Jack Pierce Trailers
Jack Pierce: The Man Who Made the Monsters TrailerHe Who Made Monsters: The Life and Art of Jack Pierce TrailerMasquerade Trailer
Jack Pierce (born Janus Piccoula; May 5, 1889 – July 19, 1968) was a Hollywood make-up artist best remembered for creating the iconic makeup worn by Boris Karloff in Frankenstein (1931), along with various other classic monster make-ups for Universal Studios.
In the 1920s, Pierce embarked on a series of jobs in cinema—cinema manager, stuntman, actor, even assistant director, but within a few years he settled on mastering makeup. The head of Universal, Carl Laemmle, was won over with his creative abilities and hired full-time by the studio.
Universal's first "talkie" horror film, Dracula (1931), eschewed elaborate horror make-up. Pierce designed a special color greasepaint for Bela Lugosi for his vampire character, but Lugosi insisted on applying his own make-up. For all film appearances of the character thereafter, Pierce instituted a different look entirely, recasting Dracula as a man with graying hair and a mustache. The most significant creation during Pierce's time at the studio was Frankenstein (1931), with Lugosi originally cast as the Monster. Pierce came up with a design which was horrific as well as logical in the context of the story. So, where Henry Frankenstein has accessed the brain cavity, there is a scar and a seal, and the now famous "bolts" on the neck are actually electrodes: carriers for the electricity used to revive the stitched-up corpse.
As the head of Universal's make-up department, Pierce is credited with designing and creating the iconic make-ups for films like Frankenstein, The Mummy (1932), The Wolf Man (1941), and their various sequels associated with the characters. Utilizing his "out-of-the-kit" techniques, Pierce's make-ups were often very grueling and took a considerable amount of time to apply. Pierce was always reluctant to use latex appliances, favoring his technique of building facial features out of cotton and collodion, or nose putty. Pierce eventually started using latex appliances, most notably a rubber nose for Lon Chaney Jr. in The Wolf Man (1941) (the edges of the appliance are clearly visible through most of the film), and a rubber head piece for Boris Karloff in Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and Son of Frankenstein (1939).
He did a great many historical, old age and character make-ups in TV anthology series such as Screen Directors Playhouse, You Are There and Telephone Time. One episode of that show, a drama called The Golden Junkman, featured Lon Chaney Jr. as an unlettered but kindly Armenian junk dealer who ages from his 30s to his 70s in the course of the story, which Pierce handled with aplomb.
Pierce died in 1968 from uremia.
Jack Pierce's enduring work at Universal has become a huge influence to many in the entertainment field, including make-up artists Rick Baker and Tom Savini. In 2003, Pierce was recognized with a lifetime achievement award from the Hollywood Make-up Artist and Hair Stylist Guild. In May 2013, Cinema Makeup School in Los Angeles dedicated a memorial gallery in his honor.
Most Popular Jack Pierce Trailers
Total trailers found: 103
12 August 1943
Following a tragic accident that leaves him disfigured, crazed composer Erique Claudin transformed into a masked phantom who schemes to make beautiful young soprano Christine Dubois the star of the opera and wreak revenge on those who stole his music.
03 July 1962
Many years after a nuclear war, the human survivors have created a new society where much of the work done by androids, referred to derisively by humans as "clickers".
13 May 1935
A strange animal attack turns a botanist into a bloodthirsty monster.
04 June 1943
An insane scientist doing experimentation in glandular research becomes obsessed with transforming a female gorilla into a human.
24 May 1946
A convicted thief in Dartmoor prison hides the location of the stolen Bank of England printing plates inside three music boxes.
07 May 1934
After a road accident in Hungary, the American honeymooners Joan and Peter and the enigmatic Dr. Werdegast find refuge in the house of the famed architect Hjalmar Poelzig, who shares a dark past with the doctor.
08 July 1935
A brilliant but deranged neurosurgeon becomes obsessively fixated on a judge's daughter. With the help of an escaped criminal whose face he has surgically deformed, the mad man lures her, her father, and her fiancé to his isolated castle-like home, where he has created a torture chamber with the intent of torturing them for having 'tortured' him.
12 April 1940
In 1828, the bankrupt Pyncheon family fight over Seven Gables, the ancestral mansion. To obtain the house, Jaffrey Pyncheon obtains his brother Clifford's false conviction for murder.
11 May 1936
A countess from Transylvania seeks a psychiatrist’s help to cure her vampiric cravings.
07 December 1945
A scientist working on cures for rare afflictions, such as a bone softening agent made from molds to allow him to correct the spinal deformity of his nurse, finds the physical causes of lycanthropy in wolf-man Larry Talbot and of vampirism in Count Dracula, but himself becomes afflicted with homicidal madness while exchanging blood with Dracula.
01 May 1947
World War II veteran Bob MacDonald surprises his new wife, Betty, by quitting his city job and moving them to a dilapidated farm in the country.
29 October 1943
Anthology film of three tales of the supernatural. The first story is set at the Mardi Gras in New Orleans.
