Monday, November 19, 2007
HMA Q&A WITH SAM MCCAIN
If you’ve been a mask collector for a while, there’s no doubt that you’ve heard the name Sam McCain. Sam began to make monster masks at the young age of 15, and from that point to now his resume in the mask world is most impressive! Whether it was working at Distortions Unlimited in the early days, starting his own company with Horror Sanctum in the 80s, or helping to produce some of the most memorable masks at Don Post Studios, Sam has definitely made his mark in the mask world and it seems as if he’s just getting warmed up. Sam was nice enough to take some time out to do this interview with The H.M.A., and I hope you’ll enjoy it.
HMA: When did you become interested in monsters?
SM: My earliest memory is seeing Frankenstein on TV...and it scared the hell out of me. Of course I was about 3 years old. My dad got me to watch it by telling me it was Herman Munsters brother. That was it...I watched all the Sci-Fi TV Shows from that point, Outer Limits, Night Gallery, Night Stalker, Creature Features and every Friday a local station showed all of the classic Frankenstein and Dracula movies, I was hooked.
HMA: What are some of your earliest memories of monster masks?
SM:From Famous Monsters of course, but the prices were totally out of my reach. I remember buying a Topstone Frankenstein for about 1.99 that I wore everywhere until my dad stuck a cigarette hole in the Frankenstein mouth and ruined it for me. Then a Topstone Werewolf followed after that. When I was about 11, I entered a National Enquirer contest that had a huge full page ad of monster masks and toys for the main prize. All of the masks were Don Post and I freaked. I had to have them. I entered about 20 times, and of course I didn't win. I wore my Topstone Frankenstein mask on Halloween day at school and my Frankenstein outfit consisted of the mask AND MY PARKA. Hey where was a 7 year old going to find a suit like his?
HMA: How did you learn to create your own masks?
SM: The Aurora Models were my first creative outlet. I always liked to play with clay and paint. When I was about 14 I started going to the library a lot looking for books on making masks. The only book out there was Richard Corson’s Stage Makeup. It gave me my first references on life casts and making appliances. But there was still very little on making a mask at all. I used to go to a Magic Shop in Colorado that sold masks and used to just stare at them, trying to figure out how to do that. So I kept reading Corson’s book and trying to find places to buy Plaster and clay...Latex was a major problem. Being in the middle of Wyoming there were some ceramic shops but no Hobby Stores. Then one day I got lucky in a model train store and they had a can of very thick casting latex. I WAS SET. I recruited my best friend Jerry to be my Life Cast subject. Little did he know the pain he was about to endure. For Christmas everyone gave me 5 lb boxes of Plaster of Paris. I had no where to get plaster bandages or alginate. So I made a bald cap on a Styrofoam head from the casting latex and made a big batch of plaster and slathered it directly on my buddies face. Everything seemed to go really well as the plaster set. Then came the moment of truth when we TRIED to remove the face cast. See, I didn't think about putting Vaseline on any of the hair on his face. He lost the little peach fuzz on his chin first.....then came the screaming. It was totally stuck on his face and he was trying to pull it off and screaming at me in pain...I was kind of pulling on it while I yelled at him not to break it, all the while laughing hysterically. He lost most of his eyebrows and his eyelashes and had a very nice black eye covering most of his face...but it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. THE CAST ACTUALLY HAD EYEBROWS AND EYELASHES IN IT!! From that cast I started sculpting small appliances scars and noses. Of course that was in the book, but I still needed a full head cast to make a mask. I took Jerry's life cast and built up plaster for the rest of the head and a neck. From there I went to the toy store and bought every chunk of clay I could find....you remember it I'm sure. It contained 6 different colors of oil clay in a package. My first full head sculpture was rainbow colored and was kind of hard to see to make any detail. My first mask was a green alien with no ears that had big yellow eyes and a mask & breathing tube running from his nose/mouth to his throat. It was crude, but I finally had a full head mask. I sewed a zipped into the back and tried to put it on. That was another fine point I didn't know about....building up enough clay to allow for the thickness of the latex. This sucker was skin tight and my friend had to use pliers to pull the zipper closed. But I finally had my first mask. Around that time I was in the Magic Shop in Colorado one day and saw some new masks that were killer!!! A green alien with a big brainy head and a few other masks from the same company called Distortions Unlimited. They guy at the counter told me about Ed Edmunds and Distortions and told me that he lived right there in Greeley! He gave me his number and address. I went to Ed's house and he showed me around his mask making studio. It was just a 2 car garage and most of his basement. Ed showed me around and opened my eyes to the materials I was lacking. He had 55 gal barrels of latex and gave me my first gallon. I still remember smelling it for the first time. He also gave me my first airbrush which I still have and still use. From that point on I visited Ed many times through those early years and he showed me how to airbrush. Gave me tips on sculpting, painting and hairing masks.
