Since even before I started writing for Horror Press, I’ve wanted to get a peek behind the curtain on how horror movie productions are made. Not just the films themselves, but the people.

How do you get the perfect storm of people to assemble and film a slasher? 

How do practical effects creature features get all of their most important moving parts, the cast and crew, in place? 

And with so many people with their own artistic vision, how do they keep from tearing each other’s heads off? 

Today, I got those questions answered by the wonderful Monster Makeup LLC, the queer horror film collective that brought you Death Drop Gorgeous and their newest feature Saint Drogo. 

What did they say about making these ventures, and their latest feature Queen of the Rats? Venture deeper, intrepid reader…

An Interview with Monster Makeup LLC

Pictured from left to right: Brandon Perras-Sanchez, Ryan Miller, and Michael J. Ahern

Just want to start off by saying, I saw Saint Drogo, and I enjoyed it a lot. Perfectly evokes all the vibes critics say it does, and that finale is gut-wrenching. Excellent stuff, and congrats on realizing that vision. 

Michael J. Ahern: Thank you so much!

Christopher Dalpe: That’s awesome! Thank you.

Wayne Gonsalves: Hail, Saint Drogo.

The second thing I wanted to say was, all I could think about after I saw the climax of Saint Drogo was “Imagine just being in the area that day and seeing this crew off in the distance filming THAT”. Your effects are insane, has anybody ever stumbled across you guys shooting these scenes or preparing the effects and just lost it?

Brandon Perras-Sanchez: We had this weird curse placed upon us where no matter how far into the wintry wilderness or national shoreline we would travel, there would always be at least one person lingering around. We were filming the SFX heavy finale with Joe Castro on an extremely windy and freezing beach. Along with these harsh winter conditions, the tide was coming very close to washing away our props and equipment, so we had to relocate everything to the parking lot and film it there. While we were setting up, this group of four, very curious, and intrusive adults started hovering around us. We were polite at first and let them watch, but since we only had one take and opportunity to get this specific shot. Things were intense. One of the nosy spectators kept touching the makeup of one of our actors and asking really stupid questions. Her other friends were right next to us and trying to start conversations while we were about to shoot. We finally gave them the cold shoulder and they eventually got the hint, but I was ready to use one, if not all of them as actual props.

Kevin Bowden: We tried getting film permits so we could shoot in peace, but the film commission never responded so we were at the mercy of tourists coming up to us while shooting. It didn’t help that American Horror Story was also in town shooting so people thought we were part of that production.

Pictured from left to right: Brandon Perras-Sanchez and Michael J. Ahern

Speaking of insane practical effects, the grinder scene from Death Drop Gorgeous is incredible. It felt like the spiritual brother of that very over-the-top “explosion” scene from Frankenhooker and seemed super Henenlotter inspired which is something I love. We need to know, who thought of that for the kill?

BPS: It was from my cesspool of a brain. I am terrified of glory holes and am amazed that someone could just voluntarily put their dick through one without caring about what’s on the other side. We also were very adamant about trying to create kills people hadn’t seen which made my imagination run wild. I probably need to start taking multivitamins again.

CD: This is the kill that started it all really! In the early days, before Monster Makeup was founded, before DDG was even a script, Brandon and I were geeking out and riffing on how we’d love to see a good gay slasher – one that exploited the hook-up culture and sketchy red-flag scenarios that Queers find themselves in commonly. Glory hole, meat grinder…it felt natural.

I’ve been hyping Saint Drogo up to my friends who are gore hounds. To give people who haven’t seen it yet an idea: how much fake blood did you guys end up using in that finale over the course of however many takes it took to get it right?

BPS: When Joe Castro landed in Rhode Island, we immediately went to our house and made a couple of gallons using his secret recipe and at different consistencies, one was watery and one thicker for better drippage. For some reshoots, we bought 2 or 3 more gallons because filming blood is always a crapshoot on how it’s going to splatter or flow and look on camera. Each gore scene took about 2-4 takes, we used every drop we had.

