Since the mid-70’s Tom Savini has left his mark on everything he’s been associated with. From stuntman, makeup genius, monster maker, director, photographer, etc, the Godfather of Gore has earned his front-runner spot on the blood-stained slab of horror’s most influential people behind the scenes and on camera. Making ‘80s zombies come back to life and stalk shopping malls, blowing up everything in sight and slowly ripping people apart was just the beginning.
Savini’s talent for creating skin-ripping repulsion as a master of special effects matches the energy and creativity brought to any of his on screen characters.
It’s a cinematic journey through celluloid that started with a mid-‘70s summer’s Deathdream, to current day Creepshow and 2020’s Pandemonic. Director Jason Baker’s life-spanning documentary Smoke & Mirrors: The Story of Tom Savini tells the story of the master from early single digits to modern day shaman of the macabre.
Director, Savini student and sometimes actor Baker has taken a different approach to the man known to vampire fans worldwide as Sex Machine. Smoke & Mirrors shines a more personal light on the story of Savini, guiding the audience from childhood, teens, college, Vietnam to eventual filmmaking and everything hence forth. Baker, with Savini’s blessing had his personal library of home video footage to choose from telling the tailored story of the man who would be the zombie-kill torch bearer, decades before they walked on TV.
Though Baker jokingly describes himself as more of a Savini sidekick than die-hard fan and disciple explains the initial direction he wanted the documentary to go. “I met Tom, thought he was a really interesting person with a really intriguing story and was surprised no one had done it from the angle we did. There have been countless documentaries on Tom and his effects but no one’s ever done anything on the person. That was the story that really intrigued me, knowing more of who he is as a person.”
Baker takes the audience on a life journey from Savini’s childhood to modern day, “I sat down and told him, I wanna tell the story about the guy who threw a bunch of blood in the Monroeville Mall and made sure his daughter was up for school the next morning, not just the guy that threw a bunch of blood. There are lots of single mom stories, but not a lot of single dad stories. That intrigued me. Here’s Tom doing all this as a single father. You watch his home videos from the set of From Dusk Till Dawn or Night of the Living Dead and he has his kid with him. To me that’s so original and unique. How do you balance personal life plus professional career? This industry, this career absolutely consumes your life. For Tom to be able to do that and raise such a wonderful person is a testament to the wonderful human he is.”
While the documentary interviews several iconic and veteran genre figures, family are also given the spotlight along with Savini himself telling personal stories of early family events, parental memories and fun on set moments. For all his work behind the camera, this is Savini the boy, man, student, soldier, husband and father.
The footage from his personal collection was an absolute godsend for Baker painting a truly touching, genuine narrative of his life struggles, triumphs, fears, success’s with intimate family details along the way. “Tom’s been a shutterbug his whole life. From the time he was a kid. I think his family members were too. He’s got home footage going back to the 1950’s when Tom was (a child), running around the neighborhood with his family, all the way to today.” He’s always loved anything with a lens. The vast amount of B-Roll really helped tell the story of the man behind the blood.
Some really cool scenes include him walking past the building that formally housed the theater he went to watch monster movies in as a kid. Another story of his mom letting him sneak back downstairs after bedtime to watch horror movies on the B&W TV showed the early influences and ingredients that would eventually shape the Godfather of Gore.
The building where Savini’s FX school stands was a former nunnery, a very unique change of occupants indeed. The surrounding area gives clues that it was part of a much larger compound. One can only wonder if the building remained blessed when the Sisters and students left and the blood, guts and monster masks came in, literally heaven and hell so to speak.
In the ‘80s he gave more than a fair share of kids and adults nightmares from his monstrous creations, after all his job in FX WAS to scare people. He may have even been an unwitting, behind the scenes part of the satanic panic of the decade when parents, politicians, journalists and church groups took up their witch hunt, pulpit bashing crusade against metal music and violence and gore in horror movies.
Baker thinks and hopes the show will help demystify Savini to anyone who still thinks he’s some evil, demented madman responsible for creating nightmares for impressionable children. “I think Tom gets a bad rap from people who trash him. He’s the farthest thing from it, one of the nicest humans I’ve ever met. Prime example, while shooting we went to South by Southwest. Tom let us tag along while he was filming. They’re supporting Robert Rodriguez for the From Dusk Till Dawn TV series. We go to dinner. I break a tooth biting into a bone on some BBQ. Shatter it. It’s killing me, what do I do? Tom gets on the phone, finds a dentist. Says come on we’re gonna get that fixed and pays out of pocket to get my tooth fixed while we’re in Texas. I mean, who does that for another human? We didn’t know each other at that point. Yeah, that sucks, don’t worry I got ya. He’s a great guy in my book.”
