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LORD OF GOREJason Arnopp talks Vietnam, slasher flicks and George A Romero with make-up FX legend Tom Savini...
THESE DAYS, an interview with Tom Savini comes packaged with certain preconceptions. Some say that the groundbreaking make-up and effects guy (turned actor and director over the past decade or two) now turns his nose up at some of the early gore flicks which made his name. I remember someone telling me that Savini disowns The Burning, for instance.This, as I soon discover, is nonsense. Seated in a North London hotel on November 29, 2005, Savini is the very picture of enthusiasm - not to mention zen-like calm - as he discusses all aspects of his career. It's not difficult at all to get him chattering away about his remarkable life. Furthermore, you get the feeling that you can ask him pretty much anything: this man has nothing to hide. So let's get stuck in... Slasherama: You worked in Vietnam as a combat photographer between 1969 and 1970. How did you end up there in the first place? Savini: "I enlisted to hopefully stay out of Vietnam. I enlisted so that I could choose the training. If you're drafted, you're in the infantry, you're in front lines. But when you enlist you have a choice of schools. I was already into photography: I had a dark room and I was processing colour film. I thought it'd be a breeze to just enlist as a photographer. I did learn a lot more about the technical aspect of photography during my 13 weeks of basic training in the Army Photo School in New York. When training was over, we all went into this big room and got our orders at Fort Monmouth. One of my friends was going to Italy; another to Turkey; another to Germany. But my papers said 'RVN'. I went to the sergeant and asked what it meant. He just said, 'Vietnam. Next!'. It was a complete shock. I couldn't believe it. I'd enlisted to stay out of Vietnam, but I must have done well at school, because they only send the best to the war!" Slasherama: Did your stomach drop? Savini: "Yeah, but I wasn't going to back out of it and go to Canada or something, because I'm a man of my word. If I tell you I'm going to do something, at a specific time, I'll do it. Unless there's fire or blood, I'll be there at that specific time, doing it. And I'm disappointed when I don't get that back. Anyway, I went to special training unit, for combat training. They put you in combat situations: you're on a truck, you have a gun with blanks, blanks are being fired at you. It's to get you in the mood for combat. They showed you horrible movies of gun or grenade victims, from World War Two, Korea, wherever. But one of the best things that happened - and I'm using this in a zombie horror movie which I'm going to direct, called Death Island - was that they took us out to a secluded area. You would sit in bleachers - which are seats, like baseball seats - and teach you something. One day, we just sat there for a long time, looking at the woods which were only about 50 yards away. Then a sergeant came out and spoke into a walkie talkie: 'Sergeant So-And-So, move your men'. And the 35 soldiers in camouflage that had been standing there started to move. It scared the fuck out of us, because they'd been standing there the whole time and we did not see them. Camo works! It was a good lesson, but a scary one, because if they'd wanted us they could have had us." Slasherama: So we'll see camouflaged zombies in Death Island? Savini: "The zombie are black African Americans with shaved heads, but they're covered in mud, scars and dirt so they look camouflaged. In Death Island there'll be a scene where our hero and heroine are standing in front of the woods, talking. When they walk away, the 18 zombies now come to life. That'll build suspense, because now you'll never know when the zombies are going to come out. To me, the best scares come from suspense." Slasherama: Back to your army training… Savini: "I was in San Francisco for a couple days before they shipped us over. I went to headquarter camp there and it was like Platoon: dusty, dry and miserable. If you were picked, the morning duty was take the shit from underneath the barracks and burn it. I never went to the formation: I always hid, listening to see if my name was called, because I did not wanna have that duty. And I never got that duty!" Slasherama: What it was like when you first arrived in 'Nam? Savini: "They shipped us there in a big Panama jet. I expected that we'd have to run for cover from the jet, but no. This MP came onboard with pistols on either hip and escorted us off. The place looked like a lovely resort, but that was only temporary. It was the base. There were thirty or forty guys waiting to get on the jet, and they harassed us horribly, saying stuff like, 'You're gonna die, you're gonna take my place, I hope you get shot'. These were the grunts. I said to myself, 'I would never do that to somebody'. Then a year later, we did the exact same thing to the new guys getting off the plane. I have no idea why: maybe it was just off-loading." Slasherama: You've often said you had to turn off your emotions while in Vietnam. Was this because you've be chatting to someone in the morning, only to photograph their dead body in the afternoon? Savini: "No, it was never like that. But I'm sure it'd be like for the grunts out front. They'd watch friends die, right in front of them. I didn't socialise with those guys: you were afraid to. When those grunts came in to HQ camp, after being out in the field for a month, the look in their eyes wasn't like Charlie Sheen in Platoon. It was like they'd seen a ghost, or seen their mother killed. The look in their eyes was scary. They were in another place, in their own world of thought and misery." Slasherama: Tell me something we've never heard before, about your time in Vietnam. Savini: "One thing you've never seen in a Vietnam movie, which I'm gonna use some day - don't steal it! - is the method used to dispose of the Viet Cong. We removed our men immediately, but we would not remove the Viet Cong until maybe a day later, waiting for rigor mortis to set in. So two guys would walk up to the Viet Cong body with cable wire or a rope. One wire went under the head, the other under the feet. Because of rigor, you could then just pick the corpse up without touching it." Slasherama: So what happened directly after 'Nam? Savini: "My next assignment was in Fort Bragg, which is the 82nd Airborne. It's a huge base in Carolina. There were three live theatres there and I became the make-up director there when I got out of the army. I had a very easy job - I replaced a sergeant in the craft shop. I taught people how to process film and sold model airplane parts to officers who flew remote control airplanes at the weekend. I was in civilian clothes, I could grow my hair as long as I wanted and I was in the army. I lived off-base with my wife and they sent me my cheques. It was a breeze, but I had paid my dues and got special treatment. I stayed in that area for eight years after the army because of the theatres. I was doing make-up, playing parts, choreographing shows. I went to Pittsburgh and auditioned at theatre school. They accepted me into the acting-directing programme and got me to teach. Two years into that, I took a leave of absence to do Dawn Of The Dead." Slasherama: How did you feel emotionally after the war? Savini: "It was hard to turn my emotions on again. It killed my marriage and I don't blame her, because I wasn't there. I also fell in love with her best friend. After holding back all this emotion, when it finally came out it was like Niagra Falls. I fell madly in love with my wife's best friend, which only lasted six months because it never should've happened. It was because the flush of emotion coming out of me was overwhelming. I remember looking at a sunset, a year-and-a-half later and crying my eyes out. I think that was the beginning of getting my emotions. Before Vietnam I was this naďve, monster-loving kid, so I grew up fast." 
Slasherama: Weren't you actually slated to do effects and make-up for the original Night Of The Living Dead at some point? Savini: "Yeah. After I enlisted, George was gearing up to do Night Of The Living Dead. When you enlist, you have 140 days, within which they will call you. So that's a long time: I figured I could do the movie. But they called me sooner than George was ready. In fact, I think I was in Vietnam when he shot." Slasherama: How different might that movie have been without your involvement? Savini: "Well, there would have been more illusion and more effects. (Reconsiders) Or *would* there have been? In Night Of The Living Dead, Ben gets shot, people are grabbed… Well, you would have seen some bites and zombies would have been killed in more interesting ways. George lets actors improvise and does the same thing with special effects and stunt guys. That's the whole point of saying, 'We've got another thing. Start thinking of different ways to kill people'. "On Dawn of The Dead, I'd go to George and say, 'How about if we stick a screwdriver in a zombie's ear? He'd think for a bit and he'd say, 'Okay'. Then two hours later we'd be creating the effect, taking soda straws and painting them silver, then cutting off a screwdriver, making a collapsible one… but it was our suggestion. That's the fun of it. It's one thing to take what's in the script, but the real fun is in executing your own ideas. Sometimes the script is explicit, sometimes it's not. In the case of Creepshow, with the creature under the stairs, the script simply said, 'We see a blur of fur and some teeth'. That's all it said. So that was fun. Inventing how to do these effects. On Martin, the stick goes into the guy's neck. George was going to take a close-up of a lamb's neck or something. I said, 'No no, we can drive the stick right in the guy's neck!'. He said, 'Well how are you gonna do that?'. I said, 'Well I don't know. I'll figure it out!" Slasherama: Was inventing gore effects a kind of therapy after the horrors of Vietnam? Savini: "(Thinking to himself) Was it therapy? Maybe there were some joy… but no, I can't honestly say that." Slasherama: Did you feel a ghoulish glee in creating all these horrendous images? Savini: "When I was younger, I was trying to emulate Frankenstein, the Wolfman or the Mummy. I would go to school with half my eyebrows missing, or nose-putty in my hair. I made a terrible mess, until I realized I didn't have to wear the make-up myself: I could put it on my friends. I made them up as burn victims, or suicide cases with slit wrists and then they'd go home. Their parents would scream the place down. 'Who did that to you? Savini? Well, you can't play with him any more'. The gore aspect happened because that's what was presented to me. There was gore in Martin, then in Dawn Of The Dead had massive gore and so did Friday The 13th. Producers who wanted the same success as those movies would hire the same people." 
