themakeupgallery | disfigured
updated: 29/10/2007
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disfiguring makeups: fake amputees

Home of the Brave
Planet Terror
Stories of Lost Souls
Marilyn Hotchkiss Ballroom . . .
The Saddest Music . . .
The Dangerous Lives . . .
El Espinazo del diablo
Amores perros
Drop Dead Gorgeous
Romeo is Bleeding
Boxing Helena
A Zed & Two Noughts
Tristiana
other movies

With prosthetic makeup it’s a lot easier to give an actress a big nose or a fat face than to take away what’s already there. For simulating the effects of an amputation this is true in spades – a hook where a hand would have been is always going to be a hook beyond where the hand still remains.

Somehow the continuing existence of that inconvenient limb has to be disguised, so movie-makers often resort to a combination of techniques to create the illusion: an arm bound behind the back or a leg hidden in the wheel-chair; a prosthetic stump; a prosthetic hand that fits like a glove (eg Home of the Brave); precisely planned camera angles; trickery with cuts; CGI.