HMA: Tell us about your time at Distortions Unlimited. Any interesting stories to share?
SM: After about 3 years of visiting Ed and making my own masks I joined the Army and put my time in there. After I got back I visited Ed and he was talking about expanding his operation and said he wanted to hire me to help out there. So for the first year I drove back and forth to Greeley which was about 50 miles each way to work. I made molds, poured latex, trimmed masks, painted them and haired them. Ed and I were the whole operation at that time. I remember we had conflicting musical tastes and Ed had this huge mixing board and 6' speakers in his office he used to blare as loud as he could. He listened to hard rock and I listened to top 40 then. So while he was there we rocked out and when he left I changed the station and he would get pissed when he got back and Hall & Oats was playing.
I remember when Ed came up with a new technique for painting his new Werebat called a rubout. He used what was essentially car lacquer and thinner. He only had one respirator so he would go into the paint room and spray 3 masks with the paint and I would run into the room with thinner soaked rags and we would wipe most of the paint off, then run out of the room and take a breath. Ed also had a really nutty sense of humor I recall. He would walk around with latex boogers hanging from his nose and I would try to ignore him, or lock us both into his office and turn the huge speakers up as loud as he could. I was deaf for the rest of the day. At some point he had taken Karate classes and I would have to walk around blocking and ducking all the time.
I finally moved to Greeley after about a year or so and worked for him full time. We started getting licensed masks and that's really when I got interested in expanding my skills toward more realistic painting techniques. We had the rights to Sixth Finger from Outer Limits for a short time and The Gargoyle from the TV movie. Dr Phibes and then a couple of masks that thrilled me completely and that was Nate and Fluffy from Creepshow. An interesting mask was Invasion of the Saucermen. I remember talking to Paul Blaisdel once for a few minutes about that mask when we were trying to get the molds from him. Since it was made so long ago we had no idea what he still had to send to us. I thought we would have to start from scratch and sculpt the whole thing and the mask was huge! Blaisdel told me that he still had mold on it and would ship them out. We both thought it would be a piece of cake at that point but when we received the molds we were shocked! The molds consisted of two huge halves of the brain section, a neck mold from the mouth down and that was it. Blaisdel constructed most of the creature from scratch. He also sent an original mask from the movie for reference. The eyes were Styrofoam balls with electrical tape for pupils. The brain had very few veins sculpted on it and only the very large ones. We had to pour casts of the brain and neck piece. Glue the pieces together and Ed found balls somewhere that were the right size for the eyes. We used a hot glue gun for all the veins which worked out pretty well. I don't think Ed sold very many of those, as they were too expensive back then.
HMA: Can you tell us a little about the production process at DU back then?
SM: Just like most of us old timers, Ed's process consisted of a sculpture which only Ed would do. He would make the master mold out of Ultracal 30 back then. Then we would pour a thick latex master out of that mold. Stuff it with paper and tape it down to a table and mold that master many times to make production molds. We then poured the latex, let it sit for an hour, empty the mold, and let it drain into a bucket for 20 min. Then sit the molds on a table with holes in it. This table had heating elements and a blower under it to dry the latex faster. Pull the blanks and hang them on lines until we were ready to paint them. Ed and I would each take a color and alternate painting about 25 - 50 masks at a time. Then I would get the task of hairing them. After hairing and drying the blood and 5 min epoxy would be applied and left to dry. It was all pretty basic.That was in 79 and 80...when I worked for Ed in 92 he was much more high tech. He has a huge mold room that he can pour as many masks as he wanted at one time. The paint line was incredible. Ed concocted an assembly line for painting that was amazing to see. A track with holes in it and rods sticking up that wound around his entire studio back and forth. We painted entire lines of masks from start to finish in amazing time. Each person had a different color and function and as the masks slowly went around you would shadow the mask...or highlight or ad shadows to cuts and so on. We did hundreds at a time. The Terminator masks that we did at that time were neat but I know that the breathing problems I have now were because of Ed's process. The silver on the T-800 side was bumper chrome spray paint and we wore only dusk masks.
Ed's mold making process now isn't as high tech though. Ed's consisted of taking a foam master and taping it to a table, strapping a metal box around the master and filling the box full of plaster. You could build a house out of these molds. They were enormous and extremely heavy. BUT, they didn't take a lot of finessing.
