Note: I would like to thank Matthew Mungle for kindly sending me some of the images used in this article, as well as hosting others on his website. W. M. Creations Inc.
Francis Ford Coppola's guiding principle for his opulent retelling of the Dracula story was that there would be no use of computer-generated effects. All the special effects in the film would be optical illusions, matte paintings, miniatures and, of course, prosthetic makeups.Coppola explained his reasoning, 'I thought that since this was a film about passion, about timeless love and those mysteries, it would have more soul if the effects were not super-technological, but more works of magic and illusion. We tried to do all the special effects as they would have been done (in Dracula's time period) - with double exposures, mirrors, all the 'naive effects' and not even get into the modern, computer-generated type of visuals'.
Michael Lantieri, who supervised the special mechanical effects, elaborated on Coppola's mission, 'We decided to invent nothing on this film. Usually on movies, especially effects movies, people like to talk about doing things for the first time and inventing cutting-edge techniques. We took a completely different approach — we tried to be more or less on the cutting edge of applying older methods in the most creative way we could.This way, we were not in competition with anything like Terminator 2 or computers or dazzling opticals — we didn’t want to be compared to that kind of filmmaking. We wanted our effects to blend in and not lead. Dracula wasn’t supposed to be an effects film; we weren’t going to be grandstanding anything. We wanted the effects to be a natural part of the picture so that they wouldn’t detract from the story we were trying to tell.'
The special makeup effects on Dracula were designed and supervised by Greg Cannom, with Matthew Mungle doing the makeup application. Cannom's makeup team included Steve Prouty, Glen Hanz, Mitch Devane, J. C. Logan, Roland Blancafor, Larry Odien, Todd Tucker, Mike Measimer, Londa Notaro, Mat Falls and Rob Watson.
Cannom's team had to make sure the prosthetics they designed complemented the wigs designed by Michele Burke, who handled the film's 'straight makeups' and hair. The aged Dracula's 'bun' hairdo was one of the many wigs designed by Burke for the picture.
Cannom's team handled all the vampire prosthetics, including the minimal appliances such as the fangs and contact lenses. Gary Oldman, who starred as the titular vampire, required a special set of prosthetic fangs for a shot of his canines elongating on camera.This specialized teeth appliance was designed by Larry Odien, who explained, 'Typically, people have used flexible teeth that are stretched down. I don’t think that’s been very successful. I wanted to do it with rigid acrylic teeth, in a completely self-contained piece.
What I made were long fangs, but they retracted underneath a foam latex appliance that was shaped like Gary Oldman’s gums. When you looked into his mouth, you would think you were seeing his gums, but it was actually this foam piece. It was tissue-thin. I had to make everything as tight as possible so that it wouldn’t bulge out of his cheek or anything like that. The fangs were activated by a spring wire device that Gary could operate himself with his tongue. He would press the appliance and the fangs would come down'.
Cannom explained, 'We built a device very similar to what Dick Smith did in The Exorcist. Larry Odien rigged a little mechanical fan which we put in Sadie’s mouth to really spray the blood as it came out.
We made a whole bit piece that actually clamped and pulled her mouth back. I fixed it so that we could release it at times to give her face and mouth an occasional rest. Then we put a foam appliance over her face to conceal all the rigging. It worked really well.'
'We decided to do the makeup of an eighty-year-old man. I sculpted and designed the makeup, while Mitch DeVane, my lead sculptor, finished off the detail work. The makeup had fourteen foam rubber appliances and took about four hours to apply. Gary Oldman wore finger extensions and back-of-the-hands prosthetics.
I wanted a translucent quality to the skin, so I airbrushed some dark blue-gray veins which were layered into the makeup. When the makeup was shot, there was no filtering used and they got very close with the camera — which is a difficult situation with makeup.
But on film, the veins appeared deep in the parchment-color skin, which was yellow-toned and very fair. Gary also wore old-age contact lenses that were made by Dr. Morton Greenspoon and Dr. Rick Silver.'
