Photographer & Makeup Maestro Rick Jones Horrifies You With His Creations - Exclusive Interview
Rick Jones is a massive aficionado of horror, dating back to the days where Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney Jr. lit up the big screen. While many of us can only imagine what it feels like bringing movie monsters and their original creations to life, Jones is among the lucky few who has taken his passion to a whole new level as a makeup artist who photographs subjects for his unique business called Horrify Me.
In an exclusive interview with Looper, Jones said the origin of Horrify Me, which is based in Kent, England, began 10 years ago when he was working as graphic designer and illustrator. A request for some artwork with a horror angle came ambling through his door and ended up changing his life. "I got contacted by an author who wanted a cover for a zombie novel," Jones recalled for Looper. "I'm like, 'Oh my God! Yeah,' and I said, 'Please don't go to other people for quotes. I'll be really competitive and I'll work really hard, and you'll get a great book cover.' I really wanted this job."
For Jones, the request to create the cover of the zombie novel effectively woke up his artistic beast within, setting him on the path to what would become Horrify Me.
"I didn't have a makeup kit [or] camera at that time, so I hired everybody including a photographer and I did the cover and it was really good," Jones remembered. "Doing it was so much fun that we decided to get some friends together and start messing around with makeup and taking some pictures, and we'd put them on Facebook. The photographer said, 'You should start something and call it Horrify Me.' I thought, 'What a cool name!' I didn't think of it. The name Horrify Me is really clever, but I can't take credit for thinking of it!"
What Jones can take credit for is the bloody brilliant business Horrify Me has become. Not only does he do most of the makeup work on his clients — which stems from his original creations or are based on iconic horror characters — he shoots portraits of them, making for an all-inclusive experience.
A ban on scary movies on video piqued Jones' curiosity
I know you've gotten to know horror makeup icon Tom Savini and count Rick Baker among your influences, but how far back does your fascination with horror makeup go?
I was born in 1970, and there was a really legendary double bill horror series on the BBC on a Friday night in the late '70s. It was always a classic Universal film or a black-and-white B-movie followed by a film in color, which was usually a Hammer film. I was very aware of Jack Pierce's makeup with "The Wolfman" and "Frankenstein" and all those things, but at that age, I was more interested in the Hammer films, because they had a lot of blood and a lot of red in them. I was very drawn to that.
I'd nick my mom's makeup kit and nick her lipstick, and draw red lines here [tracing his fingers from the corners of his mouth to his chin] so I could look like Dracula and waste all the ketchup and everything. That's why she ended up buying me that makeup kit — the Dick Smith [Horror] Makeup kit — because it meant I left her stuff alone. In the '80s we had the nasty period in the UK when video releases of films were getting censored and banned, and it was really hard to get a hold of things ... The banned films were the ones to watch, and [those were] "Evil Dead," "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," and "The Exorcist," and I was fascinated by them and that fascination's never let go.
What was the ban about?
Home video was just starting up, and the government had this terrible fear that if you could watch a horror film, you could have this perverse power to pause it on a horrible scene and keep replaying this horrible scene. When you're sitting in a cinema, the movie plays through and you go home. All of a sudden [with video], you could pause it and rewind it, and they feared that children would get hold of this stuff and it would deeply corrupt them. It did, look at me! [laughs]
As the years have gone on, they couldn't have been more wrong. Us kids who were horror fans at that time, we've all grown up. We still love it. We're passionate. We're quite creative people, and I know loads of kids of my age have gone on to become writers, and they're trying to make films, they sculpt, they paint all from that stuff. It did influence us, but in a really good way.
Horror makeup and photography is a year-round business for Jones
Are you busier now that Halloween is around the corner, or is it Halloween the whole year for you? It seems to me like you're busy year-round with the volume of portraits of your work that you feature on your website.
Yeah, I'm doing Halloween all through the year, and come on, what could be better? I'm really living my best life with this stuff.
Since you've been creating makeup and shooting portraits for so many horror fans, have you gained any insight into the fascination that people have with being scared? It seems that maybe Horrify Me might give you a little peek into people's psyches.