Slasherama: You worked on 1981's The Prowler, aka Rosemary's Killer. You obviously like the film, as you appear on the audio commentary of Blue Underground's Region 1 disc… Savini: "There's some good stuff in The Prowler. The subject matter is good, with the guy coming back from World War Two. I actually go back to that beach often, the beach that we shot at. It's a gorgeous place called Cape May, with a lighthouse. The whole town is a historical landmark. I go there to revisit where we shot - and of course to enjoy the beach. I discovered that place during the making of the movie." Slasherama: You also handled the excellent effects of The Burning, released the same year as The Prowler. Savini: "The Burning was Miramax's first movie. You would think that they would release that on DVD. I get a lot of requests. It's the Weinstein brothers: one wants to release it, the other doesn't. I don't know who. Hopefully they'll release it, because look who's in it: Holly Hunter, Jason Alexander, Fisher Stevens… and it's got my effects in it. You think they'd release it, with an audio commentary." Slasherama: Did you enjoy filming The Burning? Savini: "The Burning was great fun. They call it a Friday The 13th rip-off, but it was actually written before Friday The 13th. I had just done Friday The 13th, and it was The Burning that I chose to do instead of Friday The 13th Part II. Because Part 2 had Jason in it, and I didn't believe that there should be a Jason. I said, 'I just read your script and you've got Jason running around!'. They said, 'Oh no no, we're going to change that', and of course they didn't. It was just illogical to me that there would be a Jason. But the audience has been trained to be stupid and has accepted the fact that Jason exists. I even cut his head in half in Part IV and he's still there. I stopped watching the Friday The 13th series after Part V, because in Part V even the fuckin' *ashtray* is Jason. His spirit kept invading things (Editor's note: I think Tom's perhaps thinking of Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday here). I saw a bit of Jason X after a showing of Resident Evil. I watched about 10 minutes of Jason X and it was so stupid. But there'll be a Friday The 13th Part 13, I'm sure of it." 
