[NSFW] Award-Winning Horror Photographer Rick Jones on ‘Horrify Me’, Tom Savini, and the Dreaded ‘C’ Word
Vampire Squid team member and content writer Emily had an absolute scream interviewing Rick Jones, founder of Horrify Me, upon his return to the studio. The award-winning photographer and SFX wizard offers an immersive experience that allows you to live a day in the life of your favourite horror fiend. This is a fang-tastic experience for any horror fan, and the passion Rick has for his clients’ terrifying transitions is inspiring.
Emily visited Rick in an unassuming village in Kent, home to his globally renowned SFX studios, to find out more about Horrify Me and experience it first-hand!
Emily: What lured you into horror?
Rick: I think seeing Jaws and King Kong as a very young kid got me hooked on monster movies, and from there I got hooked on old Hammer horror films. I was a seasoned horror fanatic by the time I was eight years old. My mum was awesome, always letting me stay up late to watch horror films and buying me arty materials.
Emily: What kind of horror inspires you?
Rick: 1980s horror! It doesn’t even come down to a specific genre (such as zombies or vampires). If it came out of the 1980s then you can guarantee it will win my heart and feed my imagination more than any other era of horror. I just love it all and feel endlessly inspired by that magic era. The very best FX guys were busy then, such as Tom Savini, Rick Baker, Rob Bottin, Steve Johnson, and all those other guys who were like rock stars to us fans.
We’re in the age of committee-led filmmaking now, where teams of hundreds of technicians create CGI effects, and it tends to make the FX feel a little soulless. But back then it was all led by individual visionary artists, and I think that’s why their work continues to fascinate and inspire subsequent generations.
Emily: Tell us about the birth of this horror adventure. What inspired the name?
Rick: I’ve been a horror fanatic my whole life, literally since a very young kid. I think my love of horror is actually imprinted into my DNA somehow. I was always quite an arty kid too, and often tried to copy monsters I’d seen on TV by making drawings or crude makeups. I studied fine art and design, and never lost my passion for horror. My whole work life has been dedicated to art, design and graphics, and eventually my work and my horror obsession met when I was asked to produce a book cover for a horror author. From that one job, Horrify Me was accidentally born! I originally decided to call it Living Dead Portraits, but a buddy of mine came up with Horrify Me, which I thought was a stroke of genius for the name – unfortunately I cannot claim it as my own genius.
It was all an accident, following the book cover project for Lisa Richardson, which I mentioned earlier. But once it got going it just seemed ludicrously obvious, and I have no idea why I didn’t think of it 100 years ago!
Emily: Talk to us about the process, how it differs, the creativity of it all.
Rick: There are two aspects to Horrify Me. Firstly, I shoot horror portraits for paying clients. In almost every case, I have never met nor seen the clients before the shoot date, and so I have to design their vampire or zombie looks on the fly, often improvising and making their makeups work for them with no prior preparation. This keeps me on my toes and also ensures that every single creation is unique. It means making their scars and zombie wounds right there on the day.
The second aspect to Horrify Me is the in-house projects. These usually do have a lot of preparation and planning, such as sculpting prosthetics, making costumes, building props etc. These shoots tend to get the most attention because they are often quite big complex creations (such as Wolf Girl, Bride of Pinhead and the Impaled Girl).
Emily: What do you love most about what you do?
Rick: I love all sorts about it, but primarily I love the creativity of it all. Horrify Me lets me flex my creative muscles more than anything else. I love crafting scary images, I love meeting so many cool people, and I really love some of the amazing things that happen as a result of this work, such as meeting my idol Tom Savini.
Emily: Yes! We hear Tom Savini is a massive fan of yours! How did that come about?
Rick: I met him at Manchester at a Living Dead convention and managed to chat to him. A few weeks later, he dropped me a line on IG and asked about getting hold of my book. Naturally I was happy to send him a copy, and he sent me back a testimonial about it, which was amazing! I hear from a lot of creative types that Tom is incredibly generous, giving us mere mortals a whole lot of support and encouragement. He’s such a legend.
Emily: Where would we have seen your work?
