TAMIRoffal

My daughter, who is 25 years old, said she needed some help with her Halloween costume. She was going to the party as a cow and had therefore purchased a cow costume, a fairly top of the line one too, with an udder that fired a jet of water from one of the teats when you squeezed a rubber bulb. (This is an upright cow). Sounds like you have this covered, I said. No, she said, I want to go as a zombie cannibal cow. I really tried to beg off for a couple of days but in the end I caved. The fact is I knew how to design zombie cannibal cow make-up and she knew that I knew how to do it.

“I can’t do anything for you if I can’t get some liquid latex,” I told her. “We get that, the sky is the limit, zombie-cannibal-cow wise. We don’t, I advise you to go as a standard cow. You should keep it as simple as possible.” She assured me that we could get liquid latex at one of the Halloween shops on Rt. 46. So I drove 50 miles and we went shopping.

 

The Halloween Shop had bottles of “Fake Skin” which, according to the label, contained liquid latex. T didn’t list any other ingredients. It was made by the Spirit Company, which produces an excellent liquid latex. This stuff was considerably cheaper than I remembered, which made me suspicious. I should have been more suspicious.

There are two basic ways to use liquid latex to make zombie skin. The quick-n-dirty method: you mix in some bread crumbs and just brush it on the face, using one of those cheap art brushes you can pick up in a stationary store. Then you apply make up (gray) and powder it to keep it from rubbing off, and you’re pretty much done. But I was thinking we’d want to go with something more elaborate: first we’d paint her face with the latex, then add a layer of toilet paper, and then another layer of latex on top of the toilet paper. Then when the top layer was dry (which takes about 5 minutes) we’d poke some holes in the toilet paper (some of the tissue paper would be wadded up a bit to make it appear that the flesh was decaying and the connective tissue was shot—a very nice effect if you can bring it off) and paint the inside of the holes dark maroon and the edges of the holes various colors corresponding to various stages of decay. I learned both techniques from the “Dick Smith Monster Make-Up Book,” a glorious compendium of horror movie make-up tips by a master of the art. It was published when I was 11 or 12 by Warren Publishing, who were also responsible for Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. The make-up book was printed on the same shitty paper as the magazine and it was sold at the local news stand where I bought my comic books. The make-ups were incredibly elaborate and required much more patience and precision than I possessed at age 12 but I spent a lot of time attempting half-assed variations. Many of the recipes called for common household items or cooking supplies but when mortician’s wax or liquid latex or non-flexible collodian was the only thing that would produce the desired effect, that’s what the recipe called for.

Anyway, I committed all the recipes to memory more than 40 years ago and I just don’t get that many opportunities to use them.

Well, the fake skin turned out to be crap. It was like rubber cement. There was no expiration date on the bottle so maybe it was just 5 years old or something, but it was lumpy and impossible to apply with a brush. “Go as a vampire cow,” I said. “Just get some fangs. Keep it simple.” But she was adamant about the zombie cannibal cow thing.

I attempted the toilet paper-and-latex technique but I don’t believe I was entirely successful, although the holes in the skin looked pretty good. The cow concept was also a problem, since it required a white face with black spots and I felt it would detract from the zombie make-up. But you try to give the client what she wants, and in the end it was convincing. Sort of.

“And I want the udder to shoot blood,” she said.

“You know…” I said.

We’d bought some fake blood at the Halloween Shop (The Dick Smith Monster Make-Up Book suggests corn syrup and food coloring but time was tight). Clearly it was going to be too thick for the squeeze-bulb hydraulics of her costume so I suggested forgetting it. “Anything you put in there that’s red is going to stain whatever it hits,” I pointed out. She wanted Hawaiian Punch; I went with cranberry juice, darkened by a drop of black food coloring. It shot out of the udder, all right, but it still looked like cranberry juice to me.

It didn’t prevent me from being ridiculously proud of myself, though.

BONUS:

THE LEGENDARY PROFILE

The Dick Smith Monster Make-up Book had been published that summer, just as we were gearing up for Halloween. Dick Smith was a professional Hollywood make-up artist and his book was a copiously illustrated step-by-step guide to making yourself or your friends look exactly like a real Hollywood-type monster; everything from mummies and vampires and rotting corpses to genetic mutants and space creatures with extra eyeballs. It contained invaluable tips about making great looking fake scars-- mortician’s wax would work for raised scars, and you could embed shards of glass or razor blades in it; non-flexible collodion from your local drug store could be brushed on and then, when dry, would make state-of-the-art sunken scars, though if you smiled they would crack off. As you can see, wisdom of this caliber stays with you a lifetime.

The book started off with simple make-up jobs and climaxed with an amazing version of Frankenstein’s Monster. Smith had gone back to Mary Shelley’s novel and discovered that her monster looked nothing like the familiar Boris Karloff version; The jolt of electricity that brings the creature to life had jellied the skin of the face, made it translucent and yellow, and the veins and muscles were visible beneath it. This image had inspired Smith, and he created a remarkably hideous Frankenstein Monster.

We were all going to go out for Halloween as Dick Smith’s version of the Monster. Calvano, Picarillo, and I were all going to get started gluing red and blue yarn to our faces (to simulate the pulsing veins and arteries) as soon as we got home from school; Dick Smith had estimated that the make-up job would take 4 hours, if done correctly. We had managed to get all the necessary ingredients a good week before hand, and had done a preliminary monster face on Picarillo to make sure it looked good. It looked great. We were confident that, with a little practice, we could get our faces on in less than three hours and be on the street before six. The stuff we used to make Picarillo’s translucent skin (corn syrup, gelatin, and egg whites were among the many ingredients) tended to melt under the heat of the high intensity lamp we were using so we could see what we were doing, but we assumed that the stuff would be stable on a cool late October evening.