HMA: Tell us how Horror Sanctum began.
SM: I had met Dante Renta, Guy Thorpe and Ron Magid while I was working for Distortions in the 80's and started doing a lot of custom painting for them. I wanted to start doing my own sculptures and masks. They encouraged me to do it. Al Tayor of THS productions contacted me through Jim Lawrence and wanted someone to start a line of masks through THS. Al Taylor wrote a book in the 80's called Making a Monster, he seemed to know Dick Smith and Rick Baker, all of the makeup artists that did all of the movies that I liked so I jumped at the opportunity. Dante Renta designed my logo and I think Ron came up with the Horror Sanctum name.
I told Al that if we were going to do this I wanted to do certain characters that I though would be really good sellers. I thought The Shape, from Halloween, Jason from Friday the 13th part 2, The Incredible Melting Man and a Rick Baker King Kong, would all do well. He said he would see would he could do. Within a week he called me back and told me that he had procured the rights to all 3 characters. I was thrilled. BUT he had a catch. He wanted me to make a few other characters that he had the rights to, which were Clark Gable, Humphrey Bogart, and a weird alien that John Chambers designed. I told Al that the Bogart and Gable would be a mistake but he said that was the deal. So, I made the Shape using a clay press taken from a Shatner Life cast that Ron or Dante gave me. Carl Fullerton sent me new appliances from his movie molds to make the Jason with. I used a foam latex stunt head from Rick Bakers mold to make the King Kong. But Baker wouldn't let us use his Melting Man sculptures so I had to make my own. Originally I wanted to do a stage 2 or 3 with the muscle detail on it but Taylor told me he had the rights to the stage 4 makeup only.
HMA: What caused Horror Sanctum to close it's doors?
SM: I borrowed a chunk of money from my parents to start Horror Sanctum and it was just enough to buy a barrel of latex and all the materials I needed to start and run it for a while. I started with the Shape and made about 50 of them and started sending them to Al Taylor. Then I made about 50 of the Jason, some of the Melting Man, and some Kongs. I know Tom Savini has one. I kept sending masks to Al Taylor waiting for orders to come in. But they didn't come. He kept wanting more masks and wanting me to give more and more but I was seeing NO sales. So I finally put my foot down and told him I wasn't going to make anymore until I saw some money. I remember being threatened by him and I hung up the phone and never talked to him again. I was in a bad marriage at the time and it broke up at the same point. So I packed all the molds up, stored them at my folk’s house and retired Horror Sanctum.
HMA: Tell us about your time at Don Post Studios. Have any interesting stories to share?
SM: I borrowed a chunk of money from my parents to start Horror Sanctum and it was just enough to buy a barrel of latex and all the materials I needed to start and run it for a while. I started with the Shape and made about 50 of them and started sending them to Al Taylor. Then I made about 50 of the Jason, some of the Melting Man, and some Kongs. I know Tom Savini has one. I kept sending masks to Al Taylor waiting for orders to come in. But they didn't come. He kept wanting more masks and wanting me to give more and more but I was seeing NO sales. So I finally put my foot down and told him I wasn't going to make anymore until I saw some money. I remember being threatened by him and I hung up the phone and never talked to him again. I was in a bad marriage at the time and it broke up at the same point. So I packed all the molds up, stored them at my folk’s house and retired Horror Sanctum.
HMA: Tell us about your time at Don Post Studios. Have any interesting stories to share?
SM: In 88 I started sculpting and painting a lot of limited run masks like Freddy and A big Ben from House. I was really into House back then and I wanted a real Ben more than anything. I contacted the artist that created him, James Cummins and asked to buy one from him and he SOLD ME ONE!!! I corresponded back and forth with him for a while, showing him my work. He told me that he was going to do a movie called Boneyard and wanted to hire me as a painted and mold maker. SO, I packed up my new family and moved to West Hollywood, right next door to David Lady and Guy Thorpe.
My wife got a job right away, but the Boneyard project was having trouble getting financial backing. After 2 months I had to get a job. Dante told me to just walk into Don Post's studio and meet him. I called him and told him who I was and he told me to come in right away. That he wanted to talk to me. I was floored that Don had heard of me. I nervously went in and met him. Don was very nice, had me sit down and asked me what I needed for a salary. I told him what I wanted and he asked me if I spoke Spanish. He then told me that he was opening an operation in Tecate Mexico and wanted me to go down there and teach them how to make EVERYTHING. I swallowed and said I'd need more money to do that and he said fine. When can you start? Now I never even dreamed of worked at Post...and there I was walking through all the masks that I'd seen in magazines from my youth. I remember seeing The Mask (Myers) being haired, I was numb. I went to Mexico with Don 3 days later and taught Mexicans how to make lower end Freddy's to start.
