#Hocus focus photo club skin#

She was literally the picture of serenity sitting next to her husband on set while Margaret Prentice touched up Doug’s makeup. “This Hocus Pocus photo was taken when Doug Jones‘ lovely wife, Laurie, came out to hang with us on the graveyard set on the Disney Studios lot. It wasn’t a flattering look though – he looked like a cross between a walrus and a skinny teenager trying to grow a mustache.” The stitches were glued into his facial appliance every day, and between shots I would disconnect them on the bottom lip so that Doug could talk and eat. Because it was so thin and delicate, it took two makeup artists to apply it every day: myself and Margaret Prentice. I thought it was the easiest way to keep the prosthetics as thin as possible, and be able to have the wrinkles and folds line up and move well over the entire surface of his head.

#Hocus focus photo club skin#

“This is a photo of Doug Jones as Billy Butcherson on the set of Hocus Pocus. His weathered skin and gaunt look was created by using one single foam latex appliance to cover his entire face and neck. Alterian had done a variation of this design on Karyn earlier, for a film called Freaked, where Karyn played a character named “Sock Head” and wore an animatronic “head” above her own, mounted on a skullcap.”

Karyn wore a skullcap with a neck stump on it that had magnets inside the stump that corresponded with magnets buried in the neck of the latex and polyfoam severed head of Billy Butcherson. For the scenes in the film where Billy Butcherson loses his head, actress Karyn Malchus took over for Doug Jones as “Headless Billy.” I wanted to shoot the effect practically on set, so we built up an upper torso for Karyn to wear that was proportionate to Doug Jones’. Actress Thora Birch reacts to Winnie Sanderson ( Bette Midler) flying down to grab her, while Headless Billy Butcherson struggles to put his head back on in the background. “This photo was taken on the Disney sound stage where Hocus Pocus’s graveyard set was built. The high speed of travel on the rig would cause the “rider” to spin out at a certain point towards the end of their trajectory, which made for entertaining shooting days.” A giant flying grid was mounted to the ceiling of the stage that was capable of flying the Sanderson Sisters anywhere on the stage at any angle, and in this case, a cameraman was flown towards Thora Birch in the rig, representing Bette Midler/ Winnie Sanderson’s point of view. Here Director of Photography Hiro Narita fine-tunes the lighting on Doug Jones as Billy Butcherson, for the scene where Billy faces off against the witches on their broomsticks flying towards him over the cemetery. Instagram: and Twitter: and behind-the-scenes photo from Hocus Pocus was taken on the lot at Disney Studios, on the soundstage where both the Witch’s house and the Graveyard sets were built. KEEP UP WITH TONY GARDNER and ALTERIAN INC. Most of the set photographs below are credited to Andrew Cooper. Gardner’s photos and insights peel back the curtain and showcase all the work that went into bringing Billy to the screen did you know, for example, that Jones wasn’t the only one to play Billy?!Ĭonsider this an early Halloween treat – a bonus featurette for Hocus Pocus, if you will, that you certainly won’t find on any of the film’s home video releases! Of course, one of the film’s biggest effects is the undead character Billy Butcherson, played by iconic creature performer Doug Jones. Not only did we get the chance to speak with Alterian Inc’s makeup FX master Tony Gardner, who was the film’s animatronic cat effects artist/special makeup effects artist, but he was also awesome enough to share with us TONS of behind the scenes insights as well as NEVER SEEN set photos that document his team’s effects work. We’re huge fans of Hocus Pocus here on Bloody Disgusting, and we’ve got quite a treat today for those of you who are fellow fans of the 1993 Halloween classic. “There were many steps involved with bringing the character of Billy Butcherson to life – or reanimated life.”