Ourchickenshack's House of Horror : Return of The Living Dead Oklahoma Chainsaw Massacre

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Well it's getting very close to that special time of year again

For those of you who have seen my set up from previous years , I have reworked the photos and will post some highlights and some in progress pics of props I have made over the years .

For those that haven't seen the show I hope it delights and disgusts you all


Here's a small part of what I do  

A little of what it looks like in the daytime ...

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and at night ...

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Thank you Nicolas


You should be able to click on any photo in this thread to see a larger pic if you like  


I'll start off with my Jason costume :

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A few years ago I found a seller on ebay with some really cool latex pieces that worked great for my costume - I got a good deal on them because I requested that they be sent to me unpainted .

Here are the knee parts shown in stages of being painted :

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1st pic : Raw Latex as it came to me
2nd Pic : after going over it with a watery brown wash
3rd Pic : after several more steps such as detailing the bones and a few seperate coats of different paint mixes - redish brown , then dark brown and finally a very dark black brown wash . I do it in separate stages to try and give a layered look to the paint    .

The completed chest and back pieces :

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These 2 square pieces were for forearms and/or to cut up to use in random spots under the clothing part of the costume .

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I simply took a old long sleeve black T-shirt and glued the chest and back pieces to it and a old pair of jeans that I glued the knee parts to . Then took a old green shirt and ripped it all up for the top layer to go over the t-shirt with the innards showing .


Here's the hood :

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After I bought I had to modify it to make it fit better and be more comfortable . I had to make the eyes bigger and completely cut out the nose and mouth areas . It looks really goofy on me without the hockey mask      With the hockey mask on it doesn't matter though and it is wayyyy more comfortable and I can actually breath  

I also customized the paint by added more detail and shading and changed the overall paint color to match the rest of my costume pieces .


The Hockey Mask :

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It started as just a plain white $10 mask but I notched it and then painted and weathered it . I still want to replace the stretchy straps with some actual real leather straps eventually


Here's the whole get up together ...

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BTW - I made the gloves with some other costume gloves I found with exposed decent bone/finger sculpting . I cut the parts I wanted to use off them and then combined them with some old tattered brown work gloves I had . After a repaint I thought they looked like a decent enough match with the rest of my costume  

Thanks guys

I know most of you have seen the stuff before but at least the pics are a little better quality since I finally learned how to photo shop them

I shot these next videos 2 years ago (Halloween 2014) but didn't know how to post them at the time . I finally took the time to learn how to upload them to youtube today so , although it's 2 years late , here you go


These 2 were shot at dusk to try and show the lighting but it's creepier once it get's completely dark  






Here it is in daylight when the details can be seen a little better ...




To be honest , although the videos are a couple years old , I was too busy last year to make many changes to the set up and only had time to make a couple new props . I did improve the lighting quite a bit last year but there really weren't many changes from what's shown in the videos otherwise .

I am going to try and do quite a bit more this year so hopefully there will be some stuff that's new to everyone  

ChristianC wrote:WOWWWWWWWWWWWWW!

Dude that setup is amazing! I initially assumed you must have hired all the props but then realised you made them. Wow. Halloween must be awesome at your joint.

I'm not going to sleep after seeing that clown in the second video.

Nice random KFC bucket too...

Thanks Christian

Glad you like it and it does my heart warm that it may give you nightmare's

Less then 10 % of my set up goes completely unaltered . I make a lot of my stuff from scratch but even the props I buy get customized in one way or another - repainted , weathered , gore added with spray foam , latex or paper mache etc .

The KFC Bucket Head isn't random , it's a "Buckethead" prop I made a few years ago . It started as a white foam wig head but I did a bit of gore work on the neck and added the bone , hair etc . It's a tribute to my favorite guitar player who also happens to be a horror movie fanatic and a strange fascination with chickens

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Ian_C wrote:Holy hell, that's awesome James.

If I could only convince my wife to let me do up our house like that...

The very audible breathing on the videos sure adds to the creepiness factor.

Did you customize the Judith Myers headstone?

Ian

Thanks Ian

I wish I knew how to add music to the video's instead of my breathing

Yes , I made the Myers headstone

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It was my 1st attempt at making a headstone and I used some Styrofoam type packing material that I found behind a local furniture store . The letters are actually carved in but it's hard to tell in the photo . I wasn't happy with the "carve ability" so on my second attempt I used blue sheet foam insulation (like for houses) and glued 3 - 1 " inch layers together ...