One funny story I remember is Don taking materials to Mexico. Now to take latex to Mexico in the amounts that was needed Don was supposed to export the barrels and that would have taken a lot of paper work and money that Don wasn't prepared to spend. Now Tecate is a very small border town in the hills south of San Diego and there really isn't anything around for 50 miles. So Don and I loaded 12 - 55 gal barrels of latex on a flatbed truck and drove it to a tiny town on the U.S. side of the border and parked it. Then we walked into Mexico and saw the sites until dark. Then Don Post jr. and I drove the truck to a single strand barbwire fence on the outskirts of town and met another flatbed on the Mexican side and loaded the barrels on that truck. I thought it was funny and kept laughing. Don kept telling me to shut up and hurry. I'll bet if the boarder patrol had caught us it wouldn't have been so funny.
One project involved meeting one of my idols. Don was kind of hush-hush about a certain project on that day and hurried us into a meeting room. In that room were all of the Gremlins puppets from Gremlins 2. In walks Don with Rick Baker. I remember being in awe and shook his hand and didn't say a freaking word. What do you say to one of the masters that he hasn't heard 5000 times before?
We used to have 30 minutes for lunch and the sculptors and I used to walk to McDonalds about a block away from Don's Studio. Now I had heard that Freddys boiler room had always been filmed close to that area but never knew where. 4 of us walked into McDs and there, standing in line was Robert England IN FULL FREDDY MAKEUP!!!! All of us freaked out and started pawing at him like groupies. One of the sculptors ran back to the studio to get a Freddy poster for him to sign....AND all he found was a poster of Elvira!!! Robert still signed it and we shook his hand and left.
When I finished in Mexico, Don brought me back to his studio to paint a batch of Universal Monsters for the new Universal Florida theme park. Then I designed the paint schemes for the Dick Tracy line and headed the Robocop line. I learned to make molds the Don Post way from a master mold maker there named John.
I guess my fondest memory of working there was meeting Don. He is the most generous man I had ever met up to that point. I remember being offered the Alligator 2 movie and went to Don to tell him. I remember him saying he was very happy for me and told me that's how he wanted all his employees to go on to bigger and better things.
HMA: Can you tell us a little about the production process at DP back then?
My wife got a job right away, but the Boneyard project was having trouble getting financial backing. After 2 months I had to get a job. Dante told me to just walk into Don Post's studio and meet him. I called him and told him who I was and he told me to come in right away. That he wanted to talk to me. I was floored that Don had heard of me. I nervously went in and met him. Don was very nice, had me sit down and asked me what I needed for a salary. I told him what I wanted and he asked me if I spoke Spanish. He then told me that he was opening an operation in Tecate Mexico and wanted me to go down there and teach them how to make EVERYTHING. I swallowed and said I'd need more money to do that and he said fine. When can you start? Now I never even dreamed of worked at Post...and there I was walking through all the masks that I'd seen in magazines from my youth. I remember seeing The Mask (Myers) being haired, I was numb. I went to Mexico with Don 3 days later and taught Mexicans how to make lower end Freddy's to start.
One funny story I remember is Don taking materials to Mexico. Now to take latex to Mexico in the amounts that was needed Don was supposed to export the barrels and that would have taken a lot of paper work and money that Don wasn't prepared to spend. Now Tecate is a very small border town in the hills south of San Diego and there really isn't anything around for 50 miles. So Don and I loaded 12 - 55 gal barrels of latex on a flatbed truck and drove it to a tiny town on the U.S. side of the border and parked it. Then we walked into Mexico and saw the sites until dark. Then Don Post jr. and I drove the truck to a single strand barbwire fence on the outskirts of town and met another flatbed on the Mexican side and loaded the barrels on that truck. I thought it was funny and kept laughing. Don kept telling me to shut up and hurry. I'll bet if the boarder patrol had caught us it wouldn't have been so funny.
One project involved meeting one of my idols. Don was kind of hush-hush about a certain project on that day and hurried us into a meeting room. In that room were all of the Gremlins puppets from Gremlins 2. In walks Don with Rick Baker. I remember being in awe and shook his hand and didn't say a freaking word. What do you say to one of the masters that he hasn't heard 5000 times before?
