EP#444 - Live from Propstore's Spring 2025 Entertainment Memorabilia Live Auction with Tom Sullivan

·44 min·4 clips

Tom Sullivan had just two weeks to create all the special effects for The Evil Dead before filming began.

This episode of The Boo Crew is a live recording from Propstore's Spring 2025 Entertainment Memorabilia Live Auction VIP event. Host Trevor Shand interviews special effects artist Tom Sullivan, who worked on The Evil Dead. Sullivan explains how he met director Sam Raimi at Michigan State University through the Creative Filmmaking Society. He had only two weeks to prepare all effects for The Evil Dead, including the Book of the Dead, which he bound with grocery bag material and illustrated with hieroglyphs inspired by The Ten Commandments. The book's cover was a latex cast of actor Hal Delrich's face to resemble human skin. Sullivan created Deadite makeup using latex and tissue paper applied directly to actors, with contact lenses that were rinsed with coffee after the proper solution ran out. He made the Kandarian dagger from a Revel model skeleton kit and chicken bones. Sullivan collaborated with Bart Pierce on the stop-motion meltdown scene, combining clay animation with live-action effects. He also worked on Evil Dead 2, creating the opening book sequence and vortex effects. The episode mentions auction items like the screen-matched Book of the Dead, which sold for over $132,000, and Linda's looking glass necklace. Sullivan reflects on the film's legacy and shares a humorous story about creating unique drawings for auction attendees that hint at a fictional treasure called Lovecraftium.

As heard by us

Tom Sullivan makes horror makeup feel painful, ingenious, and sharply physical.

The Boo Crew's return to special-effects mastermind Tom Sullivan works best when it stays close to the physical grind behind horror production.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Press play for Tom Sullivan's account of the painful oversized contact lenses that helped give a horror production its blank-eyed, eerie faces.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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