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DARKMAN The Mask!

Only $150.00

Below is an interview conducted with Jim McPherson via email. Jim is an accomplished character design artist and sculptor who has worked on action figures, statues, and character design for film among other things. Jim's impressive film resume includes films such as Escape from L.A., Army of Darkness, The Nutty Professor, Men in Black, Planet of the Apes (2001), and Gremlins 2 just to name a few.

Jim McPherson works on an intermediate head for the two headed Ash sequence in Army of Darkness. (Picture source)

Q: First off, could you tell us a little bit of your background and what got you interested in working with special makeup effects?

A: I recall being interested in makeup starting with The Munsters. I was very drawn to sculpture at that time mainly from seeing sculpted toys of characters I liked. I had been seeing Monster movies on TV, and eventually found Famous Monsters which is where I learned about Lon Chaney, Jack Pierce, Dick Smith, Rick Baker, John Chambers, and many other pioneering makeup artists.

I came to California and slowly got interviews at the makeup and FX shops. I realized that I hadn't seen some of the current movies so I started to study the films of artists I would be meeting. Not just watching the films but buying more magazines with interviews. 

I eventually got hired at Rick Baker's and did a lot of character design work and sculpture starting with Gremlins 2.

Q: How did you first get involved with Alterian Studios and Army of Darkness?

A: I saw Evil Dead 2 in the theater, and rented the first one. I remember meeting Tony Gardner before he started Alterian. I think that he was working on the miniature power loader for Aliens at Doug Beswick's, but he might remember more than me. I got on board with Alterian Studios on the film Mom and Dad save the World (1992) though the very first thing was the Swamp Thing TV show. I could always see up above in storage all the continuity Darkman heads with all the different types of bandages. Since Tony worked with Sam Raimi on Darkman and Evil Dead 2, Sam had asked him to also work on Army of Darkness.

Q: You worked earlier on Gremlins 2 which was a very large project. Do you feel like you were better prepared to tackle Army of Darkness because of it?

A: Gremlins 2 kind of prepared me for a lot of things but Army of Darkness was substantially faster than almost anything else we worked on. 

Q: How were the sculpting tasks delegated among you and the other artists who worked on Army of Darkness?

A: Near the beginning of our schedule, Tony had asked me if I'd seen The Manster, which I had. I've seen photos of it since. In Famous Monsters there's one with the eye on the shoulder, and some funny pictures of the 2-headed man wearing a trench coat. So I remember that. 

I sculpted the eye coming out of Bruce's shoulder; the lids at least, not the eyeball. That was rigged by Dave Penikas as I remember. I did several stages of the small head coming out of the shoulder. The first one was an actual baby head. The last one was supposed to be stretching with stretchy skin on the neck. I'm not sure what actually was shot at the studio but none of those heads on film have surfaced.

The unused baby head sculpt meant to be a stage of the head coming of Ash's shoulder in Army of Darkness (Picture courtesy of Jim McPherson) 

I did the stretch faces one stage after the other, but I might have done the longest one first. Loren Gitthens had sculpted a long face ghost mask for a Halloween party that Tony really liked and he wanted it to look like that. I put the Bruce Campbell facial structure in though. They had already used the long face design on a monster tree for the "Swamp Thing" TV show and had made a mask of it for the Alterian Ghost Factory. I've said a few times that the mid stage face was based on Fred Gwynne but I didn't use a picture. I did it out of my head.

The mid stage stretched Ash face sculpt by Jim McPherson based off of Fred Gwynne for Army of Darkness (Picture courtesy of Jim McPherson)

For the 2-headed Ash, they did a bunch of expression head life casts for the final stage. I know the one that's smiling is in the movie. I did one with a wide open mouth and at least one grimacing head.

All the heads had eyebrows and hairlines by Becky Ochoa and Max Alvarez and probably hair work by some other talented people also. There's a picture of Bruce Fuller painting all the expression heads, but I think Garrett Immel painted on some of the smaller heads. Once again there were talented people involved. I sculpted the Evil Ash fire mask, the hands for Evil Ash skeleton hands and Ash's "Plastic Man" arms. The arms were actually the same arm turned upside down, to cut down on sculpting, molding, and casting time.

Jim McPherson works on the Evil Ash fire mask sculpt for Army of Darkness (Picture source)

You'd have to ask Tony Gardner at Alterian about why we had certain people do certain things. Later though when I worked on The Nutty Professor, I worked on a lot of the transformation sculpts for Rick Baker, so I guess people feel I have an affinity for it. I certainly do appreciate the opportunities Tony gave me on a bunch of fun movies. I've said in the past that Army of Darkness is one of my favorite things I worked on. It's at least to me very fun to watch, and I really like the dialogue. Other movies I worked on, many I've done more sculpts or more design. So that's good too.

Q: What was the schedule like on Army of Darkness? Was it more of a challenge compared to some of the other films that you have been involved with?

A: The schedule was very fast. We had been doing most sculpts at Alterian in three days but on Army of Darkness, I remember everything being done in 1.5 days per sculpt. I had to think of a lot of ways to save time. I recall setting up a series of stamps and sponges to texture the heads and I even remember using little scraps of clay that had fallen on the table. I chopped those up into fine pieces and kind of patted them onto appropriate parts of the sculpt. That would have been for beard bumps. On the expression heads at this speed, I kept as much as I could from the impression but the stretch faces and transformation heads were done from scratch but the textures still had to match.

Q: Are there any interesting stories that you would like to share about working on Army of Darkness?

A: Bruce saw the stretch face where I had sculpted his moles and the L shaped scar on his chin and he said, "Hey! I try to minimize the flaws or I put blood on them myself." Then he said, "Oh I'll probably put blood on my face again so if the scars aren't on these faces, it won't match so leave it as is." I heard a lot of the time, he liked to put blood on his face himself. I sort of remember he had requests on what materials he liked for his face cuts. But I wasn't there and I can imagine on Army of Darkness his make-up artist did the cuts at least some of the time.

I saw Bruce Campbell, years later on Escape from L.A. I had sculpted the Surgeon General make-up for him and Rick Baker did a test in his office. I went to see what it looked like when he came out and I said, "I worked with you before. I sculpted those stretch faces for A of D." Bruce said, "Then you're responsible for me not being able to eat lunch!" I stammered something and Bruce said, "Well what's important is that it looked good in the movie, so don't worry about it." That was nice.

Bruce Campbell as the Surgeon General of Beverly Hills alongside Kurt Russell as Snake in Escape from L.A. (1996)

Special thanks to Jim McPherson, Tony Gardner, and Aelia Petro for making this interview happen! 

Visit Jim's website