Men are from Mars; women are from Venus. Dudes dig zombies; chicks adore vampires. At least that’s how Sean Purucker sees it.
The costume fabricator for Custom Characters in Glendale, Calif., breaks it down this way: As gore folklore goes, zombies will always appeal to the shoot-em-up video-game action-adventure male mentality; the seductive romanticism of vampires attracts the female sensibility.
“If you have zombies versus vampires, you can compare it to boys versus girls,” says Purucker, who graduated from The Art Institute of Seattle with a degree in Industrial Design Technology in 2004, and a degree in Fashion Design in 2005.
Regardless of gender distinctions, vampires and zombies will always stalk the soundstage streets, scaring the daylights out of our collective imaginations. Purucker and other graduates from The Art Institutes system of schools have created vampires and zombies from scratch for Hollywood’s scariest movies, TV shows, theme-park parades, and Halloween parties.
George Troester, who’s created horror characters in his job as a Hollywood makeup effects artist, says he’s always loved zombie movies. His interest began when he tried to replicate the special effects in cheesy horror movies before attending The Art Institute of Pittsburgh, where he graduated in 2006 with an Industrial Design degree.
“I like changing people to look all nasty and decayed,” Troester says. “And vampires are cool because there’s a level of elegance to them beyond the scary level.”
Movies like Zombieland and the Twilight sagas and TV shows like HBO’s True Blood and CW’s The Vampire Diaries have resurrected the mass appeal of vampires and zombies in pop culture. To Troester, these movies and shows are comedies or romances starring horror characters, so they attract a wider audience than typical horror movies.
Vampires and zombies, along with other imaginary evildoers have invaded our psyche through literature, movies, TV shows, random night terrors, and Halloween parties for generations. Michael Dinetz, owner of special effects makeup company Diabolic Design Studio, understands the popularity of low- and medium-budget horror movies that are distributed worldwide each year.
“People will always be fascinated by the things that scare and repulse them,” says Dinetz, a 2003 Industrial Design graduate of The Art Institute of Philadelphia.
Dinetz says the gore trend began in the 1980s and early 1990s and now makes up a significant portion of current low-budget films and bigger studio productions like Hostel. His credits include direct-to-DVD films like Awaken the Dead, Fear House, Jake’s Closet, and the upcoming Puppet Master: Axis of Evil and Killjoy 3. He started his studio in 2004 and partnered with Troester and makeup artist Elissa Prager in 2007.
Prager, who specializes in injury makeup and has a zombie count in the 20s, says she enjoys creating vampires because there is no set definition of what they look like. The aesthetic, she says, can range from pale skin and fangs to darker creations with prosthetics and strange facial features.
“The nice thing about vampires is that you can take any director’s vision and morph it into something else,” says Prager, who graduated from The Art Institute of Dallas in 2002 with a degree in Video Production. “Everyone has their own view of what a vampire actually looks like.”
Troester recounts a bit of gore lore about Bram Stoker’s Dracula that illustrates just how important the costumes and special effects are in making a successful vampire movie. Hollywood legend has it that an especially gruesome bat costume was going to be cut from the film due to budget constraints. But Gary Oldman, the actor who played Dracula, loved the costume so much that he bought it with his own money to wear onscreen.
Even the King of Pop himself had a personal infatuation with gory makeup effects, and zombies in particular. Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video revolutionized the music video industry and paid special homage to the makeup community. A lesser-known Jackson production called “Ghosts” was re-mastered for high-definition and released this year for Halloween.
The increase in high-definition, or HD, cameras has created special challenges for horror professionals. As Prager explains it, HD ups the standard for realism. Small imperfections won't necessarily read on film, she says, but HD sees every flaw.
“It has to look perfect to your eye in order to look good on (HD) camera,” she says.
Filmed in high-def, horror movies of the vampire and zombie variety are hot right now, but the gore genre in general follows a cycle that also includes slasher flicks when the mood is right.
So what will the next wave of gore be? Prager says monster movies; Troester points to the remake of The Wolfman coming out in February and predicts werewolves. Whatever the trend is, the experts know there will always be a distinct audience for horror.
“It takes [a certain person] to be into horror movies. ... It’s the same type of people who like roller coasters,” Troester says. “It’s that sense of danger but not a real fear.”