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Jack Pierce - The Man Behind The Monsters
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Obviously a labor of love, Jack Pierce - The Man Behind the Monsters at first appears to be a documentary, and in a way, it is. Apparently what happened is that in June of 2000, a large group of makeup artists and costumers held a one-day, one-performance show based on the life of Jack Pierce, the famed creator of Universal's great monster makeups. Producer, writer and director Scott Essman organized a rather elaborate event, with about a dozen actors appearing in elaborate makeups to represent Pierce's major works.
In the play, an actor made up as Pierce himself rises from a coffin and reads from a scrapbook of his life, a process interrupted by short vignettes and recreations of scenes from the classic movies, accompanied by stills projected on a large screen.
The show and the disc unfortunately comes off as a vanity production, which isn't entirely fair to the proceedings. As a documentary, it's kind of roundabout. The actor playing Pierce does a good job of animating the frustrated actor-turned makeup man, but as a tribute, there's nothing much really happening except the parade of new faces. A variation of the phrase, 'And then something happened which would change my life forever", is said at least four times.
This is a good calling card for the talented makeup people, who clearly invested a lot of themselves into the show. By and large, the characters recreated are accurate and impressive. A couple, like The Mummy, seem perfect, while characters like Colin Clive, Ernest Thesiger and Conrad Veidt approximate the look but can't convey the personality to make them work 100%. Frankenstein's monster is of course as much a feat of acting as it is makeup, so the excellence of the makeup work only goes so far.
The staging is enthusiastic but limited as well, as the skits and recreations require elaborate sets beyond the reach of the production. Shot live on videotape, the limited coverage doesn't help either. The 'grandness' of the scenes isn't there, and our appreciation pretty much stops at the admire-the-makeup stage. The show works best if one thinks of it as one of those English-style 'tableau' exhibitions, where live people imitate great paintings, etc.
The script mainly clicks off the main accomplishments of Pierce's life, and doesn't get into his craft. My understanding is that Pierce pioneered refinements of the old-fashioned 'built-from-scratch' Lon Chaney techniques, instead of the modern latex appliance methods. The makeups on display here are all done the modern way, and look it; the fact that they're shot with harsh stage lighting on video, means that the final products probably looked even better than what we see. But in terms of celebrating Pierce, the photos shown win hands down every time, and the new makeups we see can look as haphazard as the cheapo ones done for the 1957 Man of a Thousand Faces, that did nothing to honor the legacy of Lon Chaney. What we see is by and large very well done - but there are gaps in the basic show concept.
The large cast of patient actors get their head-shots billboarded at the end of the show, which is deserved. But one must search the 'cast' menu selection to find out who made them up and costumed them - something that shouldn't happen on a show produced to give due credit to an underappreciated makeup artist! A lot of the costuming is spot-on perfect, as important as the makeup in creating the stage illusion. Robert Burman and Jennifer McManus' names are prominently featured, but each monster has at least two contributing artists not credited on the show proper. As the show was a one-shot deal, this DVD stands as good record of their work.
The menu section of the disc has a few surprises. A graphically-enhanced gallery of Pierce makeup photos looks thrown-together and unattractive. A timeline for Pierce's life gathers together the writer's research and would be more useful on a website or printed somewhere. A short behind the scenes section shows the makeups being applied backstage. And a wonderful excerpt from the old This is Your life TV show is a kinescope of Pierce surprising Karloff in front of the television audience.
That clip is accredited to a TV rights holder, which brings up another issue: I hope the producers of this disc have legally cleared all those stills and feature audio clips through Universal and MCA. Perhaps they're all public domain, but I wouldn't take it for granted - the last I heard, the Pierce makeups themselves are copyrighted. There's no mention of any legal clearances anywhere on the disc.
Going to the disc's advertised website, www.jackpierce.com , we find an article about the show written by its producer. It's thorough and gives a lot of credit that's hard to trace on the disc itself, and has a number of attractive stills of the very elaborate vignettes, for those who'd like a preview. There's an option to order the disc on the site. I couldn't locate it on Amazon.
Visionary Cinema's DVD of Jack Pierce: The Man Behind the Monsters is an odd record of a unique stage show shot live, that will have great appeal to fans of movie makeup. The camerawork is basically okay, but some audio tracks have production noise problems. There are also low stage light situations that don't record as well as others, but overall the video image is good. The package quotes a 72 minute running time.
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