Then, two days before Halloween, Picarillo got sick. He had a horrible cold, bad enough so that his Mom actually kept him home from school; his nose was gunked up, his face was blotchy, he couldn’t even drag himself out of bed to watch “Rat Patrol.”

“Ibe stiw goink owp for Allo weed,” Picarillo vowed when Calvano and I called on him.

“That’s the spirit,” said Calvano. “You won’t even need make-up. You look really disgusting as is.”

Picarillo beamed.

But it was obvious to me and Calvano that Picarillo’s mother would not let him out of the house in his current state. “You’re going to have to pull yourself together and make it to school tomorrow,” I said. “Your mom isn’t going to keep you home from school and then send you out at night.”

“I’ll dake gare ob id,” he said. His eyes burned with a fiery determination that betokened hundreds of millions of brain cells being charred to burnt carbon in the furnace of Picarillo’s skull.

He did not make it to school on Halloween.

Calvano and I stopped by his home after school to see what, if anything was up. Picarillo was even sicker than before. His pillow was soaked with sweat, his eyes were red, the floor around his bed was covered with used tissue paper.

“Well?” said Calvano. “Are you coming or not?”

“Ob gorse Ib gumming,” said Picarillo. He wrenched himself out of bed, hung onto the bedpost to keep from falling to the floor, and cried, “Bob! Bob!”

“Who’s Bob?” I said.

“Dot Bob, BOB! Ib galling by buther.”

“His mother,” explained Calvano.

“Bob! Good dews! By feber brogue! I feel find! I can go owd for Alloweed!”

Picarillo’s mom was delighted by this news. “I’m so happy about your miracle cure. Get back in bed, you moron.”

“She dint buy id,” Picarillo said sadly. Calvano and I helped him back into bed. The bedclothes, we noted with approval, were littered with Frito crumbs. “Bake be ub eddy way,” said Picarillo. “Eben if I gant go owd, I still wanda bead a Bonster for Alloweed.”

“You’re too sweaty and gross,” said Calvano. “Everything would just slide off your face.”

“I thawed yoog eyes were by frengs,” said Picarillo.

“We are your frengs,” said Calvano.

“We’ll glue the veins and arteries to your face,” I said, “but that’s as far as we go. We gotta get ready ourselves.”

“Yoog eyes are grade,” said Picarillo. Calvano opened his big Macy’s shopping bag and took out a jar of glue. He had a coil of red yarn soaking in the glue, and, while I held the Dick Smith make-up book open, he began applying this to Picarillo’s face. This took rather more time than usual, because every time Picarillo sneezed, he blew the veins and arteries off his face.

“You good pood sub muscles odd by face, too,” said Picarillo.

“C’mon,” said Calvano, “We ain’t got all night.”

“I good be dying,” said Picarillo.

We began applying the sub-dermal musculature to Picarillo’s face. This was a very time-consuming process. Picarillo’s mother came into the room with Picarillo’s medicine. “He just wants to greet a few trick-or-treaters at the door in his full Frankenstein make-up,” Calvano explained. “He’s not too sick for that, is he?” Picarillo’s mother said she guessed it was all right, but we’d better not get any of this glop on the sheets. To be safe, we packed paper towels around Picarillo’s head.

We were now committed to completing Picarillo’s make-up. There would not be time to do two more Frankensteins before dark. I began mixing up the disgusting yellow translucent skin in Picarillo’s bathroom. We could hear trick-or-treaters ringing the bell downstairs.

By now Picarillo had fallen asleep, or perhaps lapsed into a coma, and the last stages of the Frankenstein face went on with little fuss. Picarillo’s mother wandered into the room from time to time, shook her head, and walked out. “I let your parents know you’re over here,” she said at one point. We nodded, busily deforming her son.

When we finished, it was obvious that we had a masterpiece on our hands. Calvano thought Picarillo looked far grosser than the photos in the Dick Smith make-up book. We woke Picarillo and walked him down the stairs. He moaned in a convincingly Frankensteinish voice that he just wanted to sleep. “Just greet ONE lousy trick-or-treater,” said Calvano. “You’ll scare some kid to death. It’ll be great.”

When the bell rang, Calvano threw the door wide. A kid in a Casper the Friendly Ghost mask stared up at the tottering, repulsive form of Picarillo. Picarillo looked down at the kid. The kid opened his bag wide. Picarillo’s face dropped into the bag with a horrible splat. The kid screamed. Picarillo rocked unsteadily in the doorway, said something that sounded like “Ib dubba zig,” and then threw up into the still-open bag. The kid screamed again, and began punching Picarillo in the stomach. “You big fat goon!” the kid said, pummeling Picarillo. The kid was 6 years old, tops, but Picarillo was no match for him in his weakened condition. Mrs. Picarillo had to pull the kid off her son and throw him out. He pounded on the door for ten minutes before he gave up, screaming some remarkably accomplished invective the whole time.

“Just think,” Calvano said much later, “We did the greatest Frankenstein make-up of all time, and the only person who saw it didn’t even appreciate it. It’s like a parable of art.”

“Yuh,” I said.