As a massive fan of horror films, I’m always showing some of my favourites to people. Interestingly, as I watched more and more horror with others, one of them began to take note of a name that appeared in the opening credits, Tom Savini. He’d often be credited as a “Special Makeup Effects Artist” and, whenever she saw his name, she’d turn to me and say “This is going to be a gory one isn’t it?” I immediately became fascinated with Tom Savini and his wonderful horror effects so I thought it’d be great to take a look at the history and career of this genius.
As Tom Savini himself tells it, he first began his interest in developing a career in film when, at the age of 12, he saw a film called “Man of a Thousand Faces” which is a dramatisation of the life of Lon Chaney, an actor and makeup artist from the silent film era. He was so inspired by the film that he soon began to create his own makeup effects which he’d practise on both himself and his friends. He later ended up serving in Vietnam where he coped by imagining that the violence he was seeing were special effects. He later encountered legendary filmmaker George A. Romero and ended up doing stuntwork and other effects for the 1978 film “Martin”.
However, it was the 1978 film “Dawn of the Dead” that really put Tom Savini’s name on the map. Featuring a level of gore that had previously been unseen, such as the famous head explosion, Tom Savini became one of the most sought after special makeup effects artists in cinema. This was further cemented by his work on the original 1980 film “Friday the 13th” where he produced the makeup for Jason Voorhees and produced some incredible effects works, perhaps most notably the death of Kevin Bacon’s character in the movie.
With regards to the effects themselves, many are delightful in their simplicity. Tom Savini appeared five times on the Tonight Show with David Letterman and, having then just watched several films he worked on such as Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, The Burning and many others, I was amazed at how a simple effect could provide an incredible result. Taking the example below for instance, Tom Savini shows off a bayonet that was used in The Burning which had a throat wide gap cut out. It sounds like it wouldn’t be particularly convincing but, as you can see below, it’s incredibly effective.
Of course, not all the effects that Tom Savini developed were simple with many dummies that were used in place of the actor such as Jason’s death in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter or the opening death on the bridge in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 requiring a great deal of mechanical expertise to operate and painstaking detail in order to look as convincing as possible. Given that many of the films that he worked on were also comparatively low-budget, it’s truly astounding the incredible results he achieved.
Let me know your thoughts on the wonderful genius of horror effects, Tom Savini, which films you’ve seen that he did the effects and makeup for, what some of your favourite effects and makeup have been, your thoughts on prosthetic effects and any additional information you might have on the topic.
Hopefully you have found this article interesting and informative and, if you wish to seek any of the works I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk or amazon.com for all of your needs!