Name: Tom Savini's Horrifying Special Effects | Letterman
Uploaded: 2022-07-12T15:13:31.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Tom Savini's Horrifying Special Effects | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-07-12. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Tom Savini's Horrifying Special Effects | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-07-12. Transcript available.

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.
Before we take a look at this, 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 what does that, when we go to a film, what of your work do we see?
Oh, well, anytime somebody's head is blown off, or a cutthroat, or a little
creature runs around.
That's me.
Now, having a head blown off, it comes under makeup?
Special makeup effects, sure.
Oh, okay. Well, let's take a look at some of the stuff.
Okay, let's uncover this.
Okay, speaking of heads.
Oh, my goodness.
Want to take that?
Oh, my God.
Oh, geez.
How'd you like to be at dinner and have your dog bring this in someday?
Well, uh...
That's where I got it.
I'll be darned.
Bob's been out in the woods again, and, well...
Somebody call the neighbors.
What? Now, wait a minute, Tom.
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, yeah.
What's it made of?
It's made of, uh, foam rubber.
It's solid foam rubber with, uh, dental plates in there,
and, uh, 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.
Gives them that shine.
See that shine there?
Now, 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 in 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 else behind me.
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.
Now, we have all sorts of household items you can use.
Now, now, in your, in your business,
is it a lot of experimentation?
Are these old, old formulas, or a combination of both?
It's mostly experimentation.
Yeah.
Just take a little Rice Krispies.
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.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
You can hold on to that.
Now, this is from a film called Maria's Lovers,
Nastasja Kinski, John Savage.
Right?
Wow.
That's amazing.
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.
See?
I think we've all done that.
And then he would, uh,
we would press this little button.
Let's see.
That would do that.
Now, can you actually put that in your mouth
and show us how it looks?
Oh, yeah, sure.
Why not?
Okay.
No.
Would you like to gargle?
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 shots.
Well, in case, we had,
I think we were going to look for a scene
where he actually stepped on a rat,
and so we, I built this little dummy rat for him.
So you can flatten it?
Yeah.
All right.
Okay.
It's your non-skid rat, isn't it?
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.
Oh, my.
Now, how, now, how was a scene like that shot?
You're obviously somewhere out of camera range.
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 cut,
we go back to this,
and then all the blood comes out.
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?
It's, it's Dick Smith's formula.
Dick Smith is probably the greatest makeup artist in the world.
You learned much of your stuff from him?
Well, he likes to share his secrets.
One of them is his blood formula,
and that's Cairo corn syrup,
red and yellow food coloring,
Photoflow,
which is a wetting agent.
It makes the blood saturate clothing
instead of just rising above it,
and methylparabin,
which is a preservative
because, you know,
the blood's,
the Cairo 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 there is for us.
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.
This is the hand of Jason,
the killer,
and there's a scene
where he gets a machete in,
he gets hit in the palm with a machete,
and you see it splits right there.
Oh, God!
But 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
when he looks at it.
You know, the amazing thing about this,
in the film, of course,
this 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, this is really advanced stuff, isn't it?
Yeah, I would say so.
It's state-of-the-art.
Now, when you see somebody's...
When you see somebody's face swelling
or an artery bulging
or something like that,
I'm talking about in movies now.
Sure.
Are those...
Are those things done mechanically,
or is that pneumatically?
Is that air pressure doing that?
It's air pressure, actually.
I see.
And 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?
Oh, yeah.
Okay, we have 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 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.
Okay.
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 a living.
I like to scare kids
in the neighborhood.
This is Fluffy.
Sure, Fluffy is also from Creepshow.
Fluffy was worn by an actor
who had special lenses in his eyes.
Fluffy, let's see, he...
Yeah, this operates his eyebrows.
Oh, my goodness.
Let's see.
Just makes him snarl.
That's amazing.
That's really amazing.
He gobbled up Adrian Barbeau
in about three bites in Creepshow.
Now, most of what you do
is actually made for actors, right,
to be worn,
or do you build just special dummies
to take the place of actors?
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 him
couldn't possibly be done
to, you know, a human actor.
This is the Fluffy puppet.
Oh, that's terrific.
Hi, Fluffy.
Oh, my God.
That's amazing.
Okay.
And this is Jason.
Okay.
Oh, jeez.
Oh, no.
Oh, boy.
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 wound.
He was hit with a machete
and his head kind of split.
Oh, my God.
Now, this is what I was talking about.
This would be great, you know,
at a party, just put dip in there.
Nice.
Woo-hoo.
Oh, my goodness.
This is a little something I brought you.
Your own set of fangs.
Well, I have one set, actually.
But I sat on them accidentally,
and they're a little warped.
Do you want to try them on?
Do I put these in?
These are at the bottom or upper?
Oh, this is the upper.
Upper, okay.
Yeah.
You haven't had these
in your mouth, have you?
No, I haven't.
He did.
He did.
Yeah.
You can't really tell them
from the ones I have.
Well, I did put the split
in between the teeth.
Oh, I see.
There's the split.
Oh, thanks.
Sorry.
Quite a bit.
How did you get started in this?
You're also an actor.
Yeah.
But what was your first,
your motivation to do this stuff?
I saw a movie when I was about 12
called Man of a Thousand Faces,
the story of Lon Chaney.
Lon Chaney Sr.
You're a silent screen actor,
stuntman, and a makeup artist.
And I wanted to do all those things.
And so far, I've been lucky enough
to do that.
I have a son named Lon.
I named him after Lon Chaney.
So you do wonderful work.
Thank you very much.
It looks like a lot of fun.
Thank you very much for being here.
My pleasure.
Thanks.
Tom Savini, ladies and gentlemen.
We'll be right back
with After a Minute.
We'll be right back.
We'll be right back.
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