Rick: Most of it is probably on the Facebook Banned List! Aside from that, my work has appeared in Matt Shaw‘s film Monster, lots of magazines including Coffin Cuties, Photo Shoot Magazine, Nikon Magazine, Twisted Edge, and Mirror Group newspapers. My work has also featured on book covers, the Blog of the Dead series, Through the Dead Eye, and a novel called Wayne. Then there’s features on Bloody Disgusting, Movie Pilot, Bleeding Cool, The Horror Society, Bunker 51, and many others. Oh and there’s all the tattoo studios around the world that use my photos as a source of reference for their tattoo work – some absolutely amazing results! My photos have a very strong following by international tattoo artists.
Emily: And rightly so! You mentioned during the shoot that a favourite monster of yours is werewolves?
Rick: I don’t really know that werewolves are my ultimate favourite as I love all monsters, but there is something cool about werewolves. Like vampires, they come from very old folklore, which is pretty fascinating. I think the human/animal hybrid is a pretty interesting concept.
Emily: What keeps you motivated?
Rick: I’ve managed to keep that magical, child-like sense of wonder for this stuff, and so staying motivated and eager is easy. I still get excited to see movies, I still buy action figures and horror toys (I have a man cave full of this shit), and I still get as excited as a little kid when I put fake blood on people. Growing up is for suckers!
Emily: Your plethora of props is something to behold. This warehouse is an avid SFX enthusiasts dream come true!
Rick: I’m a proper workshop monkey and I like to build all my own stuff where I can, which includes photographic backdrops, custom light stands, and of course masks and props. This is all just part of the creative spirit. I do sometimes buy masks and prosthetics from other artists, such as Monster FX, but I mostly make everything myself. Over the years I’ve scratch-built a full-scale and screen-accurate R2D2, a full Alien costume, Leatherface mask, Legend/Darkness horns, castle walls, and fuck knows what else. Loads of stuff. It is intensely satisfying to stand back and say “I made that”.
Emily: Tell us about your most controversial shoot.
Rick: The Impaled Girl, based on Cannibal Holocaust, was perhaps among the top most controversial shoots. That image has got me banned from everything at least once, upset countless people, attracted hate mail and a death threat, and even got me compared to ISIS for “posting shocking violent images of death online to scare people” – although I did remind them that, unlike ISIS, my models tend to have fun and go home safely afterwards, but that’s another story.
Perhaps just beating that one is the photo of a young boy, about six years old, holding a real machete in one hand and his mum’s decapitated head in the other hand. It’s a grim photo, but it’s supposed to be. That photo somehow ended up under the scrutiny and discussion of the Netmums and, man, were they pissed! Portraying children as demons and murderous, cynical monsters was “irresponsible, bad parenting, abusive”; there were calls for the police to check my hard drives, have my sanity checked, have my work banned, have the kid checked to see if he was okay (he was fine by the way), and so on. Fucking crazy reaction. I suppose it was my first big brush against “cancel culture” but, as you can see, I’m still here and still doing my thing.
Emily: We are very glad you are! So, is there anything that makes you squeamish?
Rick: Oh loads of stuff. I’m bloody useless. The sight of real blood makes me wobble, even if it’s a pathetic little paper cut. I’m very squeamish of anything to do with teeth or fingernails – I tend to have to hide my eyes. I have absolutely no appetite for anything “real” and I struggle with dentists.
Emily: Haha! What’s your favourite kill scene in a horror film?
Rick: There’s a film called Mirrors from 2008, which I’m not a huge fan of, but it was okay. But, oh my god, there is a death in that film that made my toes curl, and I still struggle to watch it. The scene shows a girl in the bath, and her jaw is broken off in a way that I just cannot tolerate watching. I suppose I would call that one of my favourites as I find it so utterly horrific. But I love imaginative deaths too, such as the helicopter chopping the zombie’s head in Dawn of the Dead, and the guy who is split in two by a large piece of glass in 13 Ghosts.
Emily: If you could have a dramatic horror death, what would it be?
Rick: Woah, I’ve never considered it. Okay, how’s this: I’d be thrown off a tall building by King Kong, landing in a nest of hungry vampires who drain my blood and then throw the remains into the sea where Jaws scoffs the rest. How’s that?