Slasherama: The Burning features one of the slasher genre's most vicious scenes: the raft slaughter. Was that problematic to work on?Savini: "No, it was close to shore. I loved doing that raft scene, because I had to figure out a death for every person. I cut Fisher Stevens' fingers off, Ned Eisenburg was stabbed in the throat, another guy's T-shirt just exploded with blood. It was Peckinpah-ish, in that like Friday The 13th: The Final Chapter, everybody's death happened quickly. You got a subliminal glimpse of it. That was great, leading up to Jason's death in The Final Chapter, because you expected the same thing. But we dwelt on Jason's death, so it made his death more horrific and horrible. When he slides down that machete through his head… we invented that. Actually, I invented the ending in both of those Friday movies. They did not have an ending for Part One. I'd just seen Carrie, which scared the hell out of us when the hand came out of the ground at the end. You thought the movie was over. The music came on, which sounded like end credits. She's walking down the street and goes into the graveyard. The hand coming up scared you. So I said we should do a Carrie ending: have her in the boat, make it seem like the credits are going to roll, then bring Jason up. They said, 'But Jason's dead!' and I said, 'No, it's a dream!'. Throughout history, if you know movies, you can get away with anything, as long as you show it's a dream. Even if you show it's a dream before you show the stuff, the audience will love it. They've used it endlessly on TV: there was a whole season of Dallas which turned out to be a dream. And people accepted it! It's preposterously stupid, but they do! So I came up with that ending, then they didn't have an ending for Part IV. One day, one of the guys from my crew took the Dawn Of The Dead machete and put it on his head. I said, 'That's it! We'll smack him in the head, then have him slide down the blade'. Then we worked out how to do it. You could do it with CGI today, but of course back then you could only do it with a mechanical Jason. "That's the thing about all my stuff: it's happening right in front of you. I get the CGI question a lot and I love CGI when it's done well. It actually makes my job easier now, but you have to change your mindset when you're watching CGI. It's not like American Werewolf In London, where it's happening right in front of you. You have to pretend it's happening and that's part of the collective distaste for CGI. People don't *want* to have to make an effort. They don't want to pretend: they wanna see it happen. I had a big problem watching Jurassic Park. To me, the dinosaurs weren't there. Some guy at a computer was creating the dinosaurs. So I had to get stoned and tell myself that no matter what I saw in the frame, it was really there. Then I enjoyed the hell out of it. So I'll have to go and see King Kong stoned, in order to enjoy myself. Future generations won't have to do that: they'll just accept it. But we grew up seeing things happen, right in front of us." 
Slasherama: Friday The 13th: The Final Chapter had some of the series' most effective murders: my personal favourite is the death of Axel the morgue attendant, whose head gets twisted 180 degrees… Savini: "I was very proud of that. That was Bruce Mahler, a comedian. Crispin Glover was crucified too and got the screwdriver in the hand and the meat cleaver in the face. That was going to be the last movie, but it made so much money… Still, I got to kill Jason. Or so I thought…" Slasherama: For many years in the UK, The Final Chapter was cut: Jason's machete death in particular was trimmed. Savini: "Really? So how did they kill Jason then? They just cut to the kid beating him? So did you know there was more, or did you just accept that as Jason's death?" 
Slasherama: Most horror fans probably knew there was more, thanks to Fangoria or something. Let's talk about your effects work on 1978's seminal Dawn Of The Dead, good sir. Savini: "(Smiling) I ignored the effects on Dawn Of The Dead. I had just seen Star Wars and spent most of my time creating a Darth Vader costume for myself. When I should have been preparing Dawn Of The Dead, I was in my basement sculpting Darth Vader. I took my Vietnam helmet to use as the Vader helmet. I had to be Darth Vader for Halloween and I couldn't buy the costume anywhere, so I made my own. It was very heavy: in fact the whole face was a solid block of foam. I had to carve the foam out to get it on my head. But I built the electrical belt with the lights, the cape, the big boots… I *was* Darth Vader. I won every contest." Slasherama: …While you should have been working on a groundbreaking zombie flick? Tut tut. Savini: "Yeah. I mean, occasionally I'd bring like Jim Krut in to cast his head for the helicopter effect. Or build a rubber hammer or something. Because there really wasn't much to build for Dawn Of The Dead. I already had a latex chest that could get torn apart for the intestines. I had hammers and bullet hits. For the exploding head, I built one and blew it up with a shotgun. We did cast Gaylen Ross' head, for the first ending, in which everybody dies. Gaylen Ross jumps into the helicopter blades, Ken Foree shoots himself in the head. But George decided to have an up ending. So I had Gaylen Ross' head, so I made it like a black man with an afro hairdo, then blew it off with a shotgun." Slasherama: So that head explosion was one of last things shot for Dawn? Savini: "I don't know. I don't have a chronological memory. I know I did this stuff: I just don't know when! In fact, when I wrote my books (Grande Illusions I & 2) I had to call Greg Nicotero and ask, 'Did I do Monkey Shines before Texas Chainsaw 2?'