This is an interview conducted with Howard Berger over one phonecall; on May 20, 2012. Howard is the 'B' in 'KNB' EFX Group's title, along with Bob Kurtzman ('K') and Greg Nicotero ('N'), and worked on the make-up effects of both Evil Dead II and Army Of Darkness. You can listen to the raw audio recording of the interview below, or read the edited & formatted transcription further down.
Working freelance on a number of feature films in his early career, since Howard, Bob & Greg formed KNB EFX Group in 1988, they've worked on a huge list of movies & TV shows, including many subsequent Sam Raimi films.
Howard working on Bruce Campbell's evil hand for Evil Dead II (1986)
Evil Dead II marked the first point at which you, Rob and Greg worked together, what had he been doing prior to this and what led you to form your own company together?
Well, just before Evil Dead II I was working for John Buechler, who'd created effects for a number of cheesy horror films for Charlie Band. I'd worked with John Vulich there and I got a call from Vulich saying "hey, I'm working on Day Of The Dead with Tom Savini, and we're looking for some more guys", and I had keenly took the job and had to fly straight to Pittsburgh the next day, but I had to find a replacement for my position at John Buechler's shop.
The day prior Bob Kurtzman had come in to show us his portfolio, he'd just graduated from Joe Balsco's School of make-up in LA. I called Bob and asked if he would like to take my position at MMI and he agreed. I then offered that we go and see a movie that night so we could actually meet, and that's when Bob and I became great friends as there was just chemistry between us and I knew we were going to be friends forever. I went off and did Day Of The Dead and I met Greg Nicotero off the plane. Right away, the same thing, I just thought "I'm going to be great friends with this guy for the rest of my life". When Day Of The Dead ended, I said to Greg "you need to move to LA, and I've got this really great friend Bob Kurtzman", the funny thing was, I'd only hung out with Bob for about ten hours up to that point, but I still considered him one of my best friends.
So Greg moved out to LA and the three of us got a house together, we were room-mates for two years working around town together; at Stan Winston's, Kevin Yagher's, and one of the jobs we got was working with Mark Shostrom. Mark had just landed Evil Dead II, and of course the three of us were very excited because we were all big fans of the original movie. Greg handed all the business breakdowns and such for Mark, and Bob and I were handling design and art along with Shannon Shea and Aaron Sims. It was just this little shop and we all pumped out all this stuff really quick. A short time after Evil Dead II had wrapped, Bob and Greg had gone back to Mark's to supervise Deep Star Six and Phantasm II, and I had moved over to Kevin Yagher's shop working on Robert Englund's make up for Nightmare On Elm Street Part Four, having just completed the Child's Play movie.
Howard Berger's portrait photo (Copyright 2011 Trevor Jansen)
The three of us got together for dinner one night, and I said "we bust our asses all day long, we're running everything for these guys, but we don't benefit on any level; credit, money, or anything. Let's break away, stop working for other people and form a company". Bob and Greg had the exact same idea at the same time, and I'm glad we did. During Evil Dead II the three of us were such a strong presence on set, Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert approached KNB to do Army Of Darkness a few years later.
Bruce Campbell in his possession make-up for Evil Dead II (1986)
Moving onto the production, you are responsible for all of Bruce Campbell's make up effects, can you just give us a brief overview of what that entailed?
It was a huge task, this was 1986 but it was still a garage operation, not like the big effects shops we have today, everything was done by the seat of our pants. When Mark hired us he divided up the tasks; Shannon Shea handled Evil Ed, Bob handled Linda among other things, Mark was handling Henrietta and the Pee-Wee Head, and Greg was the in-between, organising all the scheduling and making sure everything got done within the time and money allotted.
Bruce posing for reference photos (1986)
A replica of Bruce's head (1986)
I handled Bruce's make-ups, which entailed all his Evil Ash looks, the evil hand, the evil mirror twin, which we call the Sid Caesar look, along with a barrage of other stuff.
Bruce Campbell came into the shop so we could life cast him, then I produced a bunch of face positives, sculpted on top of those, cast and painted them all. Sam came in to look at Evil Ash's make-up, we have video of it, I just remember him going "yeah, maybe we can put more of a Witchiepoo chin on it". Even today Sam still uses the phrase Witchiepoo chin. I've just finished on Oz The Great And Powerful, and I kept waiting to hear Witchiepoo chin and finally during the design process he said "maybe we can put a Witchiepoo chin on the witch there buddy?", I thought "oh thank god you said it", I was just waiting and waiting to hear that!