From the practical effects he helped create, to the most modern digital tools, he’s embraced it all. “I don’t know anyone who hasn’t. Visual effects to me are now as much a part of filmmaking as sound and camera. I’ve seen visual effects in movies that you wouldn’t even know happened. I think visual effects makes physical effects job a lot easier and Tom completely agrees with me.”
Prime example, Day of the Dead when Captain Rhodes gets ripped apart, he says we could only have done that one time, one take, one shot. We had to make sure it was right. If we didn’t, that’d been a 24-hour turn over before they could shoot it again. Now he’s like, I wish I’d had visual effects back then. You talk to someone like Greg Nicotero who uses visuals for The Walking Dead where they practice blood gags and digitally erase them. You don’t have to spend time putting prosthetics together on somebody, clean up then reset. Visual effects are as much a part of filmmaking as anything else is.”
Deranged was an early project that Savini did makeup on. The movie was said to be one of the most realistic portrayals of the life of Ed Gein, though not officially about him. “The first Ed Gein movie? If I was a gambling man I’d say yes. I don’t know for sure. Technically Psycho’s inspired by Ed Gein.”
Deathdream was Savini’s first movie, “It’s about this guy who comes back from war and he’s essentially a zombie, it’s pretty messed up and cool.”
Baker says Savini just directed an episode of Creepshow recently and acted in Locke & Key and NOS4A2. “He’s working with us on The Black Phone for Blumhouse and helped us with all the WWE stuff. Tom’s a little bit of everything, he never stops.” Baker’s done seven Wrestlemania’s in a row so far to Savini’s eight.
Baker’s association with Savini started with wrestling. Baker dressed Hulk Hogan up like a pirate at last year’s showcase of the immortals. ”It was pretty surreal and I got drunk with Stone Cold Steve Austin. That was pretty awesome. That wasn’t with WWE. I was working with The Misfits, they were on tour and the whole six degrees of separation where the singer and guitarist Jerry Only knew Stone Cold. We were in the area so we went and met up to sample it and next thing I know it’s one in the afternoon and I’m trying to keep my composure and stay as professional as possible. Stone Cold kept feeding us beer then left to the show. By 4pm I’d sobered up, felt horrible and wanted to die. It was the best worst day of my life. By noon I was riding high and by 6pm I just wanted to find a casket and climb inside.”
He got a stunner without getting a stunner, “Yeah, it’s a really good beer. It’s just, when you just finished your morning coffee and someone hands you an IPA, it’s gonna be one of those days. He’s a great guy, and Jerry and The Misfits are really fun people, amazing to be around, had so much fun working with them.”
Smoke & Mirrors begins with Doug Bradley in black and white on stage doing a program intro. “It was Frankenstein, we just reworded it. Doug’s a really good friend of Tom’s. He was willing to do it and it worked out great.” One can only hope at some cinematic point he reclaims dominion over the box.
About four years ago Baker and Savini teamed with another area effects group Tolin FX to recreate the pinhead makeup on Bradley for a photo shoot. “That was an absolute blast. I got to do the Pinhead makeup on Pinhead. I can retire.”
Smoke & Mirrors identifies Man of a Thousand Faces as the movie that gave Savini his first glimpse behind the camera of creature creation. “That’s what Tom says, he loved monsters when he was a kid. He saw Man of a Thousand Faces in the theater. Wait, someone actually makes this stuff? It was a mixture of that and discovering Famous Monsters Magazine. Those two things lit the spark and Tom was off and running from there.”
One of the documentary’s darker parts is the discussion of Savini’s time stationed in Vietnam and gruesome images taken as a war photographer. In a weird yet tragic story he has a duck to thank for saving his life, one night to the next. “It’s insane, the insanity of war. That one little instance totally changed the trajectory of his whole life.”
