It’s surprisingly bright inside the Old Mint in San Francisco when I arrive to interview Jason Henricks, the lead makeup artist for this year’s alien-themed Terror Vault haunted experience, Fatal Abduction (through November 3). From the next room drift the sounds of banging tools and large items being moved, as the set builders work their own specific magic on the scenery. We’re in our own little corner of the space, positioned between two card tables where the FX makeup and prosthetics are laid out, ready for action. Reptile-esque eyebrow ridges. Hands with impossible nails attached to a pair of long gloves. A soft, custom breastplate fashioned from nylon and textured bouncy balls. [Witness the horrors in action in our Fatal Abduction slideshow here.]
While this is just Henricks’ second year working for Terror Vault (and his first as the makeup lead), he’s worked with Peaches Christ as far back as 2012 after attending a Master Make-up program at Cinema Make-up School in Los Angeles. A contestant on SyFy’s makeup artist competition Face Off in 2015, he freely admits the irony in having been sent home on an alien challenge (“there’s a bit of a redemption arc in this,” he laughs).
As we chat, Henricks works on realizing the character makeup for Donna Moore, a San Francisco-based actor and director with a history of underground performance, including as a Dark Room Theater regular. As a returning veteran to Terror Vault she’s landed the plum role of one of the key reptoid characters (as-yet-unnamed but casually referred to as “Triple Nipple” for reasons that become apparent once her costume is donned).
48 HILLS So now that you’ve wiped down Donna’s face, what’s our next step here?
JASON HENRICKS Now I’m going to put the prosthetics on. The thing with this is, it has to be super quick… we need to get them in and out of chairs fast. So most of her look is the costuming. Plus, we have six of the same type of character. So it’s much easier to sculpt and cast the same pieces for each one, and just color them differently.
48 HILLS So all the reptoids get the cool nose ridges…
JASON HENRICKS Nose ridges, brows, and she’s got it connected to her chest piece, but they all have these wrinkly necks. Joshua (Grannell, aka Peaches Christ, the writer and co-producer) wanted them to look very human. But have these just ridiculous little aspects to them that show how non-human they are.
48 HILLS On your website, I love this description of yourself: ‘the hypothetical lovechild of Dr. Who and Farscape, raised on grindhouse films backstage at a drag show.’ Do you want to expound on that a little?
JASON HENRICKS When you go into the makeup and FX business, most people just think it is nothing but horror and gore, but I really like the fantastical… also, I’ve spent so much time in drag community, and so much time in like the bloody gory FX world that.. it was just the best description of me that I could come up with (laughs).
48 HILLS I love that there’s specificity. But then also this blender, where it’s the combination of influences.
JASON HENRICKS I feel like genres are meant to be broken, so anytime I can pull something from one and throw it into the other, it’s a happy day for me.
48 HILLS At what part of the design process did you come onto this show?
JASON HENRICKS So I actually took over as head of the makeup department from the person who was doing it last year (Dani Spinks). I was already working on some designs, just because she’d asked me to. But the whole ‘running, everything, coming up with all the characters,’ that happened a little bit after they’d done some of the initial planning. They basically just said, ‘Hey, we’ve got the daughter. We want it to look like this’ and I just started sketching, and luckily they liked it right off the bat… (he proceeds to show me the sketch for Moore’s “Triple Nipple” character)
48 HILLS Back to your website while we’re filling in brows and such. Something I really appreciated was the section on color… I’d love to get maybe a distillation of your color philosophy.
JASON HENRICKS It’s really funny, because I left the makeup world for a little bit when I was in LA, because it’s such a crazy market. And you know that we had this little thing called the pandemic. So I worked for a small boutique paint company. They mixed all of their colors by hand, and they did color matching by eye…so I fell in down this massive rabbit hole of color
I just became obsessed with the history of color and everything like that. This year, because I lit a lot of these scenes, I know how the light’s gonna bounce off of all of this makeup. That’s my super power. This year we were able to bring in so much green and electric blue and just vibrant purples, because it’s out there a little bit. Last year was so red and grungy and everything. This one’s got a little bit of future pop!
48 HILLS Was there something that you learned in this process, or like a new technique, or like something that you were particularly excited to explore, makeup-wise?
JASON HENRICKS Well, actually, it was bringing in more of these type of prosthetics which are more like cosplay or convention level, something that you can act in, that you can live in for hours at a time. But it’s not one of those things where someone’s gonna be fixed in post. So I had to learn that it was more about perception, and not perfection. Because I’ve done Opera, I’ve done different stage stuff, but they (the characters) are so far away. Triple Nipple here is going to be right up in your face. So it gave me a push to try and do something that’s more on the verge of realism. Still very much theater, but in the scene is gonna look just real.
As to that, my experience of the fully-realized creatures on opening night was very much in line with the way Henricks describes it. Like any good haunting, the performers are there to enhance the experience and to shape the narrative, while also serving the practical function of funneling groups of patrons through the mazes and levels. Makeup is one of the important keys to the development of characters, a visual shorthand to their complicated backstories and behaviors.
When I run into Triple Nipple in a dark parlor, she forces us to line up against a wall and submit to her. The dim Victorian light illuminates her rough, reptilian features, and bouncing, tripled cleavage, and for a moment, you’d swear she was glowing from inside. Then the next door opens, and we leave her to continue her work, one cluster of horror enthusiasts at a time.
Catch Triple Nipple and all of the cast of Terror Vault: Fatal Abduction at the Old Mint through November 3. More info here.
