From the depths of hell, horror legend Pinhead returns in the latest
chilling chapter of the bloodcurdling Hellraiser franchise,
created by master storyteller Clive Barker. With long-time SFX
artist Gary J. Tunnicliffe at the helm, get ready for gore-soaked
set-pieces and nightmare visuals that will tear your soul apart!
To celebrate the release of Hellraiser: Judgment on Digital
Download February 22nd and Blu-ray and DVD March 1st, Gary has taken
us on a tour through his top five sanguine-splashed special effects from
the Hellraiser series and beyond!
Pinhead (Hellraiser Franchise)
Well obviously Pinhead, it was just an honour to do that prosthetic makeup
and to redesign it slightly. It's a makeup that I looked up at the screen
in 1987 as a cinemagoer, and basically said: ‘Who did that? How did they
do it? I want to do it!’ It was an honour to apply that makeup again and
again. And I never felt bored doing it. There was always an amazing sense
of the ‘Frankenstein Syndrome’, as we call it, where you get to take a
human being and turn them into something else.
Doug Bradley and Paul T. Taylor were both so brilliant with it and the
makeup is only as good as the performer wearing it. So because of the
legacy of the makeup, I put it on here as one of my top creations although
of course it was created by Clive Barker! Jeff Porter did a brilliant job
executing it in the first two movies. And then I got to carry on with it.
I refined it and added my own touches, of course, but it was really just
an honour to do that makeup.
Angelique Cenobite (Hellraiser: Bloodline)
The Angelique cenobite from Hellraiser: Bloodline is a huge
favourite, because the fans took to her and really, really loved it. And I
have this thing for designing sexy Cenobites. Clive Barker always
described things as grotesquely beautiful. I thought the concept of
Pinhead with the pins was grotesque but you are fascinated by the look of
him. So I wanted to do something like that for a female Cenobite.
What happened was, I came in one night and Sister Act was on
TV. And I saw these nuns with the whimple on and I thought, ‘how cool
would it be if it was like wires peeling down skin instead and she's got
an exposed skull’! So that's what I designed. I scribbled it down on a
napkin and gave it to a brilliant artist friend of mine, who rendered it
as a drawing. We showed it to the director and he approved it.
It was a very tricky makeup to do and it had some weird technical aspects
to it but again she was one of those characters who people were really
into when she first appeared in the trailers. People were attracted to her
sexiness and then disgusted by the grossness! If you can do that, it's
such a great dichotomy to have. So that's why I love that character and
why I think the fans gravitated toward it so much.
Box Cutter Kill (Gone Girl)
My next one is the boxcutter kill in
Gone Girl. It was just an honour to work with David Fincher. I was a huge fan of
Fincher anyway, and although there’s only really one kill in the movie,
because the movie is so slow burn, no one expects that kill to happen.
David is incredibly precise about everything. I think we did 20 or 30
tests of flow, colour, amount and everything else. That whole sequence had
to be planned to military precision because we had so much blood going
everywhere that we had to clean up the actors and the bed in between
takes.
The actors were very patient and very cool. I will never forget Rosamund
Pike on set going ‘Gary, my butt cheeks are sticking together from the
blood’, or having to stick my hand up Neil Patrick Harris’ underpants to
wire up the bloodline through his neck. Every time I shoved my hand up
through his underwear, he said, ‘I think you and my husband are the only
people who have had their hands in my underwear this much’.
It was a great couple of days shooting that sequence and very bloody! And
then to see the scene in the film and it be so iconic, it was fantastic.
It was a badge of merit and to have Fincher come to you at the end and
shake your hand and say, ‘great job’. To me, that's as good as any Oscar.
Caesar the Ape (Scary Movie 5)
The reason I really love Caesar the ape from
Scary Movie 5 is because initially they were thinking about
doing him digitally. And it was like going back to old school technology
of a man in a suit with a mechanical mask. It wasn't a big budget but we
did all the classic techniques that were used in things like
Harry and the Hendersons and all the brilliant work that
Rick Baker has done.
First we had to get a really beautiful sculpt done. And then get a great
mechanical artist to work on it and have the hair worked in. When we
turned up on set, and the director David Zucker saw it doing its thing and
talking, he was like, ‘Oh, my God, this thing's amazing’. And then they
started writing so much stuff for it and adding new sequences to the film.
It really warms your heart because what was initially a couple of minutes
in the script became a character that appeared everywhere. It had so much
character, because of the expression in the animatronic and because of the
guy playing it. Plus what was really, really great was that we get
residuals from the movie. So I got a lot of money from that movie for
puppeteering the ape. So that's also why I like it!
Christopher Plummer Under the Bed (Dracula 2000)
Sometimes it is nice to do an effect and the effect not be noticed. When
we did Dracula 2000, originally, Christopher Plummer, who was a wonderful, wonderful man and
actor, was supposed to deliver a big speech at the very end of the film,
and then die and pass away on camera and crumble and fall apart. But the
studio decided after the first cut that they just wanted him to be dead,
like he's been killed, and that his daughter finds his body under the bed.
And I think Christopher was very disappointed because he really liked his
speech. So he didn't want to do that. So I got a call saying, ‘Can you do
a head of Christopher Plummer. We need to do a shot of his head under the
bed.’
We didn't have a live cast. So I very quickly sculpted a likeness of him
with a good friend of mine, Mike Regan, ran it in silicon and I painted
it. Denise Bear did the hair work on it. And we shot this head under the
bed. The director loved it and thought it looked very realistic. Peter
Pao, who did Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, was the DP on the film. And then what I heard, which really warmed my
heart, was Peter Pao turned to Patrick Lucio the director and said, ‘Oh,
you got Christopher to come back and do the shot?’. And Patrick said,
‘That's not a real person. That's a fake head.’ And Peter Pao apparently
walked down to the screen, stood up, looked at it and said, ‘That's
incredible’. To hear that was amazing. I wanted to put this one in here
because it's nice when people don’t realise an effect is actually an
effect.
Hellraiser: Judgement is on Digital Download 22 February and
Blu-ray
and DVD 1 March from Lionsgate UK.