Facepaint In Film: A Gallery Through the Decades

Now, this may seem like a bit of an odd choice to talk about here; after all, it's not actually costumes, real tangible objects that exist and remain after filming is done. But really, I feel makeup in movies is adjacent to costume design as it is also about establishing a look for a character, and often the costume designer has a hand in designing the look of the facial makeup; this happens with special makeup effects as well, where the special effects teams will follow from the costume designer's sketches.

This is going to be mostly focused on cult and exploitation film; the characters donning facepaint usually tend to be evil occultists or violent punks, with some exceptions. The inspiration tends to come mostly from either various indigenous cultures - Native American, African, Pacific Islander, Maori, etc - or from more contemporary sources such as musicians (Arthur Brown, Peter Gabriel or KISS come to mind) or wrestlers, though how much the latter takes inspiration from the former is up for debate!

For the sake of my own time, not *every* bit of facial makeup in a movie will be included; anything as minimal as the makeup worn by Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange will not be included, and clown/mime makeup will also not be included due to redundancy. Additionally, riffs on such bands as KISS are not included, nor are movies with 'tribal' characters, as they're often copies of real-world tribal facepaint.

Mr. Freedom (1969)

Assorted facepaint makeups in red, blue and white; the colours of the Stars and Stripes, as per the film's satirical critique of American imperialism.

Brewster McCloud (1970)

Shelley Duvall sported this Raggedy Ann pastiche facepaint for the finale of the Robert Altman film.

Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1971)

A fish-inspired facepaint makeup is worn on a singer in this famously oddball entry in the Godzilla series.

Kamen Rider (1971)

Agents of the villainous 'Shocker' organization wear green and red wavy facepaint, even when performing medical duties.

Blood Orgy of the She-Devils (1973)

Skirts the line between facepaint and beauty makeup, but it's elaborate and striking enough to count on here; love that there's silver *and* gold inside the red lining.

Live and Let Die (1973)

Geoffrey Holder sports two facepaint designs in his turn as Baron Samedi. The first is a half-face white makeup, that in the film's final shot is altered so the painted half has his natural lips showing, while the unpainted half has his lips painted white.

The second is a half-face corpsepaint makeup design with painted bones across his body.

The Burning Hell (1974)

None other than Satan himself wears this elaborate facial makeup in the infamous Christian propaganda 'classic'.

Phantom of the Paradise (1974)

Brian De Palma's seminal satire of the music industry has a parodic take on Alice Cooper et al in the form of 'The Undeads' wearing stylized black and white facepaint, before KISS made it cool (or uncool, depending on your opinion on KISS); and of course, who can forget Gerrit Graham's silvery bodypaint?

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

Some very mime-inspired facial makeups in the iconic cult classic, though I also included an image from the original stage play!

The Tomorrow People 'Worlds Away' (1975)

Two forest dwellers of the planet Pyrie wear multicoloured facial makeups utilizing woodland colours.

Doctor Who 'The Brain of Morbius' (1976)

Members of the flame-worshipping Sisterhood of Karn sport gold facial makeup with detailed flame markings around the eyes.

Doctor Who 'The Robots of Death' (1977)

David Bailie sports this shiny makeup in his turn as the robot supremacist Taren Capel; does this read as being a little inspired by Peter Gabriel to you as well?

Jubilee (1978)

Pamela Rooke sported her iconic pink geometric makeup design in Derek Jarman's tribute to London's punk subculture.

Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979)

A half-face patterned makeup was applied to Duke Butler and H.B. Haggerty in their turns as the 'Tigerman'.

Ring of Darkness (1979)

A hexagram facepaint pattern adorns the coven's leader in this schlocky Italian ripoff of Rosemary's Baby and The Omen; sublime Stelvia Cipriani soundtrack though!