MJA: The finale was shot, I think, four different times in three different locations: twice on location at Longnook Beach, once in the Rhode Island desert (a very strange, former quarry in the state), and once in our backyard.

Pictured from top left to right: Michael J. Ahern, Chris Dalpe, Brandon Perras-Sanchez, and Ryan Miller. Pictured from bottom left to middle: Kevin Bowden and Wayne Gonsalves.

Now let’s talk more about Monster Makeup as a group. I wanted to ask how you guys formed, how did you all come together? When did you really realize “Oh this is the team we want, we’re going to do this”? Was there a moment where it clicked, or did you just hit the ground running?

BPS: I met Chris through his sister, another horror fiend, and author, Victoria Dalpe, when I first moved to Providence in 2003. Years later, the three of us were joking about how the gay sex apps could also function as a tool for serial killers, because horny men will skip red flags to get off. A year later, I befriended Mike and told him about this and he said “Let’s make it into a movie!” Next we had a group meeting at a local bar with my boyfriend, Ryan, and one of my best friends, Wayne, and we started formulating a story, which eventually morphed into a screenplay, which eventually became DDG. Each of us brings something unique to the table which is crucial for a team to function.

WG: Brandon and I had known each other for over 10 years at that point, and he was filling me in on these crazy meetings that he was having with Chris and Mike. Chris and I had known each other for a few years, but I was recently introduced to Mike, who was writing plot points for the movie that were scarily reminiscent of things I had experienced or thought, so it was like I had known Mike for years.

MJA: I don’t know if there was a specific “click” but I think with Death Drop Gorgeous, the momentum kept rolling until it was like “oh, I guess we’re doing this!” And then it got to a point where we couldn’t keep referring to ourselves as “the Death Drop boys” and we wanted to formally name ourselves.

CD: Monster Makeup, the formal company, erupted from the ground like a limp-wristed zombie, hand sprung from the grave. We are a bunch of friends, who love horror, music, gore, and GOOD stories. We looked around and said, ‘fuck it, let’s do it ourselves.’ It’s the Captain Planet – “with our powers combined” attitude that I truly believe any amount of success derives from. Now, growing pains happen, of course, but there have been consistent core tenements that we’ve lived by: “Is it horror?” “Is it queer?” And “What are you doing on Sunday?”

Ryan Miller: Brandon and I have been together for about 12 years, so I was around when he and Chris first had the idea for the DDG story. They soon roped Mike into the group due to his excellent writing skills, as well as Wayne who Brandon had been friends with for years. At that point, I had zero background in film, but as I sat around a whiskey-fueled table listening to these guys come up with absurd, hilarious characters and scenes, I immediately knew I wanted to be a part of the process. As a group, we pretty much did collectively say, “Fuck it, let’s do it!” and learned as we went along. I tend to be much more cautious when it comes to dipping my toes into the unknown, so I’m thankful that they had the initiative and punk rock attitude to jump right in and make shit happen. The rest is history!

KB: I came in super late in the Death Drop Gorgeous production. My girlfriend saw that a local slasher needed music so I reached out to them and sent some music I had already produced under the name Limmazene. I believe Ryan asked me if I could score a scene from scratch and the first scene I received was the glory hole kill. I must’ve watched it 100 times laughing my ass off at how awesome it was. I called my girlfriend into the room, “You’ve gotta see this!” I think I scored many scenes before I even met the boys in person. One night Brandon and Ryan picked me up to watch the final cut at their place. It was dark and snowing, and their apartment was dark too. I didn’t even know Brandon was Tony Two Fingers until weeks later because I hadn’t actually seen his face. A month or two later Brandon texted me about my photography and asked if I could meet them for a drink, and that’s when they asked if I wanted to shoot Saint Drogo. I think I said yes before he finished the sentence.

Saint Drogo is a folk horror film, and I always find the subgenre interesting in the context of sharing small-scale stories, these frightening folktales, and spreading them to the world at large, to the global village that is filmgoers. So why was Saint Drogo the saint of choice for telling that sort of story to everybody, what compelled you guys to choose him of all the saints? 