We had a day of test make-ups, we did Rick Francis, Lou Hancock and Bruce Campbell, that was all done at Mark's shop. I remember it all really vividly, all the make-ups were foam rubber back then, and you would do it all yourself, sculpting, breakdowns, sculptures, moulds, running your own foam, painting, etc... It wasn't like the machine the industry has become today with many different departments in a production line. We have a sculpting department at KNB, and those sculptures go to the mould making department, and then the foam department, we just did it each step ourselves.
I think it was a three-month prep, and a three-month shoot down in Wadesboro North Carolina. We all ended up living and working together 24/7. The production had rented this big house which looked at like the Texas Chain Saw Massacre house. It was crazy, no air conditioning, and it was hot as hell. It could have been really miserable, but we always found ways to have a good time. We were young, I think we were just twenty or so and we weren't making any money really, maybe $600 a week, but it was cool. I got to go and work on this movie, work with my best friends. We were just so happy and excited to be working on a movie, and specially film with Sam Raimi, and a sequel to The Evil Dead.
In Greg's footage, Sam can be seen asking you to make Ash's make up more pronounced and outlandish. Obviously you had an initial idea of what it should look like, how sure were you that it would actually come off on screen?
I did a couple of versions that were fairly subtle, Sam came wanted big goggle eyes and Witchiepoo chin, and I went ahead and I revised it and he loved it. That's what he wanted, to emphasise Bruce's features and give him those big sockets. The first time I painted it quite subtlety, he said "no no, bigger". All the make-up was hand-painted, we didn't airbrush or anything like that. I put a PAX base all over the make-up, and then painted everything with rubber mask greasepaint and a stipple sponge. I used a Krylon palette with purple and red inside the sockets to emphasise shadows and yellow for highlights, and painted all the cuts. The dentures I did the old Tom Savini way from his Grand Illusions book. They were built from scratch, not sculpted. I did a couple of sets, uppers and lowers. I took a mould of Bruce's teeth and built up the acrylic gums over that, then I ran individual teeth in acrylic from the mould and inset them into the gums, so they were actually Bruce's teeth, but all crooked and twisted apart. We had Larry Odean do all the big white Sclerals contact lenses for us, obviously everyone was as blind as a bat wearing those.
Howard's initial Evil Ash make-up ideas (1986)
Sam conferring with Howard on his ideas (1986)
It was the 80s, and they were filled with boogidie monsters, so it could be broad it was Evil Dead II. Boogidie is that specific look that 80s monster's have, if you look at anybody; Steve Johnson, Kevin Yager, there is a boogidie myth; veins and discolouration, everything was really bold and really broad. Then it was always acceptable, but nowadays we don't do that. Sam just loves stuff really super broad, look at the Evil Ed, that was a majorly broad make up but it just works fantastic in the movie, and Shannon did a really great job. When we see something like that in a students portfolio, that's 80s boogidie!
Had you seen The Evil Dead prior to this, and what was your take on moving the effects from the more realistic of the first film, to the more outlandish and fantastical of the second?
My girlfriend and I saw the first film when I was still in high school, at a zombie day in this little crappy theatre, the World Theatre in Hollywood. There were three really great horror film's running; The Evil Dead, Zombie, and I think The Beyond.
The Evil Dead US poster (1981)
Zombie US poster (1979)
The Beyond US poster (1981)
I left thinking "man, this movie is cool!" The make-up effects were fine for what it was, they fitted the whole tone of the movie. I had been hearing rumours about a sequel for years, and always thought it would be so cool to work on it. Then when Mark Shostrom got the gig, and Bob, Greg and I got called to work on it, it was a dream come true. We just knew based on The Evil Dead what Sam's sensibilities were going to be. When we read the script we realised it was going to be very similar to the original, just really wacky and crazy, but with far higher production values than the first which was very much a student film.
There is a heavily re-edited TV version which contains a lot of new material, including Ash eating the squirrel along with burning the Book Of The Dead. Do you remember any other plot points which didn't make it onto screen?
I remember seeing it for the first time when we snuck into a test screening in Burbank. I think pretty much everything we shot was there. We did try and tie the beginning in a little more, but that all got muddled up. Evil Dead II to me is obviously a remake of The Evil Dead.