The Warriors (1979)

One of the most iconic images from Walter Hill's larger-than-life cult classic; the facepaint was the idea of costume designer Bobbie Mannix, who denied any inspiration from A Clockwork Orange or KISS; I can see it, the facepaint looks much more inspired by indigenous facepaint, fitting with the 'tribalism' theme of the film.

Crazy Thunder Road (1980)

Sogo Ishii's directorial debut revolving around a biker gang; one of them sports this very elaborate technicolour face makeup.

Blake's 7 'Stardrive' (1981)

The 'Space Rats' are a futuristic spin on biker gangs and punks, so of course they sport garish makeup, especially the yellow and black design sported by Damien Thomas; only one of his underlings has their facepaint clearly visible.

Conan the Barbarian (1982)

At least two notable bodypaint designs are seen in John Milius' adaptation of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories. The first is an elaborate bodypaint design sported by Franco Columbo as the otherwise unnamed 'Pictish Scout', inspired by the motif that Scotland's ancient Pict peoples may have painted their bodies.

The second bodypaint design, sported on Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sandahl Bergman and Gerry Lopez during the raid on Thulsa Doom's palace, is a primitive spin on modern camouflage painting, consisting of black streaks over their faces, arms and torsos.

Liquid Sky (1982)

Several bold and garish facial makeup jobs were applied on various performers in this arthouse send-up of New Wave makeup and fashion.

The Last Horror Film (1982)

A lovely blue and white makeup pattern was sported by Joe Spinell in this meta spoof on the horror genre.

Blade Runner (1982)

A rather colourful wheel-shaped makeup is sported by a dancer in the Snake Pit scene, though only seen clearly in one promotional photo, sadly.

1990: The Bronx Warriors (1982)

The 'Iron Man' tapdancing gang, taking some cues from the Baseball Furies of The Warriors, sport flame-patterned warpaint. Other characters in the film wear less garish, but still odd facepaint makeups, with one character sporting a corpsepaint-like design.

Endgame: Bronx Lotta Finale (1983)

The fighters of the titular deathsport, as well as some other extras, sport rather New Wave inspired facepaint; special mention to George Eastman's red, silver and black design.

2020 Texas Gladiators (1983)

Another low-budget Italian Mad Max wannabe, with some of the wasteland bandits sporting 'tribal' facepaints.

Warrior of the Lost World (1983)

Yet another cheap Italian post-apocalypse film, with more garish makeups; the highlight is the black and white checkerboard pattern sported by one of the wasteland thugs, though of course there's the usual New Wave eye makeups!

Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone (1983)

A sadly unused facial makeup was designed for Molly Ringwald's turn in the Star Wars/Mad Max hybrid oddity, sadly only seen in these promotional photos.

The Boxer's Omen (1983)

The evil magician in this Hong Kong cult classic sports facepaint that seems a little inspired by Papa New Guinea traditional makeup.

The Toxic Avenger (1984)

One hoodlum sports this rather fetching half-face black and red makeup, with accentuated lipstick on the unpainted side - rather glam!

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

Infamously racist for yknow, demeaning an entire religion's deity as some sub-Satanist cult, but the Thuggee cultists so sport some great outfits complemented with facial makeup; the priests wear corpsepaint (inspired by Baron Samedi?) while the warriors sport a red pattern.

The Midnight Hour (1985)

A bold, geometrically patterned blue and white face makeup is sported by a Halloween partygoer in this family oriented horror special.

Vamp (1986)

The iconic Grace Jones stars as a vampire queen in this cult classic, sporting a bodypaint job designed and applied by none other than Keith Haring; Haring and Jones had collaborated previously before, which can be read about more in this article from Artland Magazine. For the Vamp assignment however, Haring's bodypaint is completed with a mime-like white face makeup.

Unmasking the Idol (1986)

Janet Nease sports a red, blue and gold glitter facial makeup in this rather unfunny James Bond/Indiana Jones b-movie spoof; it's better than Order of the Black Eagle, at least.

