my first guest tonight is an actor and a stuntman but is best known for the truly shocking and
unbelievable effects he has created as a makeup artist in such films as dawn of the dead maniac
and friday the 13th he is the author of this book right here right here right here this one is the
heat it's called bizarro and his work can also be seen in the upcoming tv series tales from the dark
side and the forthcoming film day of the dead please welcome tom savini ladies and gentlemen
hi tom
nice to see you
uh before we take a look at this uh what you do is special effects or it's makeup
or it's a combination or what is it special makeup effects it's called i see and and what does that
uh when we go to a film what of your work do we see oh well anytime somebody's head is blown
off or a cut throat a little creature runs around that's me no having a head having a head blown off
it comes under makeup special makeup effects sure oh okay well let's let's take a look at
some of this stuff cover this okay speaking of heads oh my goodness i like that oh my god
oh geez how'd you like to be at dinner and have your dog bring this in so
well that's where i got it i'll be done
bob's been out in the woods again and well somebody called the neighbors what now wait
a minute uh tom what what is jiminy that's unfortunate what uh now how would that how
would that uh in a movie how would that look like it oh stop no let's you made the whole thing sure
what's it made of it's made of foam rubber it's solid foam rubber with a dental plates in there
and glass eyes from an ocularist and it's got rice krispies in the neck here uh and they're
painted with uh five-minute epoxy it gives them that shine see that [ __ ] now that's interesting
to me why why would you you think that the touch oh i know what this needs some rice
krispies here on the neck sure a little texture a little different color from the rice krispies
actually these are corn puffs i have rice krispies on something i thought those were corn puffs
i said to myself well i don't want to embarrass tom but these are these are corn puffs
we have all sorts of household items you can use now in your in your business is it
a lot of experimentation are these old old formulas or a combination of experimentation
just take a little rice crispy that looks good it stays you know yeah this is just unbelievable all
right all right we'll put that there okay here's a rat okay and hold on to that now this is from a
film called maria's lovers uh nastashia kinskids on the savage right wow and um this is for a
nightmare scene where john savage is lying in bed he's having a nightmare this diseased rat comes
in crawls on the bed and crawls into his mouth he bolts up in bed and we had this little mechanical
rat he made the tail move with his tongue with that little mechanism and then he would do that
and then he would press this little button
oh
would you like to gargle uh well uh he wanted a close set when we did it i don't know why that's
that's unbelievable so this is obviously used for still shots or not action well in case we had
i think we were going to look for a scene where he actually stepped on a rack and so
we i built this little dummy rod for him so you can flatten it yeah all right okay
you're non-skid wrap this is from friday the 13th the final chapter we took a regular
hacksaw and put this huge ominous blade in there so that when his throat gets cut
you see we would pump blood through here and the blood actually came out of the weapon
oh my god oh my now how was the scene like that shot you're obviously somewhere out of camera oh
sure i'm off camera this blade is brought around to the head like this the guy reacts you know
his head's pulled back we cut to something like blood dripping on the floor or his feet kicking
and then we go back to this and then all the blood comes down so you're operating you were actually
on the set operating the pump yeah this is this is really simple for this we just simply pump
blood when the move was right now what do you use for blood uh it's it's dick smith's formula dick
smith is probably the greatest makeup artist in the world you learn much of your stuff from him
well he likes to share his secrets so one of them is his blood formula and that's cairo corn syrup
uh red and yellow food coloring photo flow which is a wetting age it makes the blood
saturate clothing instead of just rising above it and methylparaben which is a preservative because
you know the blood uh the karo syrup is a food substance and it'll develop mold after a while and
this this looks very very authentic it's the best it's the best blood formula okay well we'll show
you that recipe later if we went too fast for you okay this is also from friday the 13th the final
chapter uh this is the hand of jason the killer and there's a scene where he gets a machete in
uh he gets hit in the pond with a machete and you see it splits right there oh god this is also oh
my god that oh stop it just stop it wait a minute do that again open that up oh my god that's just
unbelievable right so he gets it and it splits open like that and the fingers continue to move
you know when he looks at him you know the amazing thing about this i'm in the film
of course this is is going to be unbelievably lifelike but even right here it's unbelievably
lifelike thank you well we're not squirting blood through but the same thing we just pump the blood
through there and it zooms out of the hand oh my god now what this this is really advanced uh
stuff isn't it uh yeah i would say so it's state of the art now when you when you see somebody's uh
when you see somebody's face swelling or an artery bulging or something like that
uh i'm talking about in movies now um are those
are those things done mechanically or is that pneumatically is that air pressure
doing it's air pressure actually there are bladders beneath a foam
appliance that goes over the bladder and the foam of course stretches it out like the you know
and you do that sort of work also yeah okay we have uh many many other delightful things
to show you from mr savini's work we'll be right back after you take a look at this
all right okay this is uh this is nate's corpse this is from creepshow and again he's covered with
rice krispies mixed with latex it just makes great muddy kind of granular dirt another ugly breakfast
accident okay let's get that off all righty this must be a great deal of fun to do this isn't it oh
yeah yeah the outlet for practical jokes increases i think when you do this for living i like to
scare kids in the neighborhood this is fluffy sure fluffy is also from creepshow fluffy um
was worn by an actor who had special lenses in his eyes uh fluffy let's see he yeah this is this
operates his eyebrows oh my goodness just take some snarls that's amazing that's really amazing
he uh he gobbled off adrian barbow in about three bikes in crete's show now most of what you do is
actually made four actors right to be worn or do you build just special dummies to take the place
of sometimes we have to build a dummy we're going to get to a thing later i'll show you
jason's death from friday the 13th and to do that we had to build a mechanical dummy because what
we did to them couldn't possibly be done to uh you know a human actor okay this is the fluffy puppet
oh that's terrific hi fluffy oh my god that's amazing okay and this is uh jason
jeez oh no oh boy let's get us another tv dinner huh marge oh my god
he's got kind of a nasty head wound up here yeah i'll show you what happens
with that head when he was hit with a machete and his head kind of split
now this is what i was talking about this would
be great you know that at a party just put dip in there
oh my goodness this is a little something i brought you uh your own set of fangs
well i haven't i said actually but i sat on them accidentally and they're a little warped do you
want to try them on this i put these in these are the bottom or upper oh this is the upper upper
yeah you haven't had these in your mouth have you no i haven't he did yeah you can't really tell
them from the ones i have i did put the split in between the two things oh i see there's the split
oh thanks how did you how did you get started in this what was you're also an actor yeah but
what was your first day your motivation to do this stuff i saw a movie when i was about 12 called man
of a thousand faces story of lon chaney lon chaney senior silent screen actor stunt man and uh makeup
artist and i wanted to do all those things and i so far i've been lucky enough to do that i have
a son named lon i named him after lunch so you do wonderful work thank you very much it looks like
a lot of fun thank you very much my pleasure tom savini ladies and gentlemen we'll be right back