There were some things that we are about to shoot but never did. I remember one day that Sam wanted to have Ash's severed hand flying across the room. We rigged it up on strings, but it looked really ridiculous I hate to say. We went into Rob Tapert's office and said "hey Rob, we're setting up to do something, it seems kind of odd". Rob came down and he looked at it, and just said to Sam "no, we're not shooting this, move on". Rob just thought we were shooting something that obviously was not going to be in the movie, and that was just money out of Rob's pocket. Rob was such a great producer for Sam because he knew exactly when to put his foot down.
The Book of the Dead burning in the fireplace in the Evil Dead II TV version (1987)
The thing is, we would watch Sam shoot things and think "this is crazy, how is this going to work?", Sam is lying on a sound blanket with a Eyemo camera between his legs being dragged through the set, but when we saw the footage we were left thinking "that's great, I never would have thought that would have worked in a million years, but it's fantastic". Sam has such an amazing sense, taking things that shouldn't work and pulling them together. He has that sense of looking outside the box. All through the years we've worked with Sam he's always been that way, he does these crazy things, and wants to shoot things in a very specific way. That all comes from his childhood backyard filmmaking with all those guys; Josh Becker, Scott Speigel, Tim Quill, Bruce and the whole gang.
Bruce Campbell, Sam Raimi & Howard Berger posing on the Evil Dead II set (1986)
How much behind the scenes camcorder footage did Greg shoot in total, and was there ever any issues with you shooting your own video on set?
We always shot video, even back on Day Of The Dead there was always a video camera going. That was the good old days of being able to shoot all you wanted. We didn't have social networks, people were going to shoot something and put it online, nowadays the studios spend millions of dollars on films and they don't want anyone posting unauthorised material. We even ended up giving Sam, Bruce and Rob copies, that footage has proved to be invaluable.
Greg Nicotero shooting behind the scenes footage of Evil Dead II (1986)
Greg had the foresight of shooting with his Betamax camcorder, and captured some of the greatest moments of behind-the-scenes footage ever. He shot hours, I don't even know how much, I have DVDs piled high of Evil Dead II footage. Greg recently took his tapes and had them transferred on to DVD so nothing would happen to them. I make fun of Greg for keeping everything in the universe, he's kind of a make-up effects hoarder to some degree, but in retrospect that's really great because I think it creates a sense of history. Greg has a lot of stuff that he has kept through the years from films we've done, and collected things from other movies too.
As we've gotten older and busier, our responsibilities have grown so much that sadly we don't have the opportunity to shoot as much, also productions are really tight now about shooting photos and videos, although we have it in our contract that we are allowed to shoot all we want for our own purposes, and at the end of the day the productions are always grateful that we do, because they are able to use our material for publicity as we literally have access to everything. I'm glad we took the time, if not it just would have all been lost and people wouldn't be able to enjoy it as they have through the years.
Do you have any memories of your time on Evil Dead II, which you want to share with us?
I wouldn't even know where to begin. It's one of the few films from that long ago that I still remember vividly. It was a great adventure, with every day like summer camp. It was basically bunch of guys that loved monsters and doing make up, and we got to go to North Carolina and work on this crazy ass movie. The first time we did the Henrietta make-up on Teddy Raimi, it was a Polyfoam suit that had a FT89 skin sprayed into the mould, with foam rubber make-up and latex feet. I just remember shooting all day with Ted up in his harness flying around, and on set it was 120 degrees, which is around 50°C. He got sand in his eyes, and was just screaming "ahhh, my eyes are on fire", and Sam was just sitting there going "oh you're okay pal, we'll get you out of there in a second, don't worry about it", and he's up their flying around, spinning around, and sweat is pouring out of the suit, and Ted's saying "no, Sam I've got to get out of this, my eyes are on fire", "oh you're fine buddy, just one more take", and Sam would just keep going and going and going! Sam is notorious for tormenting his actors, he tortures poor Bruce Campbell worst of all. Be it getting hit on the head with a rubber two-by-four or having fake blood shot in his face, it was just crazy on set.
The film was shot inside this crappy High School. We had a little room adjacent to the main auditorium, near the production office. we also shot on the nearby Huntley Estate, which is where The Color Purple was filmed. Everything was still there; Celie's house with Millie's house was up on the hill, we even did our own little movie version of The Color Purple. Evil Dead II and Day Of The Dead were my first two location shoots. It was like going to college, because I just got to make monsters, get paid and goof off. Day Of The Dead was first, which was an amazing experience, and then to do Evil Dead II, what a way to start a career!
