Fake blood: Dark movie magic

Paint it red

Even before color came to film, blood was a vivid element in cinematic storytelling. Think: the shower splatter in Psycho (1960), or frenzied zombie feeding in Night of the Living Dead (1968). Then, once color arrived: The crimson bucket contents falling on the prom queen in Carrie (1976) and the ichorous elevator flood in The Shining (1980).

In all its elemental, metaphorical, campy, over-the-top, gore-y goodness, blood is something that has seeped into the visual vocabulary of movies. But how exactly did all that gloop get on the movie set?

It’s kind of a sticky story. We’ll stop at the Globe Theatre in 16th century London and the gruesome Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol in Pigalle, before making our way to the sets of Hollywood. Don’t be surprised if we encounter concoctions both poisonous, and delectable, along the way.

Now watch out for that puddle (the crime scene specialists will handle it), and pay no mind to that shadowy figure in the corner. It’s time to spill some movie-making secrets.

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Splashy highlights in fake blood’s history

Mid-16th century: There are various theories as to what early modern theaters used as stage blood. Materials such as paints, pigments like vermillion (made from cinnabar), vinegar, and wine may have been used. Farah Karim-Cooper, head of higher education and research at Shakespeare’s Globe, figures that animal blood was less likely. Washing it out of the doublet, hose, and other costumes would have been impractical (pdf) and costly.

Late 19th to mid-20th century: Open from 1897 to 1962, the Grand-Guignol theater in Paris became famous for its gory productions. To get that splash of shocking red on stage, they used a special mixture that involved a combo of carmine—a pigment produced from the crushed up cochineal bug—and glycerin. It came in nine different shades, and it literally congealed, thanks to the addition of methyl-cellulose.

20th to 21st centuries: Standardized fake blood recipes began to pop up in the movie industry during this time period (that is, before CGI took over our screens). There was also a sweet solution used for blood on black-and-white movie sets. In Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and George Romero’s The Night of the Living Dead, the fake blood used on set was actually chocolate syrup.

New recipes were developed with the adoption of technicolor film. One recipe was created by British pharmacist John Tynegate, whose edible concoction of golden syrup, water, food coloring, and corn flour, called “Kensington Gore,” appeared in many films throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, including Dracula (1958), The Shining, and Carrie.

Another popular recipe, this time poisonous, was created by the Emmy award-winning “Godfather of Makeup” Dick Smith. His recipe, a mixture of corn syrup, water, methylparaben, red and yellow food dye, and Kodak Photo-Flo (a wetting agent used during film development) was used in films including Taxi Driver (1976), The Godfather (1972), and The Exorcist (1973).

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Quotable

“If a guy gets shot in the stomach and he’s bleeding like a stuck pig then that’s what I want to see—not a man with a stomach ache and a little red dot on his belly.”—Film director Quentin Tarantino in an interview with the Telegraph in 2010.

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Pop quiz

What is the name for the tiny explosive device used in showbiz to depict bullet wounds in real time?

A. Gloop
B. Muzz
C. Squib
D. Clamp

You’ll find the answer in a pool of methylparaben at the bottom of this email.

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What a mess

The bloodiest of them all

There’s a lot to wade through when it comes to the compelling use of fake blood in storytelling, be it depictions of bloodbaths, a poignant red tear, or the foreshadowing of a bloody handkerchief. But if you want to watch a film where blood itself is very nearly a main character, you’ve got to dig into a subgenre of movies known as splatter horror.

Contrary to what one might think, the movies in this genre are rarely as creepy or haunting as your other horror genre fare. Instead, the over-the-top use of blood pushes the movies into a realm of provocative black humor and absurdity.

Blood Feast (1963), directed by genre pioneer and Chicago native Herschell Gordon Lewis, was the first-ever splatter film to hit theaters. While the critics hated it, audiences were repelled and enraptured in equal measure. He followed up the film with Two Thousand Maniacs! in 1964. Both were box office hits.

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By the bloody digits

$4 million: Box office sales Herschell Gordon Lewis made from Blood Feast, which he shot in five days on a shoestring budget of just $24,500

300 gallons (1,135 liters): Amount of fake blood used in the elevator scene in The Shining 

450 gallons (1,703 liters): Amount of fake blood that director Quentin Tarantino used in the two Kill Bill films

1,000 gallons (3,785 liters): Amount of fake blood used in the 2013 Carrie remake when filming the iconic bucket drop scene

£19.95 ($24.50): Cost of a pint of “Drying Blood” special effects makeup made by Fleet Street Bloodworks (instructions: “Shake well”)

$135: Cost of one gallon of water-based “bulk stage blood” from Graftobian professional makeup

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Fun fact!

One of the most influential bloody scenes in cinematic history was an accident. In the 1962 masterpiece Sanjuro, by Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, the film’s climax is a duel between two samurai. The titular character Sanjuro strikes adversary Hanbei (you can watch here) with his katana, and after a half-beat a massive spray of blood erupts—a dramatic effect that was entirely due to a special effects malfunction. Nevertheless, the shot made it into the final cut and went on to influence many other films, notably Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill.

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Watch this…

Check out this video from Insider that goes behind the scenes to show how fake blood is whipped up for the silver screen. Want to try it yourself? Here’s one we found for Kensington Gore—let us know if you dare to try it.

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Poll 

Which director is best at using fake blood in movies?

• Akira Kurosawa of course—he’s the OG
• Anything Tarantino, he’s a bloody virtuoso
• You’ve got to hand it to Francis Ford Coppola for The Godfather and Bram Stoker’s Dracula
• This is erasure of the spontaneous bloody nose in Emma (2020). Obviously Autumn de Wilde wins.

We’re not scared—give us your bloody take in our one-question poll. Or, tell us which director should have been on our list.

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Today’s email was written by Julia Malleck (spiritually bathing in the Byzantium (2012) blood waterfall) and edited and produced by Morgan Haefner (sincerely will try to convince you that the first three Saw movies were cinema gold).

The correct answer to the pop quiz is C., Squib. If you were ever wondering about the movie magic behind bullet hits, the squib is it. This special effects device (example here) contains a pouch of fake blood that can be triggered to explode with the press of a button.