Well, first off, technically this wasn't a Halloween costume, since I wore it on Dia De Los Muertos, November 1, 2003. This was my second time wearing a Scream Team prosthetic, my first having been my Demon costume in 2000. The previous time I had used liquid latex to color the prosthetic, but this time I wanted to do it "properly", with rubber mask grease (RMG).
I had an RMG palette I'd bought from The Chamber of Horrors a few years back and had never used, but the greasepaint was pretty moisture-poor, thickened, and hard to work with. Luckily I was aware that RMG is castor-oil-based, and I just happened to have some castor oil ampules my former chiropractor had prescribed to me years ago for an infection (yeah, just like on "The Little Rascals"), which I had kept, for that's the kind of insane packrat I am. This worked fairly well for softening up the makeup, but I definitely would like to try working with fresher RMG next time.
Anyway, here's how my face turned out:
Of course my makeup application is nowhere near as well done as the one featured on Scream Team's site for this prosthetic. Theirs, of course, was done by a professional special effects makeup artist, while I've done makeup only a handful of times (and this was my first time using RMG). I could have gone a little further than I did, but there was no time. My date Annie and I were enjoying each other's company so much that we didn't manage to settle down to the Halloween business at hand until the last minute. It was so late, in fact, that I almost convinced myself I'd have to just skip the prosthetic and do a "Lite" version of the costume with just the suit, some white face powder, and the contacts.
Luckily I came to my senses and did a rush job of the full deal. It only took me 15-20 minutes to do the full makeup, including the spirit gumming, base coloring, highlighting, and powdering stages. As is fairly visible in the below photo, two "pro touches" I had originally planned to do, but didn't have time for, was to conceal the edges of the prosthetic with stippled liquid latex, and to "rot" my teeth with Mehron Nicotine/Decay Tooth F-X.
It also appears in the above photo that my prosthetic may have been starting to come away from my face at my right temple — these photos were all taken back at home after a night of wear-and-tear, including a lot of wild dancing and expressive singing along to Dead Man's Party (see below). One place where the spirit gum was definitely failing was at my lips, though you can't really tell here. That's by far the hardest place to keep stuck, due to the solvent effects of food, drink (especially alcohol, of course), and, well, saliva. Next time I do a prosthetic I'll have to plan earlier and figure out how to get ahold of some medical adhesive. That stuff is reportedly the big kahuna of the prosthetic-stickers.
My suit, as noted, I got at The Goodwill. (I never realized The Goodwill wasn't a national chain, but just an Orange County, California thing.) It's a thrift store like the ones The Salvation Army operates. I'd never shopped for costume components at a thrift store before, but I'm sure I'll be doing so again — it was quite the goldmine, for a costume of this nature. Incredibly affordable, too. No element of my wardrobe was more than a few bucks. I went for earth tones, which to me are the color of death and decay. I especially liked the "bruise-colored" tie:
I had originally intended to "distress" the suit by shredding it up and
adding something looking like dirt (wasn't sure how I was going to do this
and not have it stain my car seat and whatnot — brown chalk powder was
a possibility I considered, though I figured airbrushed brown paint would be
better, though I'd have to buy an airbrush and quickly learn how to use it),
to simulate escaping-from-the-grave damage, but again, I ran out of time for
this. It still works well in more pristine (if ratty — these
were thrift store clothes) form, though. In lieu of shredding up my
clothes, to look as carelessly disheveled as an undead guy should be, I at
least loosened my tie and untucked one shirt tail. 
The destination for this night was The Masque of the Red Death, a costume party / "Zombie Art Show" / concert put on by Koo's Art Center, a sort of underground art venue in Long Beach. It was a great, if low-key, event (I suspect the event's first night, on the 31st, may have been slightly less sedate), and the biggest attraction for me was a concert by Dead Man's Party, the über-talented Oingo Boingo tribute band. Yes, this was my second year in a row seeing Dead Man's Party at Halloween — hey, if we can't have Boingo Halloween shows anymore, might as well have the next best thing.
Before the show (or was it after?), there was a costume contest. I can be seen hamming it up as the judging commences in this shot stolen from the Masque of the Red Death site's photo gallery:
Unfortunately the flash washed out the features of my prosthetic. Also, my "undead lurching" never quite comes across correctly in these photos — here I look sort of simian. I think it looked a lot better in motion, though. Annie, at least, said I had the disturbing living dead walk down-pat.
But as much as I tried to work the crowd, I only managed to get second place in the contest. The winner was the girl who's cut off on the left side of that shot, but who went as Sally, the patchwork doll from "The Nightmare Before Christmas" — she can be seen more clearly in this shot. I was a tad bit bitter, since though I think her costume was wonderful, she wore the same exact thing at the previous year's Dead Man's Party show, winning first place that year too, as I recall. Now, granted, I've worn the same costume more than once before, specifically my Pencil-Neck Geek costume, but never twice in the same venue or for an overlapping audience. Oh well, enough of my little "superior dance".
One of the funniest things from the evening was that there was this big burly bouncer guy who we kept passing in the hall as we went from room to room, and he could not bear to look at me. He was so disturbed by my makeup that every time I came by he'd make frightened exclamations and would have to avert or cover his eyes. And, really... who can blame him:
If you're still hungry for more zombie goodness, the second-string shots are here.
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Dan Harkless
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