Robert Kurtzman is a special effects makeup master who co-founded KNB EFX Group. A multi-hyphenate in the film and TV industry, Kurtzman is also a director, producer, and screenwriter. His makeup effects are seen in horror projects like From Dusk Till Dawn, Thir13en Ghosts, The Haunting of Hill House, Gerald’s Game, and Wishmaster, which he also directed. During his appearance at Creature Feature Weekend, Kurtzman talked to Scoop about some of his most memorable effects in multiple well known projects.
Scoop: Good afternoon. Have you had a good time at the show?
Robert Kurtzman (RK): An awesome show. We had a great time here at Creature Feature.
Scoop: What has been your most challenging makeup?
RK: Oh god, there’s so many, I don’t know. There were probably two. One, Bride of Re-Animator because she was covered full body. It was, like, ten appliances. It took eight hours to do her makeup. The other one would be Mrs. Massey from Doctor Sleep because it was also a full body that took five hours to apply. It’s because the actors are basically nude while you’re doing it, and you’re covering every inch of their body with prosthetics.
Scoop: Which ones stand out as your favorites or the ones you are most proud of?
RK: Wishmaster, anything in From Dusk till Dawn, and everything in The Haunting of Hill House.
Scoop: Movies like From Dusk till Dawn and Wishmaster have some pretty gnarly gory moments. Are there any effects that you’ve had to pull back on or edit because they got too graphic?
RK: Well of course, but that’s not in our control. Half the time, it’s the ratings board. But back in the ‘90s, we were really hammered on a lot of movies that we would do really extreme kills in and then they would whittle it down to barely anything. So, it happened all the time now. Now it’s a little more commonplace, even on television shows like The Walking Dead and whatever. The gore factor is really high.
Scoop: How were you able to utilize your skills as a makeup and special effects artist differently in the movies you directed?
RK: Well, because I was directing them, I could plan out exactly how I wanted to shoot them with no changes, or if there were changes, I knew how to shoot them as an effects guy. Whereas you work with other directors, sometimes you get set in the way you planned it, and that isn’t how they want to shoot it. They change their minds and then it’s not the best way to feature the gag or the effect. For me, it’s because I’ve been doing it for so many years, I’ve pre-planned and I storyboard the shots and then I know exactly what I’m doing when I get to set.
Scoop: Wishmaster has some great cameos and supporting roles like Robert Englund (from A Nightmare on Elm Street), Tony Todd (from Candyman), Kane Hodder (from Friday the 13th), and a bunch of others. How did those cameos come about?
RK: Well, with the exception of Tony Todd, who I connected with through the writer of Wishmaster, Pete Atkins, everyone else I had worked with before. So it was just me going, “Hey, can I get you in to do a part in the movie?” And I tried to get as many horror genre guys into the movie, you know? So that’s how that came about, it was working with friends.
Scoop: You did great work on Haunting of Hill House, which you mentioned already. Which of those designs did you find the most interesting to do?
RK: Well, it’s the simplest of all of them. The Bent-Neck Lady was the one that stood out for everyone, and there was various, like, three different looks for her. Sometimes she had the mold growing on her, and she had the dead eyes, and sometimes that was just her with the bent neck and her beauty look. I guess the Tall Man or the Bowler Hat Man, because he was on wires and we had to extend his legs and he was floating and couldn’t walk. That was probably the most challenging overall, because he’s in a harness and we had to extend his arms and his legs.
Scoop: How long did it take to make the big alien creature for The Faculty?
RK: I think we had, maybe, 12 weeks to build everything, including the big creature. The big hydraulic creature – we called it the bleacher creature – goes under the bleachers and attacks Elijah Wood. That version – there’s several versions of the whole monster – but that version, we luckily had a mechanical rig that we built for the Violator in Spawn. So, we disassembled some parts of that and retrofitted that to be the monster, which saved a lot of time. With that hydraulic under structure already existing, we redesigned the outer look of the monster over that. So instead of Violator arms, we took that off and hooked tentacles to it. So that really helped. But that was like, you know, a big undertaking regardless, because it was kind of the last big monster that KNB did at the time. Before CG took over.
Scoop: I have to ask about Scream, specifically, the Casey Becker model at the beginning of the film. How do you create those kinds of models based on actors?
RK: Well for that, Drew [Barrymore] came in, we had to do a live cast of her. I don’t think we did a body cast because we had measurements for someone else to play the body. A lot of times we’ll get somebody else the same size to play the body just so you don’t have to put the actor through an entire day of body casting. We sculpted her head and then made a lifelike replica of her. I had worked with Drew before on a movie called Doppelganger years earlier, so when she came in, it was like, “Hey, remember us? We worked together on Doppelganger.” But anyway, that’s how we did that.
Scoop: What are you working on now?
RK: Well, we just had a movie open last night at Panic Fest, and we’re going to go to the premiere in LA next week. It’s called Marshmallow and it’s a cool little summer camp thriller with kids and some horror elements and sci-fi elements. Then we have a movie coming out this year, I think, called Goons. And a show called The Johnny Ryan Project, which is the working title because they haven’t announced the title yet. So that’s all this year, hopefully.
Scoop: Well, thank you so much.
RK: Thank you.
Read about Creature Feature Weekend in last week’s Main Event coverage.