Class of Nuke 'Em High (1986)

The 'Cretins' gang in Troma's delightfully trashy entry in the punksploitation trend sport some very elaborate facial makeups.

Terminus (1987)

Arthouse-influenced French scifi thriller where the protagonists are harassed by soldiers sporting ornate facial makeup; Enki Bilal was involved on the film and this may have been his influence, due to similar facepainted fascists being present in his Nikopol comics trilogy.

The Barbarians (1987)

Various tribesmen in the schlocky Ruggero Deodato Conan the Barbarian ripoff sport colourful facial makeup jobs.

The Lair of the White Worm (1988)

Ken Russell's deliciously kinky gothic horror has Amanda Donohoe sporting this full bodypaint, with dark blue detailing around her face with streaks along the hair; more complex makeup design was applied to the male extras during one hallucination sequence. I think at least some of these designs were inspired by Nuba facepaint but in a blue tone.

The Toxic Avenger Part III (1989)

One thug sports this ornate half-face makeup depicting waves and rain drops; the actor's hair's been shaved for this no less.

Howling VI: The Freaks (1991)

A circus freakshow themed entry in the tired Howling series, among its number is a circus jester and bird-biting geek who sports this elaborate red, white and black facepaint design.

Shock 'Em Dead (1991)

Very silly low-budget rock-themed horror flick, with Tyger Sodipe sporting some elaborate facepaint makeups as the otherwise unnamed 'Voodoo woman'. The red makeup feels inspired by indigenous tribal facepaints.

Wittgenstein (1993)

Derek Jarman's surrealistic biography of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein has Tilda Swinton sporting a garish facepaint design of blue, yellow and red.

TC 2000 (1993)

Various wasteland thugs sport elaborate facial makeup; Jalal Merhi sports to distinctive designs, one a colourful wavy pattern and the other a half-face yellow and black design.

Tales from the Crypt 'Food for Thought' (1993)

As I said, I don't include clown makeups, as they are the same few designs. However, I'm making an exception for the facepaint design that Ernie Hudson sports as the sinister Zambini, thanks to its sinister lining and gold colour. Gold is typically a colour *not* used on clown makeups.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 'Rules of Acquisition' (1993)

The 'Dosi' aliens sport a variety of red and white face patterns, with blue dots and streaks going down to the chest; Brian Thompson and Emilia Crow get the most screentime, but many more patterns were made for the various extras, most of them never being seen properly on-screen.

Death Machine (1994)

Martin McDougall sports this red half-face makeup, slightly makes me think of a 'target' motif, fitting the character's warrior nature.

No Escape (1994)

A few of the extras playing the feral inmates of the 'Absolon' island prison sport tribal-inspired makeups, in particular the blue pattern that feels indebted to Maori tattoos.

Lunarcop (1995)

Billy Drago dons a colourful warpaint makeup during the final battle in this forgotten Michael Pare post-apocalyptic action vehicle.

Johnny Mnemonic (1995)

Slightly more minimalistic black facial makeup markings were applied to the various 'Lo Tek' extras.

Star Trek: Voyager 'The Thaw' (1996)

A futuristic spin on clown makeup was sported by Michael McKean in his turn as a futuristic clown in this off-kilter episode. A colourful, albeit more minimal makeup was also sported by Patty Maloney in this episode, but it barely gets a good shot sadly.

Dungeons & Dragons (2000)

One or two makeup jobs are worn by extras in this maligned fantasy film; I have no idea if it's meant to be tribal facepaint or even meant to be some sort of non-human character, but still, it counts. Notice that the green paintjob changes on the same performer!

Ghosts of Mars (2001)

Various 'tribal' and corpsepaint-a-like makeups are worn by the possessed maniacs in Carpenter's scifi actioner. Almost all of these, barring the last shot, were taken from behind the scenes material; none of them are properly visible in the film itself.

