Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990)

The makeup effects for Tales from the Darkside: The Movie were helmed by KNB EFX Group, with the renowned Dick Smith acting as makeup effects consultant. Greg Nicotero, Robert Kurtzman and Howard Berger had worked on many earlier Laurel Entertainment productions, as they recounted to Gorezone;

 'It was a reunion of sorts for Laurel Entertaiment and KNB EFX Group. We had worked with Laurel, separately and together, on Day of the Dead, TV's Tales from the Darkside, Monsters, and (gulp) Creepshow 2, but now we had the oppurtunity to do some pretty original stuff for their newest feature, Tales from the Darkside: The Movie.

The film's first segment, an adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's 'Lot 249', involved a reanimated mummy rampaging around a campus. KNB's main workload for the segment was the fabrication of the mummy suit. Howard Berger explained the design approach;

'In our first meeting with John Harrison we decided we'd do something different for this kind of creature. My biggest problem with mummies has always been that you could just push them over. Take a baseball bat and whack 'em to pieces. I mean, they're just dust, basically. So we said, 'Let's do a real big mummy, a Bernie Wrightson-type of creature - big rib cage, real powerful-looking.' Also in the script, the description's pretty vague. All it says is that he's tall and thin, and that's kind of hokey. John Harrison didn't like that, either. So we went with these dark pits for eyes, which we thought would be scarier because there was just blackness there. You're not sure what's motivating this creature.'

Mike Deak wore the mummy suit, as well as the gargoyle suit in the 'Lover's Vow' segment', due to his tall and thin frame.. Deak had previously worked as a makeup artist on John Carl Buechler's MMI and had worn suits in Arena and Cellar Dwellar. His experience in suit acting meant that he could give a good performance, without the suit coming across as stiff.

Deak stated about the way he approached his monster suit acting in Darkside; 'If they tell me to turn a certain way I know that if I don't do it exactly right, it's going to be completely stupid. You'd see a wrinkle in the suit on my wrist, for instance. I always have a practical knowledge of what they need me to do.'

Deak also felt that acting inside the Darkside suits was preferable compared to some of his earlier MMI work, 'I'm not hot inside here. I'm comfortable. I feel good. I'm just losing it, that's all. I wore this half-robot/half-animal suit in (Arena) and there was all this fighting I had to do. I got real brain-fried on that one. Must have lost a lot of brain cells.'

The mummy's death, where it's chopped to pieces with an electric knife was achieved with the construction of a polyurethane foam dummy (identical in design to the 'hero' mummy suit), with the head and other body parts hollowed out.

The hollow sections were then filled with 'mummy innards' consisting of dirt and living insects! Berger said 'We used things like bugs, dirt, dust. We used crickets, live ones, especially in the head, so all this stuff would come out when the dummy got cut open. It worked great'.

KNB also designed facial appliances for Julianne Moore and Robert Sedgwick to wear as the undead Susan and Lee, with Sedgwick's being much more disfigured.

KNB's work on the 'Cat from Hell' segment was relegated to creating a facial appliance for David Johansen, as well as a dummy head made from a life cast of the actor. Both the appliance and dummy head had grotesquely stretched mouths, as his death involved the demonic moggy forcing itself down his mouth, and back out for the finale.

Mark Tavares sculpted the appliance and dummy head. The shots of Johansen wearing the facial appliance also had a fake cat body attached the prosthetic, giving the illusion that it was trying to crawl down his throat.

The most effects heavy segment was 'Lover's Vow', which both a full body gargoyle suit and a transformation sequence as Rae Dawn Chong's character sheds her skin to reveal the gargoyle inside. The first shots of the transformation involved the gargoyle's hands bursting out of Chong's own. This was achieved via the construction of hollow fiberglass arms with foam latex appliances (designed to resemble Chong's own hands) on the back of the hands. The spring-loaded gargoyle arms would push out and tear open the foam hands on camera.

The shots of the gargoyle's talons bursting out of Chong's legs were achieved via puppet leg props, that were fitted with push-pull mechanisms allowing the talons to be forced out of the latex skin. The legs were sculpted by Brian Wade. The legs were puppeteered by Nicotero, Bruce Fuller and Mark Rappaport.

There was three stages of makeup for Chong's facial transformation. The first stage involved Chong wearing a bald cap with air bladders attached; the gargoyle 'skin' appliance was placed over the air bladder, so that it would appear that the gargoyle flesh was expanding.

A wig was placed over the gargoyle skin appliance, with a monstrous brow and cheek appliance glued down to Chong's face - the face and wig would be pulled off as the air bladders inflated, making it appear as if Chong was ripping her skin off.

The second stage of the facial makeup took three hours to apply on Chong, as she was fitted into rubber body suit. The head appliance, as well as the chest section of the suit, was also fitted with air bladders that would expand on camera.

One perfect shot! 

 

Robert Kurtzman, Bruce Fuller and Mark Tavares did several sketches envisaging what the gargoyle's final form should look like. It took a week to sculpt the head out of WED clay, which was then taken to the mold department.

Bruce and Wayne Toth worked on the body, sculpted over a body cast of Mike Deak, as he would play the gargoyle. The legs were sculpted triple-jointed to give them a 'bird-like' appearance, but in actuality Deak's legs went straight down. Mark Garbarino and Steve Frakes molded the body in fiberglass.

The finished gargoyle suit had a fibreglass underskull with radio-controlled mechanics. The foam latex skin of the suit was glued to the skull, meaning the skin moved as the mechanics did, giving the illusion of facial movement. The mechanics inside the skull were engineered by Mark Rappaport and Mecki Heussen.

The head was designed to appear that it had a long neck, avoiding the 'man in a suit' appearance. Deak would see out from the mouth, with an air line run through the neck between takes allowing him to breathe.

The suit's wings were attached to a harness, itself adapted from a mountain climbing rig. The wings weighed 20 pounds. The suit was constructed from foam latex, backed with spandex for additional strength. The gargoyle suit's paintjob was designed and applied by Bob and Ed Yang.

KNB also had to fabricate two 'baby' gargoyle puppets, with animatronics installed for the facial expressions.

A stopmotion sequence was required for when the gargoyle flies away with its two children was handled by Michael Burnett Productions; Burnett himself casted the foam latex puppet and sculpted the wings, as well as the paintjob. The armature was made by Ted Rae, with Ernest Farino doing the animating.

Sources: 

• Fangoria #92
  
• Gorezone #16
  
• Michael Burnett's Instagram page.