." Slasherama: How was working on Romero's next zombie flick, 1985's Day Of The Dead? Savini: "It was two months of never seeing the sun, but it was great fun. Romero's films are a family affair. We would do 'spit-takes' in the restaurant in the hotel: a spit-take is what happens when your mouth is full, then someone cracks you up and you spit it all out. We would wait for strangers to go by. My friend and I would be in the jacuzzi. We would purposefully wait for strangers to get in the jacuzzi and have this conversation about how long we could hold our breath for. I'd say I could hold my breath for half an hour, then go down and breath off the air jet that was coming in. We'd be down there forever and the stranger would be freaking out, looking to call somebody for help! But on top of all that fun we were making monsters and special effects. I won an award for Day Of The Dead. I wasn't there in France when I won it and I don't even know what it's called, but it was an award, anyway. That film is my masterpiece of splatter: my best work." Slasherama: Did you like 2004's Dawn remake? Savini: "It's not a remake, it's just more Dawn Of The Dead. A new Dawn! In the new one, there were some terrific zombies, but they were all fast and ugly, so you didn't get to see much of them. In the original, you saw specific zombies. I liked the new one, although the whole ending was very confusing. I also tuned out on the whole 'fast zombie' thing, because I know what George's philosophy is: they're dead and will continue to die, rot and wither. They don't gain superhuman powers. But I have to like it, because I'm the sheriff on the TV screen. That was a great opportunity and I get a lot from that." Slasherama: Let's clear up the situation once for all, regarding Nightmares In A Damaged Brain. Your name is in the credits as effects guy. How do you plead? Savini: "Didn't do it. Not guilty. They put they name on the credits - surrounded by a box. Not even Marlon Brando gets a box around his name! They put a box around my name, and I was doing Creepshow at the time. I was aware of it and called them. They actually called me back and said, 'If we come down and show you the movie and you like it, can we leave your name on it?'. I said, 'No'. Then they offered to pay me $25,000! I said, 'No, I didn't do it. Just get my name off that thing!'. I should have taken the money, because my name's still on it anyway." Slasherama: What do you think of the movie? Savini: "(Struggles to be diplomatic for a moment, then gives up) No… it's terrible. They did put pieces of my tape over my name on the posters, in New York, but I had fans calling from drive-in theatres, telling me my name was still on it. What could I do?" Slasherama: You could have sued. Savini: "Back then I could have, but I had no time. I was enormously busy on Creepshow and couldn't do anything." 
Slasherama: Now, we know you did 1980's wonderfully sleazy Maniac. How was that?Savini: "I got no money for Maniac: I think it was 5000 dollars. But I had just finished something in the area, which might have been The Prowler or The Burning. Bill Lustig came to the set and said, 'We've got this movie with Joe Spinell from The Godfather'. For me, I just wanted to live in New York for a month and two: and I did end up living there for two-and-a-half months. They took care of me and I wound up doing all the effects, creating stuff from scratch, almost. There was no prep time. "I was enamored with Joe Spinell, because he was in The Godfather and Rocky. But he wanted to do things to women that I refused to create. He wanted to bite things off women…" Slasherama: Nipples? Savini: "Clits. So I said, 'No, we can't do that!'. But I got on with Joe famously. He took me to the set of Nighthawks, that he was shooting at the time. He introduced me to Sylvester Stallone. I don't drink, but I had to go to these bars with him, where he'd be drinking and smoking and carrying on, telling jokes. I loved him, he was a great guy. The sad thing was, that after Maniac, some interviewer was asking me about the movie. And I said the movie was trash. That was something that Bill Lustig or Joe would have said. The subject matter was trash. Well, they interpreted it as me saying that the *people* on the movie were trash and that I didn't like them. And that rumour lasts even to today. People ask, 'How come you didn't like the picture?'. Joe Spinell was later doing a Tales From The Darkside that I was directing. I walked past his dressing room and he was mad as hell! 'Why are you saying these things about us?'. And I couldn't get him to believe me. So that's why, on the Maniac audio commentary, I made a special point of explaining that whole thing." Slasherama: How did you take criticism of Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, on which you handled effects? Savini: "Criticism? That's one of the fan favourites. That's a cult classic: people love it. There are phone-answering devices that speak like Chop-Top, saying, 'Lick ma plate, you dawg dick!'. You can get that to answer your phone. That's some of my best work there, too. I got to create the new Leatherface and the grandpa make-up. Tobe Hooper couldn't believe it. In Part One, they had this cheap latex thing. This guy was like Dustin Hoffman in Little Big Man, so Tobe loved that. We got to choose the actor who played grandpa, so we chose someone very skinny with sunken eyes. A Vietnam vet, in fact, who still had agent orange damage behind his ear: wounds that would never heal. We had to make him up around the wounds. I had a great time on that movie." 