Ted Raimi in the Polyfoam Henrietta suit for Evil Dead II (1986)
You mentioned in one of the recent documentaries that Wadesboro in North Carolina was still a little backward at that time, was there anything else to do there but be on set?
The make-up effects team's squirt gun arsenal (1986)
Howard Berger & Greg Nicotero (1986)
The make-up effects team's station wagon (1986)
Mark Shostrom with the Re-Animator Baby (1986)
Wadesboro North Carolina was very backward, and still stuck in the 50s which was quite disheartening. There was a lot of segregation there such as restaurants for whites only. I remember going to the movie theatre, and there was a white entrance at the front and a black entrance in the back. It was very Deliverance like. I remember Bob, Greg and I had to pack really quickly so we just put our dirty clothes in suitcases and left. Once there we went to go and do our laundry. We found a laundromat, and it was kind of dilapidated and without air conditioning, but we started doing our laundry. A black lady came up and said "hey, you boys shouldn't be doing laundry here", and I reply "what you mean?", "well this is for blacks only", "what!?", "Yes, that's where the white people do their laundry", and it was a whole other building. We packed up our stuff and went to the white laundromat instead, which was air-conditioned, with vending machines, TV, and I just thought this was going to be really interesting, because none of that sat well with me of course.
We were at the shop six days a week with sixteen to eighteen hour days, and would only have one day off a week; Sunday. We'd usually drive over early and spend the day in Charleston which was the nearest city that had civilisation with a movie theatre and restaurants, and then head back and then start the week again. Every time we went there we'd go to Toys 'R' Us and buy water squirt guns. They started off small and we ended up with an arsenal of battery-operated machine guns hung on the make-up shop wall. Mike Trcic's wife would get really angry at him that he was spending his paycheck on squirt guns, but we're all just big kids, we'd even drive down the street and fire our guns at people, which of course was highly illegal.
The Re-Animator Baby came about because Mark got this little baby doll. Driving home from Charleston in our station wagon, with Mark in the front seat and Greg driving, and Mark tied a rope to the doll's leg. He had the window open and was playing with the baby, "oh good baby, good baby", and he'd drop it out of the window and the car next was would swerve to avoid hitting it, and then Mark would rope it back in, unbelievably dangerous, and unbelievably illegal. Once the baby's head fell off, we thought "hey, the Re-Animator Baby", and that's when the baby doll deteriorating started.
We would spend days making stupid little movies and having water balloon fights just to keep ourselves entertained. There was a prop assistant, a really nice guy, who was working up on the second floor and we went up there with water balloons and be totally soaked him down. I don't know why we did that, we all thought it was fun, but he started crying. Later his department head came up and said "Will you guys lay off him, because you're really hurting his feelings". I think we were just hoping for reciprocation, that he would then come after us. I still feel bad about that, but we just kept antagonising people so that we would have something to do. I always think of make-up effects people as physically mature 13-year-olds, but we're all kids at heart, I love playing around as much as anybody, I think if you're not having fun it's not worth it. Some of that came from Greg and I working with Tom Savini on Day Of The Dead, Tom is the king of the goof offs, and would encourage us to go and do things during work hours. I'd usually be the one hard at work, when Mark would run through shouting "come on, water fight, water fight", "I've got to get this done, "come on, you can do that later", and we'd go and have a water balloon fight in a parking lot. Once Shannon Shea ran into the bathroom during one of our fights. He'd locked the door, but forgot that there was a little window above him. We went in and just hosed him down, we would spend the whole day doing things like that, like "let's not work today, let's have water balloon fight!".
Were you happy that some of the gory effects had been scaled back in favour of a lower rating?
When I first saw it I remember thinking "they kind of cut that down, or they could this down". We did a lot of blood, but it wasn't a giant gorefest. It was more about the creatures and make-ups, so I don't think I was very disappointed. I felt that everything came across really well. The Evil Ed Chop-top effect which Shannon built didn't get featured, he worked really hard on it. That sequence was reduced to shadow play but that puppet was really neat, Shannon did a really good job with it. I wasn't that keen on how some of the visual effects integrated into the film; the mattes and models, and some of the stop motion stuff was a little dodgy. Luckily that movie lends to that, like its okay to have things be a little dodgy because the film is so tongue in cheek. Overall I was really happy with the movie. Sometimes we'll work on films and go see them and say "what the hell did we waste all that time, energy and money on stuff that's not even in the film", but I think Sam used everything we created to it's best advantage.