God, that's a really good question. I've tried to dissect to my own fascination, and I can't because it's always been there. I'm sorry, I don't mean to make this about myself too much, but from the age when little kids were drawing matchstick mommy and daddy in the garden ... I was drawing monsters with bloody fangs and things. I really don't know where it's come from for me!
When I meet all these different people, some of them are not horror fans at all; they just want a weird day out. Some of them are really hardcore horror fans, and to them, it's a way of getting quite close to the experience of doing something with horrific makeup. Generally at Halloween, people are slapping a bit of liquid latex on and a bit of face paint, or they'll go and buy a rubber mask. I do things — it's quite high level. They get to sit in a proper makeup chair all day and get some proper makeup put on. The vast majority of them would never become an extra in a film set for a horror movie. [Instead], they'll come to me, and they get something quite close to that.
There also seems to be a huge fascination with blood for your clients. Where do you think that fascination with blood — or fake blood, in your case — come from?
It's all fake! I really don't know. I know for myself, it's really visual. There's a lot of psychology in the color red, represent[ing] danger or passion. I'm fine art trained and when I was studying arts, I did a lot of nude studies, and when I photograph my fine art models and they're nude and I completely covered them in blood, you lose the sense of nudity and the blood becomes a prominent feature of that image rather than the body. It is a fascinating image. I wish I could dig in there and tell you. It's all a mystery for me. All I know is I enjoy it and its good fun.
Jones sees what he does as work on a horror playground
What do you think is more difficult to create: your original horror visages or recreating horror icons like the Bride of Frankenstein and Frankenstein's Monster, or more modern monsters like Freddy Krueger or Valak the Nun? With the latter characters, they're somebody else's creation and you want to pay respect to that creation. What's the more difficult of the two?
I'd say the original things are harder because the way Horrify Me works, there's two parts to it. One part is where I will charge people to come in and have a shoot, so they get made up as a zombie or whatever. The other part of it is completely non-commercial. It's me doing fan art and creating things for fun. That's usually the difficult challenge in the big projects. If somebody wants to be The Nun or Freddy, I don't let myself get bogged down with screen accuracy too much. At the end of the day, with the guy called Mike who wants to look like Freddy, it's still a portrait of Mike at the end of the day. I'm not trying to make him into Robert Englund.
If Mike had been in that film instead of Robert Englund, this is what the character would look like. It's still a portrait of Mike, essentially. That's my approach. I do have a complete reverence and love for this stuff, and I do respect it, but I don't let that stop me from veering off into crazy ideas of my own. Some of my "Hellraiser" creations, they're more inspired by the characters than direct recreations of them. It's like being in a horror playground where you can mix these ideas up and do your own thing. For some of the hardcore fans, that would never be in the film, but I don't care. We had fun doing it. They're happy with their portraits, so we're all good.
Recreating the monster movie classics
I'm a big fan of the Bride of Frankenstein. What was going on in your mind when you were creating her? How do you create what was originally a black and white character in living color?
I've always loved that film. It goes without saying. She's one of my favorite characters from that era, and it was inevitable. I was going to try the makeup one day, but I was always terrified of that hairstyle [with the shocked hair look]. I found a girl who could basically do that with her hair. When we experimented the first time and it worked out pretty well, I had the confidence to try it again and get a bit bolder and put more scars on [the model with the makeup].
I was making it more my own with more scars and put blood on there. I have to use blood with everything. I'm a bit obsessed with blood. It is a fascinating creative process. Like I say, although I'm recreating that character, I'm not slave to the screen accuracy. It's my take on it.
Regarding classic movie monsters, is there that you haven't yet tackled that you might want to at some point?
Yeah, there's a couple actually. I want to do "The Reptile" from the Hammer films — the lady with the snake face. I've got that on my list, but I've never got round to doing it for some reason. I will one day. I want to do a Medusa [from "The Gorgon"] as well, but it's actually quite hard making all snakes. It is one I keep thinking about and then putting off, but I'm sure I'll get there one day.
Any desire to do Christopher Lee recreations? With Peter Cushing, we got him as Van Helsing and Dr. Frankenstein, but Lee played some monsters. There's my personal favorite, Oliver Reed, as the werewolf in "Curse of the Werewolf." Any desires to create him?
