About
G&C

Back
Issues

Store

Press

Links

Contact

Home

back

FAKES OF DEATH

The Horrifying True Story of the Faces of Death 

With SPFX Wizard Allan Apone

Interview by R.S. Rhine

G&C: Say it ain't so! The death scenes on the cult video Faces of Death were fakes?! WTF?! Okay... I guess we always thought some might be fakes, but until now, no one has spoken to the creators of the corpses, Makeup Effects Labs. How did you get hired for the job?

ALAN: I was friends with the director, and he came to me with this crazy project and said, “We are doing a documentary about death, we are going to use mostly real footage, but can you recreate some scenes for me?” I said yes, of course.

G&C: Makeup Effects Labs has been around for over thirty years, but back in 1980 you were hired to make the most realistic death scenes ever shot on film. Which of the deaths in the movies did you create? Which were real and which were faked? How did you make it look so convincing?

ALAN: I don't like to tell in an interview, which is real and which isn't, just because it's fun to hear which scenes other people think are real or not. I will say that the monkey brain sequence is always thought to be real, but we made a replica of the live monkey and made edible brains for the actors to eat.

To read the rest of this death defying interview and see the photo proof: Order this issue now here.