RM:  From the beginning, we knew we wanted to draw on elements of religion—in this case Catholicism—to highlight the very similar social pressures that exist within the gay community. We all experience the need to belong to something larger, to find our place among our people, and to feel a sense of conviction and purpose. One day, I was browsing a catalog of Catholic saints and their patronages, and I came across Saint Drogo. At first glance, his domain seems to be eclectic and scattered; he’s attributed as the patron saint of unattractive people, the disfigured, the deaf, shepherds, and coffee (among other things). However, if you zoom in on the social aspects, the common thread seems to be that they are outcasts, those that would be ostracized from mainstream society. It’s this feature that initially caught my eye—the comparison to the marginalization that gay people have experienced in modern culture, and the way that cult-like forces might prey upon this to lure others into their fold. There are also other fun references to the Saint Drogo legend that pop up in the film, such as his reported ability to bilocate, his own disfigurement, and the burning of his church cell.

BPS: Saints have such interesting and morbid trajectories towards their canonization, so there is a lot to play with there. We also wanted to make sure we found a saint whose patronage paralleled the themes of the film. Aside from embodying our themes, he was also described as having some sort of growth/deformity on his abdomen and had to hide himself in the basement of a church because his appearance was so jarring. His story is tragic but one that was a perfect vehicle for our cautionary tale.

Pictured from left to right: Michael J. Ahern, Wayne Gonsalves, and Mike Rigney.

Could you tell me a bit about the changes going from Death Drop Gorgeous into making Saint Drogo? Since they are very different films, tonally and aesthetically, what’s the most glaring difference that comes to mind jumping from Death Drop Gorgeous to Saint Drogo? How has the process changed for you the most over that time, and going into these new projects?

MJA: Saint Drogo, for me, felt like we had something to prove. During Death Drop Gorgeous, so much of it was learning as we were going, and there is a micro-budget charm that I think lends itself to the DIY energy of the film. So, for Drogo, I think we wanted to showcase what we learned from shooting DDG, and the growth we experienced as filmmakers and storytellers. Sometimes it’s crazy for me to recall that I was 25 when I started writing DDG with these guys, and I’m now 32. We also didn’t want to pigeonhole ourselves to a specific kind of horror, and we wanted to make something unsettling and unnerving to challenge ourselves. I feel like it would’ve been the easier route to write another comedy horror.

BPS: As far as similarities, being such a small crew, we wore a ton of hats. Saint Drogo was filmed during COVID, which forced us to have an even smaller cast and crew. Our dream is to eventually have enough staff that we can walk onto set and are only responsible for a single task instead of four or five. Adding Kevin Bowden as our cameraman lifted such a huge weight off of us and we cannot wait to have him on board for our third feature.

As far as differences go, the original DDG script was 140 pages. We learned the hard way that horror scripts are generally around 90 pages; whittling that down was a nightmare that none of us want to endure ever again. When writing Drogo, we wanted to make it as streamlined and succinct as possible. A friend of ours told us that Cronenberg will keep his screenplays at 60ish pages, and we implemented this tip when writing SD, knowing that it would be a more visual, brooding, and tense film. We also wrote the script for our third around the same time, and we kept the same mantra of “neat and tidy.”

CD: From its inception to the big screen- Death Drop Gorgeous was brutal, messy, over the top, ambitious, and hilarious. We barreled into DDG unapologetic and fiercely. This was the first time for many of us working on this kind of scale, and we may have taken the long road to get there, but we discovered and learned so much on the way.

To me, Saint Drogo is a culmination of a lot of those lessons learned. Shorter, cleaner script. Smaller cast. Wildly different and obviously a harsher story but DDG & SD are sister films with a lot to say about identity in the queer community.