I have actually thought about the Oliver Reed werewolf, because it's a really good creation. The reason I love that so much is you can see Oliver Reed in there. He doesn't disappear in that makeup. It is still him. I do like that one. Christopher Lee, I've always loved him as Dracula, but when he played Frankenstein's Monster with that big goofy eyeball contacting and the messed-up face, it's great. I wouldn't mind doing that one day. It's all these things I'd love to do. It's getting time to do them all.
Jones says clients mostly request zombies and vampires
If you could place percentage on what horror fans want to see themselves as the most, what would it be?
99% want to be a zombie or vampire, and only 1% want to be something else.
Is there any reasoning for that, where you think, "I wonder what that fascination is with vampires?"
I get the vampires, because the vast majority of my clients are female. Vampires, they're very seductive and they're alluring, they're beautiful. They start the shoot, really fine makeup on, good hair, good clothes and they finish the shoot with bloody fangs and claws everywhere, and red eyes. They get to do quite a good range of looks. I get why vampires are popular.
What about zombies?
They're popular because zombies are fun and they're gross, and you get to stuff raw meat in your mouth. They're good for couples, too. When couples come along, they bite each other's necks or rip flesh out of each other's arms and things.
In one of your portraits, it looks like a zombie wants a bite out of your neck, too!
I do have a dangerous job working with all monsters!
Opening the book on Jones' creations
It must be incredibly satisfying having a book published of all your works with "Portraits of Horror," and to top it off, an introduction by Tom Savini [with contributions by Matt Shaw, Linnea Quigley, and the Soska Twins]. Do you still pinch yourself over the accomplishment of being published and having an iconic makeup artist like Tom Savini doing your introduction? It must be the ultimate validation of your work.
Tom was my guy when I was a kid. He was my absolute rock star. I loved Rick Baker, I loved Rob Bottin, and I loved all of them. I worshiped these guys when I was a kid. If you imagine watching "An American Werewolf in London" or "Aliens," which Stan Winston did, and the creatures in those films were really beautifully engineered and crafted, you can imagine a team of a hundred people was working on them. There's no way a kid that age can make that at home.
[It's tough when] you're inspired but you're stuck with not being able to do it. Whereas with Tom Savini's stuff, he achieved a lot with very little, and he had low budgets to work with. When I watched "Dawn of the Dead" or "Day of the Dead," I thought, "Oh, my God, I could probably do that." You get hit with that inspiration of something you feel like you can actually copy as a kid.
That's why I gravitated to Tom Savini as a kid. I've got this real love for that guy, even now, and he's my biggest inspiration and influence. I got lucky that I could meet him at a convention — and I'm very timid — but I asked him, "Can I have your autograph?" and "I've got a book coming out, can I talk to you about it?" He was really good. He agreed to do it. I still can't believe it. I really can't. I do have to pinch myself sometimes.
If you think about it, that inspiration that you gained from his work, your book and work is like an extension of him. It's validating his work in a way.
And the weird thing is, all the guys that were doing that stuff back in the '80s and the '90s, that fed inspiration into my age group, and now we are making things that are inspiring the next generation ... There's tattoo artists all over the world who take my photographs and they tattoo it on people. I think, "Well, if it's the odd one or two, I get it," but it's so many that it's become a bit of a thing. Tattoo studios tend to be quite big buyers of my book. I didn't see that coming. That's really bizarre. I guess it is that thread of inspiration carrying through and people that make things, they pay it forward. It's great. It's really satisfying.
Jones is thrilled to be doing what he loves
I can't help but think that movie productions have come calling for you. I know you're busy all year round with doing the Horrify Me makeup and shoots, but do you think about taking that step into that realm?
No. As bizarre as it might sound, I'm so not interested in working in film. I do get offered film work at least once a year, and I automatically say no to it. The reason is I love what I'm doing so much. I don't want to change it. There's so many really good makeup artists around now that the film industry doesn't need me. I'm not better than any other makeup artist. I'm probably just as good as the vast majority of them. The difference is I've got this extra ability of taking good photos of them afterwards. In the photography world, I stand out a bit, whereas in the film world, I'd probably disappear into the crowd of other creative people, so, I stay away from it.
You can learn more about Rick Jones' book "Portraits of Horror" and how he can horrify you on his Horrify Me website.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.