We used to have 30 minutes for lunch and the sculptors and I used to walk to McDonalds about a block away from Don's Studio. Now I had heard that Freddys boiler room had always been filmed close to that area but never knew where. 4 of us walked into McDs and there, standing in line was Robert England IN FULL FREDDY MAKEUP!!!! All of us freaked out and started pawing at him like groupies. One of the sculptors ran back to the studio to get a Freddy poster for him to sign....AND all he found was a poster of Elvira!!! Robert still signed it and we shook his hand and left.
When I finished in Mexico, Don brought me back to his studio to paint a batch of Universal Monsters for the new Universal Florida theme park. Then I designed the paint schemes for the Dick Tracy line and headed the Robocop line. I learned to make molds the Don Post way from a master mold maker there named John.
I guess my fondest memory of working there was meeting Don. He is the most generous man I had ever met up to that point. I remember being offered the Alligator 2 movie and went to Don to tell him. I remember him saying he was very happy for me and told me that's how he wanted all his employees to go on to bigger and better things.
HMA: Can you tell us a little about the production process at DP back then?
SM: Don's process was not as high tech in the paint department as Distortions. But every other part of the process has been done the same way since Don Post Sr. started the company. Pretty much every step is the same as Distortions except painting and washing the blanks. Don has a 
huge group of ladies that paint the masks 6 at a time. Don washes the blanks in a citrus solution.
huge group of ladies that paint the masks 6 at a time. Don washes the blanks in a citrus solution.HMA: You've worked on a few films as well. Can you tell us a little about those?
SM: While working at Post I had met Kelly Mann through Ron Magid and Dante Renta. He called me and asked if I would be interested in working on a sequel to Alligator, a movie made in the 70's. I said HELL YEAH. I was hired to do all of the painting of the Alligator and assorted creatures and props, Bloody Alligator left over bits and such. From the beginning the movie was kind of doomed. They hired a team of airplane mechanics to make the mechanical Alligator which turned out so heavy that that frame bent from it's own weight. At that point the only part of the mechanical Alligator that worked was the head movement and the eyes. Kelly and I made a tail section to swing at victims and a head and neck section on wheels to do close-ups and kill everyone. Kelly and I made all the skins and a 30 foot long foam gator that was blown up at the end of the movie.
I made a set of little short legs for Tim Conway for a series of video tapes he sold called Dorf.
I painted a couple of characters for the Star Tours ride at Disneyland.
I also took the Dick Smith Makeup Course
HMA: You've been away from the mask world for a number of years. Why did you leave us? What have you been up to?
SM: Shortly after Alligator 2 wrapped John Aggot the special effects team on the same movie and I made this huge haunted house in a mall in Huntington Beach, Ca. Made about $50,000 on that...I used all movie props for the whole thing and it was amazing.
Shortly after that my second marriage ended and I was left living in my car in LA for about 4 months. That was a really crappy time in my life. My ex stole every dime I made on the films and disappeared.
I finally got back on my feet and decided the movie industry would have to wait, Ed at Distortions wanted me to fly back to Greeley and show him some of the materials and techniques I had learned in the movies and at Don Post. So I went back and worked with him for about a year. I started feeling unhappy there and wanted more. So I quit and went back to college and got my degree in Electronics and Computer science.
After college I went back to California and was a partner in a video streaming and website hosting business. I made really good money there for about 6 years until the I.T crash in 99'.
I then moved to the middle of nowhere and work for a heating and cooling business.
All the while I've been working on small things, model dioramas, and things like that. Some of my past and present work can be seen at.
HMA: What does the future hold for Sam McCain and Horror Sanctum?
SM: Well, the future is looking very bright for Horror Sanctum. I decided to bring back a couple of the characters that I did back then. For instance, very limited runs of The Shape and Jason 2 were done. I'm also going to do other characters that I like and have always wanted to do as limited edition collectibles. I'm going to do some of my early designs as mass produced characters that Jeff Keim at Death Studios is going to carry for me.
As for myself...age is creeping up on me. I found myself feeling empty since I haven't had much of an outlet for my creativity. I have this enormous amount of knowledge in my head and I need to get it out. I had a bad accident last year and ripped my right forearm to the bone...required close to 100 stitches to repair the damage. But I didn't damage my hand at all. That got me thinking that I had better do what I do best, before time runs out.
I'd like to thank everyone for their encouragement and kind words since I've been back, especially Eric Austin. If it wasn't for him selling my Shape on EBay for $2000.00 I would probably have not come out of retirement.
If you'd like to contact Sam, drop him an email at