls. The cameras got close enough that the controls could be cropped out of the scene, so it played off nicely.

To accomplish this scene, we started off with a sculpture and then added a skeleton structure. The animal skin is made of foam or silicone so it looks realistic. Our mechanic built the inside structure so it could be controlled.

We’re also using animatronics for David Fincher’s 2008 fantasy, The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons, starring Brad Pitt. His character ages backward, so we created a Baby Brad. We can control movements of Baby Brad’s arms, legs and head, including facial expressions. It’s definitely one of our most advanced animatronic creations.

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Amputated limbs and other body parts

Currently, I’m working on a really twisted horror movie called Trailer Park of Terror, based on the cult comic book. It’s about a group of young people who end up stranded at a trailer park. While spending the night there to get out of the rain, they come across a family of the undead. Each character goes to a different trailer with different evils, and from there it’s just a roller coaster of gore.

There’s a scene where a character saws off a girl’s arm. As you can imagine, she’s upset, so she gets up and walks around while she’s carrying the stub. When I saw the footage, it was really disturbing–and being in the business, I’ve seen a lot of this stuff, and it’s not often that it gets to me. The arm moved in such a way as if it were reacting to the saw blade.

The arm was made of silicone–an exact copy of the actress’ arm. We took a cast of the arm and recreated it, matching the paint job perfectly to the real arm. We do this for all kinds of body parts, and even some animals. These gory scenes are fun to do, but they’re probably not my mom’s proudest moments when she thinks of how her son makes a living.

Guts

A monster from Moldy's Madhouse,
a Drac Studios production.
(Copyright Bryan Beasley Photography)

A monster from Bram Stoker's Dracula,
starring Gary Oldman.
(Copyright Bryan Beasley Photography)

Amputated limbs are popular, but fake guts also contribute to horrific scenes, and so of course, Trailer Park has a scene where one character eats out the stomach of a victim. With all these special effects, the movie is a cross between The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Evil Dead II.

Guts can be made in different ways, and for this movie we made a sculpture of a stomach cavity and sculptures of bloodied entrails wrapped up in latex. We gooped it all up with slime and dressed the actor with wardrobe so you can’t see where the sculpture pieces end.

Rolling Heads

In Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula with Gary Oldman, we created an animatronic head for a girl who gets her head chopped off. In the scene, as her head gets dismembered, it flies through the air and rolls on the ground. Its eyes are still blinking–she’s still alive!

At any given time in the studio, we have about 20-30 heads and masks hanging on the walls. Some of the faces are contorted in pain, some are deadpan and/or just dead, but all look very real. Some were designed for directors to show a certain look for a character.

We create head casts for characters by making a mold of an actor’s face and creating a stone copy of his head. We then make a mold of silicone so we have a negative we can use to create more stone versions. Then we use oil-based clay to sculpt on top of the cast. A whole team works together: sculpture mold-makers, silicone creators, painters, hair and makeup people.

Drac Studios created costumes and
special effects for The Mask.
(Copyright Bryan Beasley Photography)

The key to making special effects come to life is to keep the details subtle. We’re researching all the time – pulling pictures online or references to inspire ideas for fantastical characters. So the next time you’re at the movies, if you’re cringing at a blood-curdling scene, you’ll know the special effects team did the job right.

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