The Wicker Man (2006)

A particularly loathed remake, but I do find these makeup designs worn by the cultists to be kinda charming, especially the alternating blue and white design sported by Ellen Burstyn, which even has the lipstick split in two colours!

Doomsday (2008)

An ornate face makeup is sported by Lee-Anne Liebenberg as the warrior 'Viper' in Neil Marshall's schlocky Scotch tribute to 1980s action films; the design feels like a combination of Maori tattoos and New Wave eyelining makeups.

Recycled Movie Costume Mysteries: Roger Corman & Battlestar Galactica

Roger Corman was not a director known for spending; he considered Battle Beyond the Stars, a film made for roughly two million dollars, to be one of his most expensive, and regularly reused its visual effects sequences in later films to keep their budgets down. It wasn't just visual effects he recycled; costumes from Battle were reused in 1982's Forbidden World aka Mutant, and 1983's Space Raiders.

To be fair, reusing costumes is not something only Corman was guilty of - just take a gander at Recycled Movie Costumes, which is a fantastic resource - but Corman had a history of utilizing visual effects sequences from other movies, provided he could get it for cheap. Of course no American studio would be willing to part with such footage, so instead he turned to the Soviet Union who didn't see much economic value in science-fiction films, despite the high level of craft put in them. Thus, dignified Soviet science-fiction films such as 1959's The Sky Beckons (Nebo Zovyot), 1962's Planet of Storms (Planeta Bur), and 1963's A Dream Come True (Mechte Navstrechu) were transformed into dull, kitschy crapfests such as Battle Beyond the Sun, Planet of the Prehistoric Women and Queen of Blood.

This tendency of Corman to not just lift from his earlier films but even from other productions brings us to the main focus of this little article; the costumes of Corman's 1981 scifi shocker Galaxy of Terror, and the rumour that they were reused from Battlestar Galactica, a 'fact' that many sites have ran with, despite it being blatantly false should anyone even compare the costumes - or is it?

Galaxy of Terror is actually one of the more polished films Corman produced in the 1980s, thanks in part to the talents of one James Cameron, who acted as production designer for the film. Cameron's faults as a human being and, in recent decades, as a director, are considerable, but he is regardless a talented and skilled artist with a good eye for atmosphere and this shows perfectly in Galaxy. Cameron designed almost everything for the picture, from the alien labyrinth the unlucky space troopers get murdered in, to their battleship and its interiors, to even the giant worm that rapes some unlucky GI Jane in Galaxy's most infamous sequence.

Cameron's designing duties extended to the costumes, but only partly; in his concept art he envisaged the galactic squaddies as wearing a rather greebly undergarment fitted with electronics and cooling systems - a futuristic spin on the likes of the RAF's 'fairy' ventilation suit - but in the final film this only extended to some fabric being stuck on off-the-rack vests. Notice that the stuck on fabric does not match the colour of the trousers or jackets, or even the vests in the promotional image.

The film's uniforms are beige cotton trousers and jackets; the trousers have black stripes along the sides, and the jackets have raised collars, ribbed panelling and angular button snaps. They do not look like anything Cameron would have designed; complicating matters further is that the film's credited costume designer, Timaree McCormick, never worked as a costume designer before or since. One costume was reused a year later in the aforementioned Mutant.

For their turn in Galaxy, the uniforms have a 'CSF' patch, referencing an organization never referenced or named in the final film. The patch was removed on the one jacket reused for Mutant, showing a black velcro panel. The single officers variant was made of the same material, as well as the pockets being similarly designed to the grunts' jackets.

In the final film, it's apparent that a lot of the costumes do not actually fit their respective cast members, coming across as two baggy or loose, with only one jacket ever being closed - the one reused in Mutant. All of this indicates that the costumes were not made for the production, but were borrowed from another studio; a suspicion bolstered by how at least one of the film's monster suits was borrowed; namely one that FX artist Steve Neill had originally built for the Leslie Nielsen vehicle The Creature Wasn't Nice.