RM: From a technical standpoint, one of the biggest differences between the films is the equipment we used. When we started Death Drop Gorgeous, it was a passion project, and we were more interested in the story and vision than the technical specs. There’s definitely some great cinematography, but we shot in HD on an older Canon and learned the best settings as we went along. When we started Saint Drogo, our friend Kevin Bowden, came on board with a Nikon Z6, a BlackMagic drone, and better lenses. This allowed us to shoot in 4K, which forced us to pay much more attention to things like focus, aperture, etc. Following the success of DDG and what we learned in the process, we approached this film with a bit more intention from the very beginning and wanted to make it look as good as possible. The fact that it was shot in a beautiful seaside town in the offseason definitely didn’t hurt, either. Because our script for Saint Drogo was much shorter, it also allowed us to let the visuals breathe and spend more time creating an immersive atmosphere.

Recently, you said your next film was going to be Queen of the Rats, and that it’s going to be a middle point of sorts between Death Drop Gorgeous and Saint Drogo. Which…I don’t even know how to visualize that, but I am excited. Can you give us a little peak of insight into that film, and the creative process of striking that balance?

BPS: When brainstorming ideas for our next film, Chris mentioned Lovecraft and the mafia. I ran with this idea and fleshed out a skeleton and brought it to the crew. And like Uncle Frank coming out of the floor in Hellraiser, the Monsters worked their magic and started adding meat to the bones and before we knew it, we had an amazing script. Mike is our primary dialogue guy/screenwriter, and I think this is his best work. 

CD: It’ll be another love letter to Providence!

MJA: We actually wrote Queen of the Rats before Saint Drogo during the summer months of the pandemic. It’s this amalgamation of so many things we all love and it bizarrely works seamlessly. We are sort of describing it as Green Room meets The Sopranos meets Lovecraftian cosmic horror, and it takes place during the early 2000s in the Providence noise rock scene, which was lowkey the Golden Age of Providence. It’s implicitly queer, but that’s a little less the focus this time around for us. We’re playing with themes of greed, gentrification, and community, which I think shares some commonalities with our previous two films.

Pictured: Brandon Perras-Sanchez and Michael J. Ahern. Crew pictured: Kevin Bowden and Ryan Miller.

Is there anything you can tell us about what Queen of the Rats is exactly about, or about the main villain? Will it be a creature, or are we going for something more grounded? What can we expect from it?

WG: Should we spoil the surprise?

MJA: There’s a creature!

BPS: I can tell you it’s going to be a wild one! In a nutshell, it’s about the early 00’s warehouse scene in Providence, RI which was a utopia of artists, musicians, performers, you name it. Weirdly enough, there was a symbiosis between this scene and the mafia (yes, this factual). Toss in a Lovecraftian monster, a noise rock band, and some mafia drama, and you have QotR. Expect our usual level of gore but tenfold, an even balance of humor and darkness, and a lot of familiar faces.

Malfunctions on set, they’re part of filmmaking. They’re inevitable, and sometimes they’re happy accidents. When it comes to practicals as involved as yours, the makeup, what’s the most memorable on-set special effects catastrophe that has happened to you? If you haven’t had one was there ever a concern like that, about a big bloody explosion or something just not coming out looking right?

BPS: The worst one was when we were filming the opening kill in DDG with the poisoned cocaine. I had made an appliance out of paper towels, latex, and acrylic teeth. We wanted to create the illusion of his nose and upper lip dissolving so we had the actor fill his mouth with fake blood and tossed in a couple Alka-Seltzers. So Mike Murphy, the actor, “dies” and starts drooling out the foamy blood and then starts saying “Hey guys, this is burning my face.” We ran over and washed all the gore off and removed the appliance. Apparently, latex and Alka-Seltzer have an adverse reaction. He ended up actually dying an hour later, but as Kevin our cameraman would say, “That’s showbiz!”

Just kidding! Mike is alive and well.

Another scary moment was between me and Ninny Nothin (Young Gloria) during the scene where she guts Tony with the electric meat carver. So, I’m wearing the silicone stomach that Victoria Elizabeth Black created which was loaded with intestines, blood and slime. We originally had a piece of plexiglass that was slid in between my actual stomach and the prosthetic. It wasn’t looking good on camera, so we decided to nix the plexi and go commando. We informed Ninny: “Don’t go in too deep!” This made her extremely nervous, and it took some convincing, but she said she’d do it. Was I terrified? Holy fuck yes, but if you’re not going to bleed for your art then what the fuck are you even doing? Luckily, I wasn’t disemboweled, and Ninny wasn’t charged with manslaughter.

