The Crazies
The deadly virus that sets the events of The Crazies in motion has an innocuous name: Trixie. The disease results in a variety of mental and physical symptoms that have a devastating effect on its human victims.
As the filmmakers set about visualizing Trixie and its outward signs, Breck Eisner was adamant that it all had to be grounded in medical reality.
"One of the interesting things about this film is it’s not a zombie movie," says Eisner. "Romero has made several zombie movies, but this was not one of them."
Rather than a horde of brain-eating undead monsters, the 'infected' are sick individuals, each reacting to the disease in unique and often terrifying ways. It is this reality that drove the conceptual design for the look of the various stages of the disease.
Robert Hall of Almost Human, one of Hollywood’s premier makeup effects houses, was given the task of developing the look of Trixie sufferers. He was also required to find medical data to back up his ideas.
"We did a lot of research on real diseases," says Hall. "We would pitch Breck an idea about what one side of the face should look like. He immediately wanted to know what disease the idea came from and how it could be integrated into Trixie. As long as we had medical backup, we had carte blanche."
Creating the look of the Crazies was a time-consuming process, says producer Rob Cowan. "We started by playing around with a number of diseases.
"Once we hit on the core idea, Rob Hall and his group had a field day with it. It was really something to see in person. It was hard eating lunch some days."
Hall’s primary concern was creating something original, but still realistic. "The script references rabies in terms of some of the symptoms and how the virus affects the body," he says.
"We began by drawing on that in a way that wasn’t completely literal. Then we continued conceptualizing based on what Breck liked and didn’t like.
"There was also an interesting idea that the writers included about tetanus," he continues. "Tetanus causes the body to arc off the ground and creates extreme tautness of the neck and the muscles.
"We thought it would be an interesting running theme if the Crazies’ necks were taut and the tendons came up into the face and became blood blisters. In the end, we incorporated an array of real diseases, including Stevens-Johnson syndrome, which is a rare disorder that causes a painful red or purplish rash that eventually causes the top layer of your skin to die."
"The effect that Trixie has on the Crazies," Hall says, "came from the idea that the virus makes them hyper-alive. It’s like life is surging through their veins, creating these pockets of infection. It has to come out, so it comes out the eyes, it comes out the ears."
Hall’s research and imagination reaped spectacular results. "These people truly look sick, which speaks to the incredible talent of Rob and his team," says Danielle Panabaker.
"To see the transformation when someone walked out of the makeup trailer was really impressive."
Fellow actor Radha Mitchell found that the finished makeup gave her a visceral understanding of her character’s plight. "The Crazies were made up in such a specific, realistic way. They are creepy and disgusting. The makeup drives the terror."
Firmly rooting the makeup design in reality adds poignancy to the fate of the infected, says Joe Anderson. "You don’t feel like you’re looking at a monster. You’re looking at somebody who’s got a serious problem. They’re absolutely human beings who are very, very sick."
Hall and his crew also used state-of-the-art techniques to create custom prosthetics for the actors. "The infection spreads so fast, killing within 48 to 72 hours," he says. "It comes on in stages that occur in very rapid succession.
"All the appliances that we used needed to be very mobile, because we needed to be able to mix and match them, for lack of a better phrase.
"For custom prosthetics we took live casts," he continues. "That allowed us to sculpt out individual silicone pieces with all the top muscles accentuated. We put those on each ‘infected’ actor every day, and blended off the edges to make them seem more realistic."
Since the disease progresses so quickly, Hall would sometimes be asked to update a character’s makeup on the fly. "Breck might say, ‘We’re a little bit further along than we were the last time. Can we add another vein here?’
"We had hundreds and hundreds of additional small pieces that basically were made out of the adhesive we would use to glue an appliance anyway. We could add to a makeup within five minutes. It allowed us to be very fluid."
That transfer process is one of the newer techniques that Hall used. "Silicone was sort of the bee’s knees during the last decade, but the transfer is a very big step forward," he says. "It was developed for The Passion of the Christ.
"It takes about 70 percent of the time. I can do a complete road rash arm in two minutes. It used to be every tiny little edge would have to be finessed. But if you’re careful about the placement, there’s no work around the edges."
Although realism was essential, as Hall points out, the best-designed makeup is useless unless the actor can perform in it. "If I can help actors create a character from the outside in, that’s fun for me. Sometimes it’s as simple making sure the actor can turn his head.
"It is my responsibility to make it work. A stiff neck prosthetic can wrinkle and ruin the illusion. If Breck wanted an actor to do a certain kind of move, we made sure he got what he needed."
Crazies is out in cinemas now.