The People Under the Stairs (1991)

The makeup effects of Wes Craven's suburban shocker were primarily handled by the then-newly formed KNB EFX. Greg Nicotero recalled how KNB earned the job;

'We were brought on board by a friend of mine named Stuart Besser, who had done a movie for Dark Horse Comics called Dr Giggles, as the line producer. So, Stuart went from Dr Giggles to People Under the Stairs and brought a lot of the same people. And we got to be really good friends, so he said 'Hey, I'm doing this movie with Wes Craven!'

Nicotero, Howard Berger and Robert Kurtzman - the three surnames of 'KNB' - all acted as supervisors on the show, with Earl Ellis and Mark Maitre handling the sculpting, as well as applying the makeups on set. Rick Lalonde and Jerry Baker acted as effects assistants.

KNB's main task was realizing the emaciated cellar dwellars of the film's title. Kurtszman explained how they came up with the prosthetic makeups and contact lenses;

'These people have not seen daylight for years, so they've became accustomed to darkness. They got pale skin (...) they don't have their vitamin supply. And they had dark eyes, the idea was that their pupils was so wide trying to see in the dark, it had blacked out their eyes.'

Notice the mask worn on the far left, intended to be a skin mask. 

 

KNB also handled the film's gore effects, with the most intensive work going to the mutilated corpse of unlucky burglar Leroy, portrayed by Ving Rhames. Nicotero explained;

'We did a live cast of Ving Rhames, of his full body and head, and we sculpted it as if it was hanging upside down. All the weight, the way the arms were hanging. It was a big deal! It was one of the first times we'd done anything like that, a full nude body that was mutilated'.

Kurtzman elaborated on how the mould was made, as well on how it proved useful for later films, to save time on doing full body casts;

'He had his legs crossed over and his arms hanging back. He had to lay on a table, I don't think he enjoyed it at all. We covered in him in alginate and plaster bandages. And then created a clay sculpt of him. We had to sculpt the backside on, as he's laying on a flat table so he didn't have a butt. (...) Once in clay we sculpted the whole thing, moulding it in fibreglass. That (mould) was used in a lot of (later) movies with different heads!

KNB's other gore tasks included a prosthetic mutilated tongue on Sean Whalen (who also had to wear false dentures), a severed dummy hand, and a human skin mask worn by one of the cellar dwellers, as seen in the image above (but very little in the actual film).

KNB did not handle the mechanical dog effects for shots where killer rottweiler Prince was depicted by a puppet. Instead the task fell to Robert Clark and his 'Roark Productions'.

According to the credits, Camilla Henneman, Rimelle Kerr, Mark Goldberg, Jim McLaughlin, Mark Goddall and Kent Jones handled the mechanical dog effects for Clark as well.

I haven't yet found any behind the scenes photos of the rottweiler puppet; it would be great if anyone could reach out about it, if they have any images!

The Prince puppet in the film. 

 

Sources:

• 'What Lies Beneath: The Effects of People Under the Stairs' featurette.