'The (makeup) is a young wolf look that Greg came up with - a simple appliance, with a forehead and a facial piece. It gave Gary a wolflike appearance, but he still had the skin tones of a human. He looks like this when he returns several times to Lucy's room.'
A full face appliance was made for shots of Dracula reverting to a 'middle' shape between his human and beast forms. The appliance was altered with slightly different paintjobs and wigs. A blood-spurting throat slitting appliance was also applied for Dracula's final fight.All the makeups took their toll on Oldman, according to Mungle, 'He broke out in a rash because he kept the makeup on for so long. With any actor, if you keep them in makeup for 12 to 14 hours, and they start to sweat, you're going to have skin irritation.'
Just like in the novel, Dracula is able to transform into a wolf; in essence he is a werewolf. While the shots of him in wolf form were mostly achieved with a real (adorable) wolf, Coppola opted for Dracula to have a more humanoid wolf-monster form in certain scenes.Cannom explained to Cinefex how he came up with the design for Dracula's werewolf form;
'I tried to design the wolf suit with batlike overtones. I wanted him to look naked, but still animal-like. I kept the design true to the shape of Oldman’s body, but enhanced his shoulders to make them bigger. The face was very batlike and he had a huge wig on.Linda Notaro, who does costuming for me, built the suit out of spandex using a very pale skin, which was Dracula’s coloring. Stuart Artingstall — who worked on Greystoke and Gorillas in the Mist — did all the hair work on the suit. He tied it right into the spandex so that it looked like the hair was actually growing out of the skin.' More complicated was the bat-like monster that Dracula transforms into for his initial confrontation with Van Helsing. Cannom explained how the bat monster was designed;
'I wanted the bat creature to be the most horrifying of all the makeup effects. Unfortunately, I only had three weeks to build the suit because of the shooting schedule. I really could have used three months. One of my sculptors, Glenn Hanz, sculpted the body with help from Matt Falls; and I worked on the face and ears.
I wanted it to look like there were holes in it, as if it had been worn out or eaten up. The body was sculpted and we made extended vampire bat arms with mechanics that moved the thumbs about a foot out from his hands. Stuart Artingstall tied all the hair.
To me, the face was just a little too much; but at that point, Francis said he really wanted a more horrific look for the movie, so I thought, ‘What the hell?’ I had tried to be very subtle up to that point. We did some beautiful, blood-red contacts for that shot, too'.
Gary did some amazing things within the confines of the various suits he wore. Usually, when you put an actor in a suit, they don’t know what they’re doing and you have to show them how to move around by really overacting in it.
But when Gary got into these suits — both the wolf suit and the bat suit — he was incredible. He would do things with his stomach so you could really see his breathing. He would move his shoulders and elbows and really work the suit like I’ve never seen anybody work one. Even his voice changed — it was all spitting and slobbering. He was just brilliant.
'It was beautiful. It looked exactly like her. People wouldn’t get near it because it was so frightening. We were able to make her eyes open and close and move around — I even tracked the lower lid.
We had rigged everything so the actors could stake Lucy and blood would shoot out of her heart. At the same moment, she would open her eyes and start to scream. Anthony Hopkins was supposed to come over and hit her with a giant kukri knife and chop off her head while she was screaming.
At first, the shot was designed so the knife would be pulled from the side across her neck, where a groove was made to guide the blade. But then the shot was changed so that the knife would come straight down on this tiny split in the neck, which was tough. It’s almost impossible to hit a little crack only about an eighth of an inch.
It had to be shot quite a few times because they kept missing the mark. Finally, on one take, it was actually perfect. The knife went right in and chopped off the head, and blood went flying everywhere. It was a great effect.'
Sources:
- Gorezone #25 'Old FX for a New Count' (Bill Warren, 1993)
- Cinefex #53 'Heart of Darkness' (Janine Pourroy, 1993)
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