It was a cold, dark, but at least dry morning on my first day on location in the Novato hills of Marin county, California. With a 5:00 am call time I really felt the part, like a zombie, that is. I'm sure I looked like one, too.
One by one, Dale and his small make-up crew went to work on the 5 of us, as well as on all the supporting zombies. It took hours each day of shooting for them to apply all our appliances (the latex face parts created from the head casts) and make-up. My role for most of the shoot was portraying a zombie named, appropriately enough, "Half Creeper", a living dead being who gets chainsawed in half, midway through the film. Needless to say, this doesn't stop him, although it does slow him down a little.
The chainsawing effect was cleverly accomplished by burying me horizontally with just my head showing and placing a fake torso on the ground in front of me. To heighten the effect, a hydraulic tube was used to spurt phoney blood out as the two sections were pulled apart. Dale had an inspired idea of having the legs run off while this was going on. For this effect he tried rigging a pair of wooden legs (covered with my pants) with wires. To give the illusion of them moving, the wires were operated like a marionette from the tree above. Yes, we were going for humor but the effect came out looking so silly on screen that it was later cut from the film. Some close-up gore effects with mice & guts were inserted in place of it.
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