RM: I second all of the above. I’ll just add that during Tony’s gutting, Brandon was also extensively wrapped in Christmas lights, so now we have live electric wires, liquid blood, and a crazed drag queen with a turkey carver carefully trying to avoid said wires. I was a nervous wreck behind the camera for most of the scene.

WG: I really hit Audrey Heartburn’s (Ava Unit) head on the vanity in Death Drop Gorgeous. It’s in the bloopers on the Death Drop Gorgeous DVD.

MJA: Shooting the climax of Saint Drogo felt like one big catastrophe. The weather was not cooperating, hightide was insane. The rock at the end of the movie actually washed out to sea, and we had to go in and grab it before it floated away.

Pictured from left to right: Brandon Perras-Sanchez, Mike Rigney, and Katerina Pederson.

We all watch the classics, Carpenter’s essential works, and the movies that legends like Tom Savini and Screaming Mad George have worked on for great special effects. What are some obscure practical effects movies you think most people don’t know about that they should watch?   What’s a lesser-known must-watch for you?

BPS: The Demon’s Rook! There’s an interesting and adorable story behind this movie too – required viewing. Also for all you gore hounds, any Brian Paulin and James Bell films are all barf-inducing, and they both do all the SFX themselves. Others I love: The Dead Next Door, Black Past, Nikos the Impaler, Violent Shit, Deadly Spawn, Street Trash, The Kindred, Xtro, Basket Case 2 and 3, The Church, Demon Wind, Little Necro Red, The Burning Moon, Beyond The Black Rainbow, Warlock 1 and 2, Laid To Rest.

CD: Oh! We just did a TikTok about this. Personally, I love how unhinged and insane the special effects are in the 80’s remake of The Blob – skin dissolving, acid burning, and goo; every kill is so over the top.

Daydream with me a bit. No reins, no questions asked, just unlimited funding, whatever you need to make it. What kind of effects would you have if you had that? Are there any dream projects where you would just need an unfeasible crazy amount of money to realize a creature or a concept?

MJA: One of my favorite genres, if not my favorite, is fantasy horror. Pan’s Labyrinth is probably my favorite movie next to Lord of the Rings. I’d love to create a fantasy horror epic with some amazing creature designs.

CD: Hauntings and demonic possessions! I love that shit, but I’d love to tell it from a very Monster Makeup perspective. A car chase. Head explosions. A hoard of monsters crawls out from the ground. Underwater monsters. Something in space. I’d love to do it all.

BPS: This Pandora’s Box of a question! And all of these answers will involve HEAVY practical effects. My current dream project is Queen of the Rats. I have two other screenplays that I have novelized, The White Bishop (a period piece, nautical, body horror, novelized with the help of Splatterpunk terrorist Aron Beauregard) and recessive NATURE (a horror fantasy that takes place in the 80’s with a lot of folklorish creatures and monsters.) Both would need a hefty budget (these books will be available soon!) I would also LOVE to remake Neon Maniacs, Curtains, or Spookies.

​​RM: I’ve always loved monsters that incorporate human bodies and appendages into themselves, such as the disgusting orgy mass in Society (1992) and the ravenous alien parasite in Slither (2006). I’d love to be a part of creating insane special effects like that—in fact, we already have some related ideas, so if there are any sugar daddies listening out there, please give us money!

WG: I’d really like to get thrown through a glass window.

***

And there you have it folks! It was lovely getting to know Monster Makeup LLC, and I hope you all got to learn a little something about your new favorite indie horror team. For more interviews like these, follow us on social media to keep up with Horror Press.

For those hoping to see more Monster Makeup LLC, they’ll be showing Saint Drogo at Denver Film’s CinemaQ (get tickets here!) Friday, August 11th,  as they begin the festival circuit run of their movie.

Hail, Saint Drogo!