Tunnicliffe’s team was charged with designing make up effects and constructing many of the film’s intricately detailed props, including puppets and religious idols, as well as giving life to a pack of menacing mechanical beasts. An intense preparation period of sculpting and fabrication, mold making and painting was required.
Perhaps the most important facet of the makeup design was deciding what physical form the film’s demon possessions would take. “Renny felt very strongly that the look of the demon should harken back to Linda Blair,” recalls Tunnicliffe. “It’s the same demon who is possessing, so while we never know what this creature looks like in its natural state, once it manifests into a human being, there needs to be something about the makeup that you feel familiar with.”
As part of his research, Tunnicliffe spoke to the original Exorcist makeup artist, Dick Smith. “I learned from talking to Dick that the look of the demon possession in The Exorcist was brought about by the fact that Linda Blair had such a round, apple-cheeked face. That’s the biggest thing with this demon prosthetic. It’s not a demon with big horns. It’s not a Buffy the Vampire Slayer demon. So we altered the actor’s cheekbones, made it very asymmetrical by making the chin slightly bigger in one area, and then added lacerations. I like the idea that a demon would slash at itself and hurt itself, to destroy the human vessel that it’s in. We had contact lenses made that really popped the eyes and used black stain to make the teeth go gray. It was pretty disgusting looking.”
In spite of the more than 30 years that passed between the two productions, the materials and processes employed by the makeup effects crew on Exorcist: The Beginning match those used by Dick Smith in the original film. “We used the traditional, tried and true foam latex appliances,” reveals Tunnicliffe. “So it’s exactly the same kind of makeup in its creation and build that Dick used, although I employed a slightly different paint and the contact lenses are more comfortable than the contact lenses would have been back then. But it’s basically 1970s technology. And a lot of those techniques were created by Dick Smith. So if it looks good it’s a tribute to him, really.”
Interestingly, perhaps the most extraordinary effect Dick Smith conjured for The Exorcist was one that went virtually unnoticed. While the character of Merrin was in his 70s, Max von Sydow was only 44 years old at the time the film was shot. It took three to four hours in the makeup chair each day to turn Sydow into a 70 year old man.
Similarly, it took roughly four hours to apply all the prosthetics and body paint to a possession victim in order to achieve the full effect. All the appliances had to be glued directly to the skin using a liquid called Pros-Aid, a very strong water-based adhesive. Once an actor was in the makeup, that was it – they had to keep it on for the remainder of the shooting day, and at the end of the day it took an hour to remove. Prosthetic materials are fairly fragile, because they have to be soft and malleable in order to naturally and accurately translate the actor’s expressions. Removing the appliances destroys them completely, so a brand new set of appliances had to be manufactured every day.
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