BY STEVE BIODROWSKI
Volume 6 Number 5

“I personally have never been into horror films,” says Melinda Clarke from beneath makeup that alters her appearance into a scarified zombie. “I prefer the more serious films that scare me, like THE EXORCIST. I actually like special effects, but I’ve never been scared of them—I loved FRIDAY THE 13TH-3D when Jason smashes that guy’s head and they eye pops out, because I loved the effect.”

The young actress initially had reservations about playing her first lead in a horror film, but the character offered some dramatic potential. “When I first heard about this, I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it, but when I read the script, I was really surprised—I liked the challenge. Julie’s a rebellious teenager from a dysfunctional family, and the only thing she has is her boyfriend, so they’re really playing out that strange Romeo and Juliet/Sid and Nancy-type relationship. She turns into a zombie, but she’s not just a bad ghoul walking around moaning. Her spirit is intact, and at times she struggles with the fact that she’s in danger of attacking her boyfriend. She doesn’t know how to handle it, so she goes through stages of extreme mental torture. It’s wonderful to play, because there’s a lot involved doing a scene that is entirely Julie struggling through this situation. She finds that inflicting pain brings her back to reality; then she gets to the point where even that doesn’t curb the horrible hunger for brains, so she breaks down and eats someone.”

Clarke’s stage performance, in a production based on the ill-fated Sid Vicious/Nancy Blugeon relationship, provided her with some background for this kind of characterization. “Melinda played that role real well, that near-death experience,” says co-star J. Trevor Edmund. “Nancy was about as close to death as you can get while still being alive. You’re just walking the other side of the line with the Julie character.”

While acknowledging the similarity, Clarke makes a distinction: whereas Nancy had simply lost touch with reality, Julie is facing an unreal situation. “Nancy was literally psychotic—she went from one extreme to the other, as mentally ill people do,” the actress explains. “The producers wanted someone who reacted that way, but Julie has something happen to her that is inconceivable, reality-wise. To make that believable as an actress, you use that pain-addiction parallel.”

Julie, the zombie whose scars are self-inflicted, is the one undead who must be absolutely convincing to the audience. Realizing this goal fell to Steve Johnson’s XFX, Inc. “[Director] Brian Yuzna wanted me to be in charge, not just of Melinda’s makeup but of her character—period,” explains Johnson. “So I had a hand in everything. I tried to avoid large appliances, because I think what makes a girl beautiful is always a very small thing, a tiny element that sets her apart from the crows. Anytime you start messing with that, suddenly she’s not beautiful. That accounts for the fact that we have so many appliances. I didn’t want to cover much of her face, so anytime we have something stuck into her, it’s a small, individual appliance around the wound. That was the main concern: even when in her full regalia—completely pierced, scarred and mutilated—she had to remain beautiful. Even though she is discolored and zombie-like, we tried to stay with ‘pretty’ zombie colors, blues and purples.”

Johnson points out that Julie’s nipple rings, attached to chains leading to other parts of her body, required prosthetic breasts. “Which is good,” he jokes, “because I wouldn’t want to be around exposed breasts—I don’t know about the other guys!”

Certainly, actress Melinda Clarke felt comfortable despite the semblance of being exposed. “As real as these might look, they’re fake—that makes it okay to me. If for some reason they wanted me to appear without (the prosthetics), I would be very uncomfortable because I’m not the type to go, ‘Woow!’” [she laughs, flashing Johnson’s handiwork.].

In the early stages of Julie’s appearance, the onset application was handled by Bill Corso and David Dupuis; the full-body make-up for the later stages required the additional assistance of Leon Laderach. Julie “initially starts hurting herself by doing things that aren’t permanently scarring. Then all of a sudden she goes for it—and does it in 20 minutes, when it takes us six hours! I can’t figure it out!” laments Johnson. “We didn’t have the luxury of a makeup test, except on a full-body mannequin of her. The first day we did it, just to figure out how to hook it up, took us nine hours which is a little ridiculous. Later, we got it down to six.”

Clarke’s positive attitude helped. “She made it fun—something that always helps, because it has the potential to be a miserable experience for everyone involved.” says Johnson. “You wake up every morning around 3:00 a.m. to do the same things over and over—it gets old after the first day. But she admits that it helps her performance by helping her get into the character.”

Despite the rough hours and rushed schedule, Johnson is confident in his director’s ability to deliver the goods. “I like working with Brian,” he says. “I can appreciate someone used to working with low budgets. You’d better be able to do something interesting with $50 million. But Brian’s been able to do something with less. God knows there were problems with time and budget, but the script was there.”

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