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The 1980s Grue-Crew has a special treat for listeners in this episode. Join your faithful Grue Crew – Crystal Cleveland, Chad Hunt, Bill Mulligan, and Jeff Mohr – as they interview Ed Martinez, a special effects artist who worked on crews for some memorable horror films, starting with The Dead Pit (1989).
Decades of Horror 1980s
Episode 162 – Interview with Special Effects Artist Ed Martinez
Crystal Cleveland and Chad Hunt are unable to join the Grue-Crew for this episode so Bill Mulligan and Jeff Mohr get special effects artist Ed Martinez all to themselves. Martinez was so informative as our guest for episode 159 about The Dead Pit, they invited him back to discuss some of the rest of his career as a special effects artist spanning the years 1989 to 2015. Yeah, they know dang near all of that time falls outside the 1980s, but that’s just shows how much they dig special effects and Ed Martinez!
Martinez openly discusses the beginnings of his love for the art and craft of special effects and the path leading to his first film industry job as the director of special effects on The Dead Pit. He shares stories of his work and relationships during that 25-year career, being quick to give credit to those with whom he worked. In terms of actors, Martinez helped create the special effects magic on films starring Jeremy Slate, David Naughton, Terry O’Quinn, Brigitte Nielsen, Richard Moll, Joe Estevez, Todd Bridges, and Eric Roberts to name a few.
There are a few stories from the making of The Dead Pit that they didn’t have time for in episode 159, so Martinez starts with those and moves on to discuss his experiences working on the following films:
- The Dead Pit (1989), director of special effects
- Amityville: A New Generation (1993), special effects makeup: Vision Technologies
- Galaxis, aka Terminal Force (1995), stop-motion puppet construction
- Death Row (2007), special effects
- The Dead and the Damned (2011), special effects
- Project Arbiter (2013), special effects supervisor
In case you are interested, here are links to some of the individuals, pages, and films discussed in this episode:
- The Dead Pit – Behind the scenes makeup testing
- Project Arbiter (21-minute short)
- The Making of Project Arbiter (21 minutes)
- Ed Martinez – youtube channel
- Jaremy Aiello – IMDb
- “Sneaky” Pete Kleinow – Wikipedia, IMDb
- Lionel Ivan Orozco – IMDb
- The Ray Harryhausen Podcast
- The Fantastic World of Ray Harryhausen – Private Facebook Group
- When Jim Danforth Ruled the Earth – Public Facebook Group
- The Ray and Diana Harryhausen Foundation
- The Clive Barker Podcast
If you haven’t listened to it already, be sure to check out Decades of Horror 1980s Episode 159 – The Dead Pit!
Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror 1980s is part of the Decades of Horror 2-week rotation with The Classic Era and the 1970s. In episode 163, the 80s Grue-Crew will cover Maniac Cop (1988), directed by William Lustig, written by Larry Cohen, and starring Tom Atkins, Bruce Campbell, Laurene Landon, Robert Z’Dar, Sheree North, William Smith, and Richard Roundtree.
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