So, if the Galaxy uniforms were reused, then from what? Some people online, not least whoever updated the 'trivia' page on IMDB, think they were reused Colonial Warrior uniforms from the original Battlestar Galactica designed by Jean-Pierre Dorleac. Let's be real here; even a cursory glance shows this is absolutely false; the cut, fabrics, colours, etc just do not match at all. Yet there is a similarity in their design; the general shape of the jackets, the snap buckles, and the beige colour.

It is already known that the Battlestar jackets were inspired by Philippe Druillet's design for Lone Sloane published in Heavy Metal. I doubt this was the case for Galaxy simply because its unlikely that Corman would even want to spend the money making costumes. The original Alien, a big-budget studio picture, just had its cast wearing minimally altered flight jackets and work shirts; would Corman of all people go the extra length and have several costumes bespoke-made? And designed so similarly to a recent, and popular, scifi show?

However, there is a possible explanation provided by, ironically, Dorleac himself; multiple times on social media he has railed against the work of Al Lehman, the costume designer who replaced him on Buck Rogers in the 25th Century; Lehman's designs are made of cheaper materials and rely more on camp cliches, but to be fair suit the general tone of the kitschy Buck Rogers series. However, Lehman was also slated to be costume designer for Battlestar Galactica's much-loathed sequel series, Galactica 1980.

According to Dorleac - so take it with a grain of salt - Lehman was fired from Galactica 1980 for designing a new set of uniforms for the Colonial Warriors, this new uniform 'looked like porridge' from being made of 'grey wool gabardine' and were so disliked by Glen A. Larson that they were rejected, put in stock and thus never used in the series, causing Lehman to lose the gig and Larson aksing Dorleac to return as costume designer (and have the dubious honour of having Galactica 1980 on his resume). This story is fishy if only because it implies Glen A. Larson, the man behind such quality television as Automan, Knight Rider, Manimal and B.J. and the Bear, actually had a semblance of taste. More likely is Lehman left the series for other reasons, and Dorleac upon returning to it opted to reject Lehman's new Colonial Warrior uniforms.

However, the description of Lehman's unused uniforms does match the Galaxy uniforms doesn't it? The drab colour, the coarser material, the obvious replicating of the original design. The maximum number of Galaxy's 'standard' uniforms totals a number of six; matching the amount of characters in the original Battlestar Galactica series who regularly wore the uniforms; four outfits for the men, originally for Captain Apollo, Lieutenant Starbuck, Lieutenant Boomer and Flight Sergeant Jolly, and two for the women, originally for Lieutenant Athena and Lieutenant Sheba.

Yes, it's a shot from behind, but you get the gist.

Presumably, the officers variant would have been for Lorne Green to wear as Commander Adama, replacing his earlier blue uniform.The general construction of the Galaxy uniforms matches many costumes Lehman designed for Buck Rogers. I'll just show this outfit he designed for Gil Gerard in one episode, and let you decide.

Galactica 1980 was aired in, well guess, and Galaxy of Terror was filmed 1981. The 'CSF' on the uniform patches could easily stand for 'Colonial Star Fleet', or whatever they were going for. It's not too unrealistic that Timaree McCormick could have found these forlorn looking uniforms in whatever costume warehouse they were rummaging in, with the bonus that they had never been used on-screen anyway. After all, many screen-used costumes from Battlestar Galactica, Galactica 1980 and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, ones designed by Dorleac and Lehman both, turned up in Metalstorm, Trancers and The Dungeonmaster, all produced by Corman's 1980s b-movie rival Charles Band.

A funny note to end this article on; when searching online to see if any of Galaxy's costumes had been auctioned off, I came across these very obviously phoney 'concept sketches' by an artist who, looking at their IMDB, had a career only in animation storyboarding. But what really gives away that its a forgery is the sketch that is very obviously a copy of the same Lone Sloane panel that was lifted for the Colonial Warrior uniforms in the first place!