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It was much easier to carve

I am sure you already know but , the design is based on Friday The 13th Part 6 - the one where Tommy and Horseshack dig up Jason at the start of the movie .


All the other headstones are store bought and I put them in the background so they aren't too visible , particularly at night

Thanks Steve

I will probably start setting up next week and it usually takes me close to a week to get everything set up to suit me . Most of October itself will be used to make new stuff and enhance older stuff


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The clown is (was) a licensed Michael Myers prop that I bought about 5 or 6 years ago . They are actually fairly collectable now and for several years I didn't do anything to alter him because I was afraid to devalue it . This is what it looked like originally ...

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The original factory paint job on the face was terrible and the hair was nearly fucking white !!  It was so inaccurate that it really bugged me for several years before I finally decided to give in and repaint the face and change the hair - screw the collector value  

I could never find a good picture of the mask so I had to pause the dvd on the 2 second scene in the original Halloween movie where the mask is actually faintly visible .

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The knife also irritated me so a year or 2 later I cut it off and modified the hand to hold a slightly more realistic looking butcher knife . I still had to use a fake one because I can't risk kids grabbing something sharp  

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BTW - The doll Mikey is holding in the last pic was made by my wife ...

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Lucky for me , Julie really enjoys Halloween too and makes some really cool dolls - zombie babies , Universal Monsters etc .

Ian_C wrote:Damn, I would have never even thought the original figure was young Michael Myers.  Looks nothing like him.  You've improved it a LOT.

What did Julie use to paint the baby doll?  My daughter has one that she's almost grown out of playing with, and I'd love to make an attempt at something similar.

Ian

Thanks again Ian

We both mainly use cheap hobby store acrylic paints for nearly everything . I also have a big selection of Testors Model Master Acrylic paints but , since it's a bit more expensive , we only use it for smaller details on props . It also helps to use a primer on most things - I had bought a can of grey latex paint to paint my headstones and torture chamber a few years back and didn't use it all . Julie used it to prime several of the dolls before she painted them .

Here's some more of Julies dolls ...

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The only thing I helped her with on any of the dolls was the sculpting on the head of Frankie . I did it with milliputty and then added the eye inserts . She did all the painting , hair work and even made most the clothes

Thanks Andy

Ian_C wrote:Holy shit, she could honestly sell those and make money.  They look terrific.

Ian

Yep I've told her the same thing

The cutesy ones are "inside" decorations though because they don't fit my horrible outdoor display

However the 1st one she made in 2011 is still my favorite :

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She did all the painting and I added the blood and edible creatures  

I liked it so much I made a gory swing for it out of a old jumper we found at a thrift store for $ 4 ...

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This next one was her 2nd Zombie Baby which she made for a friend of hers ...

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The skull pictured above was one of the first props I made ...

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It started off as a cheap plastic skull which I covered with a mixture of liquid latex and paper towels . It was my 1st time playing with latex so I just stretched , cut and messed around with it until it looked like rotting flesh

Then added a little paint and worms to gross it up a little more  

I displayed it this way the 1st year ...

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The next year I used it for the head of a "ground breaker" zombie I made with PVC pipe and a little padding ...

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Julie did something similar with another cheap plastic skull ...

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She covered this one with paper mache to get the rough wrinkly texture . It hangs in the torture chamber until Halloween night and then is replaced by a live victim

A lot of people who see our display think we have spent a ton of money on props , but , since we're not wealthy people and because I'm a cheap bastard to boot , the case is far from the truth  

I rarely buy props at full price and usually wait until after Halloween to go shopping for props to use the next year . Everything is always marked at least 50 % off so it saves quite a bit of money  

Here are a couple examples of props I bought cheap but then tried to modify to look a little more realistic ...

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It is motion activated - the jaw opens and closes while it makes howling , growling or barking sounds randomly . As far as I know dog skulls don't have ears so I removed them and did a repaint .


I forgot to take a photo before I started work on this next one but the 1st thing I did to it was carve out the eye holes and teeth so that I could light it from the inside with a little battery powered LED light ...

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Then a complete repaint and added a spiked collar ...

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Sorry about the weird glare spot on the pics  

Nico wrote:Did Julie do art at collage James She defo has a talent mate

I believe she did take some high school and collage art


Here's another zombie critter made by the same company that made the dog above .

Before :

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After I made a few modifications and repainted it ...

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I rigged it with LED's so that the skull eyes , baby head eyes and the squirrel eye's and mouth light up (glow) red