TOP:^COURTESYOF^ NORMAN^CABRERA;BOTTOM:^ UNIVERSAL/DARK^HORSE^COMICS/KOBAL/SHUTTERSTOCKI
grew up watching monster movies
and horror movies on TV and at the
cinema. When I was a little kid, there
was a show called Creature Features
that ran usually on Friday nights or
sometimes early Saturday mornings.
And I would just watch all the old Univer-
sal monster movies and the Hammer films
from England. There was also a magazine
called Famous Monsters of Filmlandthat
came out monthly, and it was all about
monster movies. That was the very first
thing that got me excited [about makeup
and special effects].
When I was a teenager in the ’80s, there
was a huge wave of really cool sci-fi horror
stuff. You had An American Werewolf in
London(1981), and The Howling(1981),
and John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982), and
The Dark Crystal(1982), and The Hunger
(1983), and Blade Runner(1982). One after
another, it felt like all these amazing movies
were coming out, and by that point I was
really super absorbed by it all. In my mid-
teens I was so inspired by that kind of stuff.
I would see every horror/fantasy/sci-fi thing
that came out in the theaters.
I started drawing and painting very
young. I was artistically inclined, as they
say. The first thing that really made it for
me was probably the original Planet of the
Apes(1968). There was also Cinefantastique
and Cinefex—magazines covering effects
movies—and one of the big names from
that time was Rick Baker, who had done An
American Werewolf in Londonand [Michael
Jackson’s] Thriller. He eventually became
my mentor, but initially I was just a huge
fan. For Star Wars, Rick Baker had done all
those cantina aliens, and I just loved those
masks. There was a lot of coverage in sci-fi
magazines, in Fangoriaand Starlog. An arti-
cle on Rick Baker shows him holding these
masks he made forStar Wars, and that led
me to an obsession with making masks.
Another magazine called CineMagicthat
was more fan-made had an article by Kirk
Brady about how to make a mask, with
really rudimentary steps, and I would later
find out that that information actually
came from Rick Baker. That opened up a
whole world to me.
I could tell the difference in quality of
the stuff that Baker did versus other artists.
I always thought his work was superior,
and I particularly liked his style: his
sculpting style, his painting style, and his
aesthetic sense. He was this younger guy,ART AND CRAFT Filmmaking according to the makers
16 | FILMCOMMENT| July-August 2019 Closer Look:Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark opens on August 9.
I’ve Created a Monster
Special makeup effects artist and creature FX sculptor
Norman Cabrera casts your most beautiful nightmares
BY NORMAN CABRERA |AS TOLD TO KELLI WESTON
Hellboy II: The Golden Army