Though Baker was an infant when the first few Friday the 13th movies came out, the one’s Savini worked on were heavily cut by the Motion Picture Association and targeted by parents for excessive violence, gore and killing teenagers. Though his other movies are among Baker’s favorites, “Three of my favorites were Creepshow, the remake of Night of the Living Dead and From Dusk Till Dawn. I didn’t know, growing up, Tom had worked on all three. I was an excited kid watching monster movies. When I found that out, oh shit, there’s Sex Machine directing Night of the Living Dead, who knew?”
Due to personal reasons Night of the Living Dead was not a good experience for Savini. “I couldn’t imagine going through a divorce while directing a feature film. The movie still came out amazing. Tom was having one of the worst times of his life and still made an amazing movie. He likes it now but for years he hated it. He couldn’t separate from his personal experience.” Later in life he watched it and realized how much people love it. Baker gives it high praise and has lost track of how many times he’s watched it.
Sid Haig makes an appearance , “I knew Sid but not as well as Tom. Doug Bradley and his wife were really good friends with him. Sid was Sid, a wonderful guy, really funny. Hilarious person to go have dinner with or talk about whatever with. He never bullshitted you, told you the truth, straight to your face, even if you didn’t want to hear it. A genuine person, people like him are a rarity these days.”
In the MTV era Savini worked on and off camera on the Alice Cooper/Dee Snider video “Be Chrool to your Schuel” which was initially banned for the time for violent content. “You watch the video now and it’s kinda corny.”
Baker’s also worked in the realm of metal making masks for Slipknot’s Corey Taylor. “It was for Corey’s run for the We Are Not Your Kind album. Slipknot usually does masks every album. We had the opportunity to do Corey’s.” Taylor’s was unique using translucent silicon which led to a more creative creation process.
Living on the west coast, he has chilling childhood memories of predators from the depths and deep forest. “Jaws The Revenge scared the hell out of me and I know that sounds corny because that movies so bad. To be fair, I saw it when I was 4 or 5, I think my parents rented it and I threw it in the VHS, didn’t really know what it was.” Jaws taking its first victim in the movie traumatized him. “Jaws and Jason got to me because I grew up north of Seattle. I was always either on the ocean or the woods. If Jaws doesn’t get me Jason will. When I was 5 or 6 the first Childs Play came out. I had a My Buddy doll that went right into the garbage. I love My Buddy, then Chucky came along and said by the way, you’re My Buddy’s gonna murder you.”
People still love the Slashers and the ‘80s, “They’re types of Americana. I was at Disney the other day on the Haunted Mansion ride with my wife and daughter. This ride’s like 60 or 70 years old. People still love it, Space Mountain or Mr. Toad. Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride sucks but it’s awesome. I personally love it. The story of a frog drunk driving going to hell’s the most bat-shit insane thing ever. There was like a 20 minute wait in 2021. There are things that become staples of Americana that people love and hold dear. I think a lot of the slashers go back to that mindset, that fun. You get your buddies together and watch them or the younger generation, who got them on VHS, almost a dare for everything to go to a room and watch it together.”
Visiting the local video store, rent the scariest movie and sit in a dark room pretending not to be scared. “You didn’t sleep for the next three days because Leatherface was gonna come chop you up in your bed. As fucked up as it is, watching this mongoloid wearing a hockey mask slaughter this 16-year-old, reminds me of home.”
The studio just assisted on The Black Phone this year coming in February. “It’s based on a short story by Joe Hill. I think there’s obviously a bit of realism to it. It’s mid-late ‘70s. Ethan Hawke plays the killer.”
On the poster the killers mask resembles Blade from Puppet Master. “I can see that.” It’s been years since I’ve seen Puppet Master. Funny story, I used to watch it with my best friends grandmother and him. Every time we visited her, she’d rent it. She had a thing for Puppet Master and was the coolest grandma ever.”
For dedicated fans and collectors, Savini just released a self-titled book and they just did a live adaption of Ed Piskor’s Red Room comic with recent work on Hip Hop Family Tree.
Smoke & Mirrors is streaming on Shudder and coming to On Demand in early 2022. Savini and producer Rob Lucas like the finished product with good reviews and positive fan response so far. “It’s everything I wanted, I’m really proud of it. I’m grateful to Tom for the opportunity and my first film. I learned so much from it and look forward to taking everything I learned toward whatever my next film is.”
Smoke & Mirrors is the definitive Tom Savini documentary and must see for all fans. Who knows, someday it might be a young kid’s Man of a Thousand Faces influencing blood-dripping, splattering, practical/digital generations to come.