Slasherama: You also did one of my favourite action movies: Invasion USA with Chuck Norris and Richard Lynch.Savini: "That was fun, it was in Florida. We shot in Miami, in Okiechobie, which has one of the highest concentrations of AIDS in the country. And then Atlanta, Georgia. I did the head-hits, I did the coke-spoon thing up the nose, the knife in the hand. You know, simple stuff. I got to hang out with Chuck Norris, who had Bruce Lee stories. There was this little Cuban, Puerto-Rican guy who kept hanging out with us at the effects lab. He would ask us lots of questions about effects: he was in the movie, with a white suit and hat. We were friendly, but I never engaged him in a long conversation or anything like that. I just thought he was a local, Spanish guy. When his part was done - I shot him in the head on the boat full of immigrants - and he left, Joe Zito said, 'Do you know who that was? That's Angel from The Wild Bunch!'. Fuck! I had a thousand questions I could have asked him, about Peckinpah, about the movie, about the effects! I didn't recognize him because he was so small. "That happened to me once in Hollywood, when I went to the premiere of Dawn Of The Dead. I was with Greg Nicotero. This kid who looked abot fourteen walked up to me, saying, 'Hey Tom, I met you in Ohio, you remember?'. I said yeah, because I'm nice to everybody. But I wasn't overly chatty because I was going off with Greg. After we walked away, he said, 'Do you know who that was? That was Bryan Singer!'. Again, it was like fuck! Have you seen pictures of that guy? He looks like a fourteen-year-old kid!" Slasherama: In 1990, your directorial remake of Night Of The Living Dead hit shelves. I understand it wasn't the finest of experiences for you… Savini: "That was the worst experience of my life! George wasn't there. It would have been a blast if George were there. We would've had fun and hashed things out like we always do. He would have been on my side and been supportive. But he had to go to Florida to write The Dark Half and I was stuck with these two idiots, who will remain nameless. People who thought that they were Orson Welles, with big egos. They were assholes. I put the storyboards in my book Grande Illusions 2, because I wanted the world to know what I had intended to do. That movie was 20 or 30 per cent of what I inetneded it to be. I had a whole Lolita ending planned for Harry and Barbara. It was suspenseful stuff. So I told myself that I'd put the stuff I didn't get to do on Night Of The Living Dead in whatever my next project was - even if it was a romantic comedy! So I got to do a pilot for a TV show called The Chill Factor and I did put some stuff in that." Slasherama: Did the experience of Night put you off directing? Savini: "No, because I had already done three episodes of Tales From The Darkside and those were a joy. I was totally prepared. I shoot stuff on paper first, because it's not costing you any money to make mistakes. I put 800 storyboards of Night Of The Living Dead on the wall of my office. Whenever I had a meeting with someone, whether it was the costumes, set design or George, I could go through the whole movie and say, 'Here's what I intend to do'. When George saw it, he said, 'You've got an eight-week movie on the wall and you only have six weeks to do it. So even he started cutting stuff. He cut the whole bit with Tom catching on fire at the gas pump, before we started shooting. He said we wouldn't have time, but my attitude was: how do you know? That effect was cut in lieu of dialogue, but I feel that you don't go to a movie to see people talk - you go to see stuff happen. Unless it's My Dinner With Andre, or something. So to cut action for dialogue just didn't make sense to me." Slasherama: Your Night remake got some bad reviews… Savini: "Actually, I didn't see any bad reviews. I was sent reviews from all over the country and they were great. Only one guy picked up on the sign on the house that they were in: I wrote 'M. Celeste' on the name tag. To me, the house was the Marie Celeste: they go in and a cigar's smoking on the ashtray, but nobody's there. I had tons of that stuff planned, but didn't get to do it. As it turned out, it's a straight-laced remake right up until the end when you get a little bit of a sequel. They didn't even want to do the thing at the beginning, with the guy in the suit coming towards Barbara and the whole split with him in the coffin. All those little things that made it different - the thing with the first guy in the cemetery *not* being a zombie, that's me, misdirecting. Using what you expect, because you've seen the original and not giving it to you." Slasherama: That's what good remakes do - use your expectations to pull the rug out from under you. Savini: "Yeah. That's what I did do in the first five minutes, but then it became