Emily: Haha, I love that! Have you been made up as anything? What would you see yourself as?
Rick: I used to do loads of makeup/cosplay myself, mainly at Halloween, and I have experienced all the gross makeup and fake blood that I now impose onto others, but these days I’m quite happy just being the makeup guy and behind the camera.
Emily: If you could be in any horror film, which one and who would you be?
Rick: I’d be happy to be a zombie in Dawn of the Dead!
Emily: Anyone famous you’d like to give the Horrify Me experience?
Rick: Emily Booth! I have been chatting to her for a while about a shoot but she’s a busy lady and difficult to get in the studio.
Emily: Who would you like to work with?
Rick: It will never happen, but in my most ridiculous pipe-dream I’d spend a day working with Tom Savini, making zombies and photographing them.
Emily: Do you ever face censorship issues?
Rick: Oh. The “C” word. I’ll warn you now that I cannot discuss censorship without exploding into a rant, so brace yourself. It’s something I grew up with in the 1980s, during the ‘video nasty’ era. It was endlessly frustrating having so many of my beloved films cut or banned by the BBFC under James Ferman, and the ridiculous campaigns of Mary Whitehouse. I actually think that censorship has gotten much worse in the digital age. I don’t engage in any political stuff online, but I’m painfully aware of it all, and “cancel culture” boils my blood. Regardless of what side said what or who is right or wrong, the seemingly endless quest to cancel and censor the opposition is a dreadful state for us to be in. It will not lead society to any place good. Censorship never does because it is motivated by contempt and a desire to control ideas and material.
As I said, I refuse to engage publicly in the politics, but for me personally I experience a lot of social media censorship on my work because it can be quite graphic or include artistic nudity (and I do function to a very specific industry standard call “Art Nude”). The social media blanket-ban on nudity in any form is rubbish. It basically means that under the community standards imposed on us all by FB and IG, a beautiful work of art such as Egon Schiele‘s The Reclining Nude with Raised Torso is given the exact same status as a piece of common pornography. It’s completely unacceptable and, given the size and reach of social media, it is affecting real-world attitudes towards artistic nudity that I consider to be very unhealthy and puritanical. I don’t think we can call it “progressive” when the direction seems to be backwards.
Censorship is the only political topic I will discuss in public, and I always find that the vast majority of people agree with me, but we seem to have engineered a situation where thousands of people can love and admire a fascinating image, but one offended individual now has the power to complain and get it banned. I also consider it hugely disturbing that the nude form, especially the female form, is regarded as something “dirty” that must always be covered on social media, in any context, which raises all kinds of questions about attitudes to the most natural form. Yes, I get it, porn is an issue, and there’s a time and a place for that stuff, but surely we can be treated like grown-ups and be allowed to share and view artistic endeavours without those tech overlords constantly dictating it all? I mean… come on! They’re just boobs. They won’t cause society to collapse in on itself! (And… breathe.)
Emily: What would you like to see happen for the horror industry?
Rick: Horror has become an awesome community of enthusiasts, writers, artists and like-minded souls who share and support each other’s work. It’s a fantastic development in the horror world, and long may it grow. However, I’d like the modern horror film industry to grow its balls back! The American New Wave post-Vietnam filmmakers of the 1970s and 1980s were fearless! These days our culture is more sensitive and easily offended, and the bean counters want asses on seats for maximum ticket returns, so the industry has really changed from a genre of confronting films to one of cheap jump scares and CGI… generally speaking. There are too many horror films that you can take the kids to see these days. Maybe the worst thing to happen to horror was when it went mainstream. But I have hope. I meet an awful lot of emerging talent in my work, and there is a huge appetite for real practical effects and tasty horror among today’s students. In the next decade or so, these folk will be in the industry. I think horror has a very good future.
Emily: That is very exciting! Will we see you at any conventions?
Rick: Yes! Covid-permitting, I’ll be at Sheffield Horror Con and Manchester’s For the Love of Horror. Come and say hello!
We most certainly will, and we look forward to taking another trip to see Rick very soon! Thank you for a great interview and we loved Emily’s terrifying transformation!
Check out the score, gore and more at Horrify Me’s official website, as well as Horrify Me’s Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