KNB's puppet Deadite Army on-set, created for Army Of Darkness (1991)
Moving onto Army Of Darkness, a number of effects teams were involved alongside the KNB EFX Group, including Alterian Studios, Vern Hyde with Gary Jones, Introvision International Inc, Pete Kleinow, and Tom Sullivan. How were the many varied tasks shared out between you?
That was one of the first big films that KNB did which was in 1990, we started the company in '88. Initially, Sam wanted to have Tony Gardner do the entire show, because they had just finished Darkman together, but Rob Tapert disagreed. He wanted KNB to do all the Deadites and character make-ups, with the exception of Evil Ash and the Evil Sheila, which were to go to Tony Gardner. Vern Hyde, Gary Jones and Dave Wogh were also hired to create all the mechanical effects, like the Deathcoaster, so that was never in our corner because that's not what we do. We basically got hired to do a mountain of stuff, I mean it was hundreds of these blow-up skeletons, and all that crazy stuff. We started designing up a storm, we had Terry Prince and John Bisson who ended up producing doing tons of artwork, which we still have. We built all of the skeleton puppets, Bob and Wayne Toth masterminded their creation and how they were going to be harnessed. It was all lightweight and modular, so we could disassemble and reassemble them, and if things broke we were able to put them back together.
One of KNB's puppet Deadites in Army Of Darkness (1991)
Nadine Grycan as KNB's winged Deadite (1991)
We were shooting in Acton for what seemed like a hundred years, we didn't have a big crew, there was Bob and I, Brent Armstrong, John Bisson, Melanie Tooker, Hank Carlson, there was a handful of us. We would shoot during the night and sleep through the day. We'd get up at 2pm, go and eat something, and then to go to set at about 3pm. Our workspace on location was a 40ft truck without air conditioning. We also had pop-up tents in which we could dress the actors. We'd get all the suits and puppets out, and get everything ready. Then people would start showing up, we'd get them dressed, and then Bob and I would wait for Sam to arrive. We'd take Sam through our book of storyboards for that nights shooting. Every night was always the same, if we were looking at a frame from a storyboard with five Deadites, we'd go "Sam so this has five Deadites, is that what you want?", "well how many can we have, buddy?", "Well, we've got forty", "I think I want forty". "Okay, and there's two puppets here", "how many puppets do we have again?", "Well, we've got ten", "I think I want ten, buddy". With Sam, he always wanted everything we could give him.
We would shoot all night and sigh in relief when we could see the sun was rising and sky was starting to turn blue. The nights just felt like they went on forever and ever. Normally we would finish at that point, but sometimes we would look over the parapet of the castle, and see that Sam had the grips constructing a giant black tent in which to shoot further. When we wrapped we went back to the hotel, they would open up the bar for us and we would drink for a while, before we went back to the room and passed out. That was another film where had we made a better set deal, we would be millionaires right now because the hours were so shit! We were just so excited to work on in the film that we didn't care. All of us were on a flat rate, something like $700 a week, but with no overtime it was almost like slave labour. Once our working day ended we would do it all over again. We shot six-day weeks with Sunday off. There was a stretch when we worked without a break for twenty-one days straight. I remember going to see Rob Tapert and said "okay Rob, we're heading on day twenty-one, and we need a break", Rob replied "you know what? I'll be right back, and we'll finish this discussion, just wait here". So I'm waiting and waiting, and I eventually find the one of the ADs (Assistant Directors) and ask "hey, where's Rob?", "oh, right there", and I spotted Rob's car driving away over the hill! We finished the day and then got a day off, but that was the longest stretch, twenty-one days. Our relationships with girlfriends & wives suffered because they never saw us. If that wasn't enough, the production wouldn't pay for hotels, which again is obscene, so we had to rent our own with three of us to a room.
Sam was really clever in his shooting. He'd set up multiple cameras; one camera on the master, one camera searching for footage, with other cameras shooting the master action for background plates. He could get six set-ups with the one take. If only more filmmakers took a cue from that because it saved us all a lot of time and money on set. It just looks better, it's not specifically staged as it's just going on while you're shooting the main action.
At the end of the first week of shooting, we saw the dailies that Saturday, and spotted all the things that didn't work. We found certain things wouldn't stack properly, for instance in some of the Deadite Army shots, the first row was all puppets, and then all make-ups behind those, then all masks beyond that. We asked Sam to re-shoot some footage so we could integrate all the different effects together, so it just doesn't feel like each style is isolated, so we didn't end up with people saying "oh, there's the puppets line, and there's the make up line". Sam would only let Bob and I organise all that because he trusted our opinion. Every day we would get our guys together and arrange where they would be on screen, and then we'd run it past Sam who would either make changes or be happy with it.