a tedious nightmare. People who I thought were my friends were stabbing me in the back. George was lied to constantly on the phone in Florida and would dictate things back that affected me and what I was doing. In fact, I went to his house and told him that he was being lied to. It hurt me that he would believe these people, who he'd just met, instead of someone he'd known for a long time." Slasherama: How did it affect your relationship with George? Savini: "We didn't speak for years. George and I were totally at the end of the friendship. Years later, I invited George over for Christmas. He was very apologetic and I was apologetic. I said, 'George, there's a letter in my mind I've been meaning to write you' and he said the same thing. So we kinda got together, talking-wise, *because* these DVDs were being released of movies we had worked on, and they wanted both of us on the audio commentary. We would always go to George's house for the commentary. So maybe in a way he was forced to have me in his presence again. But it wasn't as social as it had been. We didn't go to dinner or invite each other to houses. It had a lasting effect. Only recently have we got back to being chummy." 
Slasherama: If your relationship hadn't slipped a couple of notches, might you have done 2005's Land Of The Dead?Savini: "Uh… I originally had a bigger acting role in Land Of The Dead. I was gonna play one of the characters. Then Universal said that since I was in the remake of Dawn Of The Dead, I couldn't play a character in Land Of The Dead. So what did George do? Something he's never done before: he never repeats a character in his movies. Land Of The Dead is the first time that a character from a previous movie comes back. I play my character from the original Dawn, Blades. People said that when I came out, they would cheer. Quentin Tarantino said that what I wore in Dawn Of The Dead was obviously iconic to people, because they would cheer when they saw Blades. I just hope the producer saw that!" Slasherama: Why didn't you do the make-up and effects on Land? Savini: "I was doing the make-up and effects on Land at one point. I had discussions with George about it while we were doing the commentary on some movie - it could have been Martin, I don't know. But we talked about the effects and I suggested that there's only so much you can do to a person to make them a zombie: the face, the hands, etc. I suggested that we create some CGI zombies, where if the brain is still intact, the zombie exists. I used the example of the zombie in Day Of The Dead, who was lying on the slab and was just a brain. Imagine *him* walkin' around. Or a big hole throughout somebody. I said we should have eight special CGI zombies. But then I just pulled out of it. Even if I'd been hired to do the movie, I would have hired KNB to do the effects and worked with them as a consultant. So up until the last minute I was going to have a consultant credit, but… it's Greg's gig. There were no CGI zombies and my ideas were not in it. It's Greg's and it's great." Slasherama: But why did you pull out? Savini: "Well, I'm concentrating on acting and directing. If you're gonna do that, then it has to clean-cut. When I get effects jobs these days, I turn them over to my students at my school. It's great for the students, it's great for the school and it's great for producers' budgets. When you come to my school, you're almost guaranteed that you'll work on a commercial or a movie. You'll get on a film set sometime. That has now led the person who owns my school to start a film-making curriculum, with my name on it. We were gonna use George, but his wife at the time wanted way too much money. It's crazy, because then he put his name on Jack Russo's school… which failed. It's gone. The reputation speaks for itself! But who knows, we might still hook up with George. So we're starting a film-making school as well. These guys who come in to do make-up and effects, they all wanna work on movies anyway. So we might as well start a film-making programme and they can do both!" Slasherama: At what point did you start to put more emphasis on your acting career than making people's heads explode? Savini: "Well, when I was getting more acting jobs. People were calling me about playing parts. Even with George, I tried to play parts on movies I was doing effects on. It led to more and more parts, and led to me *just* playing parts, like on Knightriders. I think that my intention subconsciously, my whole life, was to use make-up effects to get in the door as an actor. Because as an actor you've got so much competition. But if I was playing parts in movies I was doing effects on, I could maybe get a name out there and get established. I get tons of offers as an actor, and they also want me to consult with their make-up crew so they get my name twice." 
