5 Movie Make Up Artists That Should Have Attended Cosmetology School
A movie can often be judged by the quality of the makeup on its stars. The scariest horror movies typically have monstrous, grotesque villains and realistic gore. Convincing sci-fi is full of aliens and superhuman. No one is afraid of a ghost who is clearly just a person covered in flower; makeup artists have a big responsibility when it comes to making the film more realistic. Cosmetology school taught many of the most successful cinematic makeup artists how to create convincing characters, but then there are some students who probably should have flunked out — if they ever even enrolled in the first place. Here are five movies whose makeup artists should have attended cosmetology school.
White Chicks
The first thing everyone thinks when learning about the existence of White Chicks is that no one in real life would think these people were real. It would take a blind person to be convinced that these two guys are actually white women. White Chicks features Shawn and Marlon Wayans as two disgraced FBI agents who go undercover in an attempt to protect two rich girls from getting kidnapped. They get, like, totally carried away with their operation and have lots of fun clumsily playing the parts of two snobby, rich blonde girls. Although it’s a terrible movie and the makeup artist most likely dropped out of cosmetology school in his or her freshman year, one can’t help but think that the whole thing was a big elaborate joke no one understood very well. Maybe White Girls was another Trapped in the Closet — a tongue-in-cheek comedy deeper than we give it credit for. The makeup seems to be incredibly bad on purpose, which would actually make the movie kind of genius instead of horrible.
The Gingerdead Man
The cosmetology expert on this awful gem was probably paid as much as Gary Busey for this one — very little. The Gingerdead Man is a movie about an evil gingerbread man who becomes possessed by an evil killer and is overcome with a murderous rage, seeking out the girl who sent him to the electric chair. It sounds a lot like Chuckie, without all the scariness or other components of a film worth watching. The pancake headed monstrosity could be compared to a wet cracker or Bill O’Reilly. Disturbing? Yes. Frightening? Not so much. The only good part of this film is when Gary Busey goes nuts in the beginning, opening fire on a bunch of patrons inside a diner — and he’s scary enough without any special effects. The makeup artist on this one should either go back to school or seriously think about the concept of priorities.
Exorcist: The Beginning
Hollywood is really scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to ideas these days. Since no one cares about good cinema anymore because everyone’s so busy trying to turn a profit, movies have been remade until they fall apart at the seams or tacked on with prequels and sequels until the story has warped into something unrecognizable. The Exorcist is a perfect example of this. Wildly popular when it first came out in 1973, it was the most realistically graphic and deeply unsettling movie of its time. People fainted in the theaters, mothers everywhere cried blasphemy, and outrage over the film swept the nation. What better way to commemorate such a significant piece of cinematic history than by creating a bunch of half-assed, thinly connected prequels and sequels into the midst? Exorcist: The Beginning falls into that pile of crap and is a 2004 prequel about the priest’s first encounter with the demon — ever. The makeup artist watched the original film and merely copied the makeup to a certain extent — but without all the cosmetology expertise. The work is a poor imitation, a bootleg, and not very convincing. It’s a blatant ripoff without any creativity incorporated and is simply not scary at all. This makeup artist should have attended cosmetology grad school before moving into film.
Pieces
One of many terrible 80s gore-fests, Pieces is about a bunch of young college girls getting chainsawed to death by a psycho roaming the campus. The killer dismembers and steals parts of the body in an attempt to create a human patchwork quilt — a new person made from many different people. A great concept, the movie is full of terrible dialogue, acting, and makeup. It’s another one of those cheap horror films which throws some ketchup on a shirt and calls it a stab wound. The blood could not be any faker; the makeup artist definitely didn’t attend cosmetology school — otherwise they would have had a better recipe for fake blood. The beginning of the film is pretty comical, however. As a young boy, the murderer assembles a puzzle of a naked woman and becomes outraged when his mother catches him and takes it away. To punish her, he cuts her to pieces with an axe.
The Beast of Yucca Flats
The Beast of Yucca Flats is supposed to be about a scientist who gets hit by a nuclear explosion and roams the surrounding areas as a newly made beast-man, but it seems to be more about a really tall guy who likes to go around harassing people. While that can be pretty scary, it’s also an everyday occurrence. The cosmetology genius hired to create the monster in this film either got lazy or didn’t show up to work at all. It seems that minimal effort was put into making this man into a beast, let alone a man afflicted with an odd and strong case of good old radiation poisoning. Where there should have been a disfigured face riddled with mutilated features, there was just some guy with a few boils or really big zits. Back to school for you, Beast of Terrible Makeup.
