25
Mar
Restoring the original Creepshow Creep Puppet
Restoring the original Creepshow Creep puppet for Creepshow TV series director/producer, Greg Nicotero.
Over the years, we’ve had the great fortune to conserve and restore on a number of key props and costumes from the 1982 film, Creepshow and other Tom Savini creations. Sometimes, that’s meant creating elaborate displays, others, preserving and restoring these bits of foam latex that helped create movie history. This time, it was restoring the original Creepshow Creep himself!
Sometimes called Raoul, the 1:1 skeletal Creep was brought to us by friend of the studio, Greg Nicotero. The timing was quite cool as Nicotero was hard at work on the new Creepshow TV series for Shudder when we began the restoration. It was also fortunate as Greg had held onto some rare photographs he shot of this very prop puppet in the 80’s, during his work with FX legend (and tremendous inspiration to us here!), Tom Savini.
Patrick Louie was the lead artist on this incredible project. Some work would be quite subtle. Pat devised clever ways to support the joints in the elbows, neck and shoulders. He spent many hours doing tiny repairs to bones (and teeth!) and improving the piece’s overall stability. Pierre Briel welded custom mounts to independently support the torso and both arms, including the mechanical controls on the back of the right arm.
Much of the facial detail had been lost to time. Pat brilliantly restored the details in a way that was very faithful to Savini’s original work and the vintage photos we were provided. At some point, one of the eyes was replaced with a replica and Pat created a new eye to better blend with the original, even aging it for a true match.
The prop puppet was mounted on a large museum-style laminate wood base and Nina Bellord crafted and distressed the new shroud created to complete the display. Christine Richter developed a crating plan that would support the piece’s fragile joints on their long journey home to LA, and he made it there safely!
With a bit of blue light on some of the photos, it looks like Raoul’s ready to float outside that window once again!
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