Slasherama: From Dusk Till Dawn, in which you played Sex Machine, must have been a turning point with your acting, in terms of people taking you seriously.Savini: "Sure. There are people who walk up to me at conventions, asking, 'Have you been in anything before From Dusk Til Dawn?' They have no idea about Dawn Of The Dead or Chainsaw Massacre 2. But that doesn't surprise me. I actually heard a guy ask her dad if Paul McCartney had a band before Wings! But the lucky thing for us, is that movies we did 20 or 30 years ago are now being released on DVD, and fans think they just happened! It keeps out names out there and keeps us in their minds. I mean, we did these things two lifetimes ago!" Slasherama: Have there been any low-budget films you wish you hadn't accepted? Savini: "Oh, of course. Children Of The Living Dead, Death Foretold… I don't think Death Foretold has hit the stands here yet. It's me and Margot Kidder and I'm in it for, like, 30 seconds. Of course, they've got my picture on the box. They called me and said, 'For the DVD release, can we use your picture on the box?'. I said, 'Well, I haven't seen the movie yet. Send it to me and I'll let you know'. And it was total shit, crap. I said no, and of course the movie comes out and my picture is clearly on the box with my name. On the back, there's a picture of me killing Margot Kidder, which is the surprise ending. So not only do they not know how to make movies, they don't know how to market them. Now, Effects has finally been released on DVD. I'm only in it here and there, but on the box it says 'starring Tom Savini'. So I wonder how Joe Pilato feels about that - he's the star of the film and he's great!" Slasherama: What about Johannes Roberts' Forest Of The Damned? Savini: "That's good. I saw that. But I just did one called Sea Of Dust, where these guys have tried to recreate the look of the Hammer films. And I think they did it - it's a total period thing and it could be *very* good." 
Slasherama: Does anything in today's underground horror repulse you?Savini: "Uh… you'll have to throw suggestions at me." Slasherama: How about stuff like August Underground or August Underground: Mordum? I understand that Fred Vogel, one of the guys behind those films, was a student at your school. Savini: "Oh, we had to fire him. He was making these outlandish, horrible things - stuff like vagina faces. I'm afraid to watch his movies - I don't need to see that stuff. To me, it's weirdness, a sickness. He was a teacher at my school, for a while, sculpting…" Slasherama: Even Tom Savini draws the line somewhere! But I'm impressed that you're obviously still in touch with the horror underground. Savini: "Oh, I go to conventions and stay in touch with the fans. My phone number is listed. People come to my house at 11pm at night, wanting to show me their portfolio. Please, call first though! I'll get a call at four o'clock in the morning from some kid in Australia, who doesn't realize the time difference. But I stay totally open to people. In 1991, I was at a convention in LA and this kid walked up to me. He said, 'Mr Savini, I'm a big fan of yours. I work in this video store on Manhattan Beach and I wonder if you'd mind coming by and signing some of your tapes'. I went, and it was Quentin Tarantino, working in the video store. He probably had the script for Reservoir Dogs in the backroom. But he's hired me three times now. That's why I'm nice to everybody: they might grow up to be Quentin Tarantinos or Robert Rodriguez…" Thanks to Tom Savini for his time. Check out his website here. You can see more of my chat with the great man in the next issue of the UK's Bizarre magazine. [Features Menu] [Back To Top] [Home] © Copyright Slasherama 2005. No part of this interview, or the photograph of Tom Savini, may be reproduced without permission. |