Bow your heads for Leonard Engelman, one of the cinematic masters in the makeup field, who passed on at the age of 83 on August 1, 2024. He worked with great skill and zero budget on Night Gallery's second and third seasons alongside the legendary makeup tech John Chambers. The peak achievement in makeup on Night Gallery would have to be the Emmy-nominated ghoul suit for "Pickman's Model," designed by artist Tom Wright and sculped, then fabricated, by Engelman and Chambers. It inspired later masters of the craft such as Rob Bottin, Rick Baker, and Greg Nicotero, who would be entering the filmmaking scene within the decade to further the craft of special makeup on fantasy, horror, and sci-fi films of the 1980s and ‘90s.
Thanks to a series of interviews with Engelman and a cache of photographs from the Chambers estate, a full chronicle of the design and creation of the ghoul makeup, from sketches to the completed suit, may be found within the pages of the second edition of Scott Skelton and Jim Benson’s companion guide to the series, Rod Serling’s Night Gallery: An After-Hours Tour, on sale here, on this website.
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