For the second half of Army Of Darkness the production moved on to the Introvision stages. We were on those stages forever and ever, so all the weight we lost while we were working hard shooting in the desert, all came back on because all we did was just sit on our fat asses. Greg was ping-ponging back and forth on a bunch of films while Bob and I were out in the desert, but by the time we relocated to the Introvision stages, he was freed up. That is one of the few times that all three of us were on set at the same time once we'd started KNB, I think I'll treasure the last time I was on set with Greg which was on Dusk Till Dawn in 1996, and that's probably the last time that Greg and I co-supervised a film shoot together. Then we went back a couple of times for re-shoots, Sam always likes to go back and do pick-ups, make the film better and better and better.
The advancing Deadite Army in Army Of Darkness (1991)
The shooting script could easily have swallowed up millions in just effects, how did you alocate the funds you were given to create the highest production value on screen?
We just did a lot of free shit, that's all there was to it. They didn't have a pot to piss in and we wanted to work on it. We knew we were going to be working on a cool movie that everybody would love. KNB is notorious sometimes for doing favours, not as much as they used to, but on that show the three of us just agreed. We weren't saying "well, $10,000 will buy you two Deadites and that's all you get", more like "$10,000 will buy you two Deadites, and will throw eight more for free". What another company might have done is arrive on set and have to say "well, this is all you get for your money". We weren't at that position, we just wanted to please Sam, so we just kept making stuff and re-building and rebuilding. I felt it certainly proved to be beneficial, because we're still working with Sam Raimi after all these years whereas other companies aren't, because they didn't step up to the plate and give the director everything he needed. I guess we just looked at it as an investment, and it's an investment that paid off because Sam has been very loyal to us, and we have been very loyal to him. He knows he's always going to get more out of us than what he's paid for. We still do that today if we feel a project needs it, if we can make it that much better.
Bruce Campbell in the castle's pit with KNB's 'Pit Witch' played by Bill Bryan in Army Of Darkness (1991)
It's obvious that you had a lot of fun on Evil Dead II, was the experience the same on Army Of Darkness, or had just become a business proposition by that point?
No, no, no, it was fun, a blast! We still have a great time, trying to find those moments that lighten the day and make it fun, because it's not fun, I don't want to do it. I try not to stress out, obviously I worry about things, I want everything to be as great as can be and never ever disappoint the client. It was just way more exhausting, you do five months of night in the desert, that's murder, man! We were in Acton which is in the middle of a desert, with one hotel and one crappy restaurant next door to that. That was our world for months, and we couldn't drive home. It was just too long of a drive, and at normal wrapping time that would have been going with traffic. I did it once and I almost crashed because I couldn't concentrate at the wheel. Everything aside, we had the best time on Army Of Darkness, it was so fulfilling, and a fantastic project to work on.
Finally, the last question. What are your thoughts on upcoming The Evil Dead remake?
I'm sure it'll be fine. I'm not a big fan of remakes, I like the original movies and the charm that the original film has because to me it is a frozen moment in time. I'm glad that the guys that count; Sam, Rob and Bruce are involved, I think if another company that had bought the rights and were remaking it, that would be really unfortunate. There are some really good people working on it, the make-up effects team are friends of ours from Hercules and Xena. Maybe it will open up interest in the original Evil Dead trilogy, and more people will watch that again.
Army Of Darkness is one of my all-time favourite films on which I worked. We've worked on hundreds and hundreds of movies and there are barely a handful that I can sit and watch time and again. Every time Army Of Darkness is on TV I just sit down and watch it, it's so enjoyable and it brings back a tremendous amount of great memories. I think that whole late 80s early 90's period is really the heart of why I'm so in love with doing what I do for a living, because I have such fond memories. It was so nurturing, creative, and inspiring to be working in those environments. Back when I was a kid I'd meet Rick Baker and say "I just think you're the greatest, I'm so inspired by this, and inspired by that". The three of us are all at a certain age having been at this for 30 years, and it's still weird having kids come up and say "Army Of Darkness was my favourite, I watched it when I was a kid". That really puts it in perspective doesn't it?
KNB's 'Pit Witch' played by Bill Bryan in Army Of Darkness (1991)