20 January 1936
Dr. Janos Rukh discovers a certain type of radium that has almost magical healing properties. But the element has a dangerous side, too, and it has already started affecting Rukh.
25 June 1945
Once again Paula the ape woman is brought back to life, this time by a mad doctor and his disfigured assistant, who also kidnaps a nurse in order to have a female blood donor.
23 October 1942
A high priest of Karnak travels to America with the living mummy Kharis (Lon Chaney Jr.) to kill all those who had desecrated the tomb of the Egyptian princess Ananka thirty years earlier.
22 December 1944
After being buried in quicksand for the past 25 years, Kharis is set free to roam the rural bayous of Louisiana, as is the soul of his beloved Princess Ananka, still housed in the body of Amina Mansouri, who seeks help and protection at a swamp draining project.
28 July 1932
In Haiti, a wealthy landowner convinces a sorcerer to lure the American woman he has fallen for away from her fiance, only to have the madman decide to keep the woman for himself, as a zombie.
22 February 1946
Lou Costello plays a country bumpkin vacuum-cleaner salesman, working for the company run by the crooked Bud Abbott.
02 August 1946
A falsely convicted man's wife, Catherine, and an alcoholic composer and pianist, Martin team up in an attempt to clear her husband of the murder of a blonde singer, who is Martin's wife.
17 August 1945
George Sanders stars in this engrossing melodrama about a very domineering sister who holds a tight grip on her brother -- especially when he shows signs of falling in love.
18 April 1945
A desert pickpocket, his sidekick, and an escaped slave help an incognito queen in danger.
04 August 1932
A woman's love for and devotion to a married man results in her being relegated to the "back streets" of his life.
06 June 1946
In Tangier, disgraced American war correspondent Paul Kenyon, café dancer Rita and local entrepreneur Pepe join forces to battle a Nazi diamond smuggler.
01 October 1957
An evil alien brain, bent on world domination, takes over the body of an atomic scientist, while a "good" alien brain inhabits the body of the scientist's dog and waits for an opportunity to defeat the evil brain.
22 March 1946
A young girl goes to work as a live-in caretaker for a spooky old woman. She doesn't know that every night, the woman drains some blood from her to feed her strange plant.
27 November 1949
When Sach eats too much sugar, he goes into a trance whereby he's able to predict the future. Slip tries to make some money off of Sach by using him as a fortune teller in a carnival, until a mad scientist kidnaps Sach to use him in an intelligence-switching experiment with a monster.
01 June 1944
Paula, the ape woman, has survived the ending of CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN and is running around a creepy old sanitarium run by the kindly Dr.
20 June 1945
In the gay '90s, cardsharps take over a Mississippi riverboat from a kindly captain. Their first act is to change the showboat into a floating gambling house.
03 January 1958
A series of grisly murders plague a small mountain community and the sheriff suspects a local scientist whom he dislikes.
13 January 1939
One of the sons of late Dr. Henry Frankenstein finds his father's ghoulish creation in a coma and revives him, only to find out the monster is controlled by Ygor who is bent on revenge.
05 November 1943
Carpathian Count Alucard is invited to the U.S. by a young heiress. Her boyfriend and local officials are suspicious of the newcomer, who is interested in the "virile" soil of the new world.
02 August 1944
In an unspecified Renaissance kingdom, no sooner has Anube's gypsy tribe encamped near Baron Tovar's village when Count Orso is found murdered.
12 November 1943
A university chemistry professor experiments with an ancient Mayan gas on a medical student, turning the would-be surgeon into a murdering ghoul as part of a plan to steal his lover.
20 April 1930
Made during the early years of the movie musical, this exuberant revue was one of the most extravagant, eclectic, and technically ambitious Hollywood productions of its day.
20 April 1935
Dr. Frankenstein and his monster both turn out to be alive, not killed as previously believed. Dr. Frankenstein wants to get out of the evil experiment business, but when a mad scientist, Dr.
05 March 1943
Grave robbers open the grave of the wolf man and awaken him. He doesn't like the idea of being immortal and killing people when the moon is full so tries to find Dr.
23 November 1934
A struggling widow and her daughter take in a black housekeeper and her fair-skinned daughter. The two women start a successful business but face familial, identity, and racial issues along the way.
23 April 1943
A native boy plays Cupid for a shark fisherman and a South Sea Islands princess.
28 March 1941
Mad scientist turns a man into an electrically-controlled monster to do his bidding.
18 December 1933
A beautiful woman mistakes a Prince's butler for the Prince.
12 February 1931
British estate agent Renfield travels to Transylvania to meet the mysterious Count Dracula, who is interested in leasing a castle in London.
01 December 1944
Deranged scientist, Gustav Niemann, escapes from prison and overtakes the director of a traveling chamber of horrors, soon reviving the infamous Count Dracula, the frozen Frankenstein Monster, and the Wolf Man.
29 February 1940
University professor George Kingsley is struck by gangsters while crossing the street, leaving him with brain damage and one of the gangsters, Cannon, paralyzed.
13 March 1942
Frankenstein's unscrupulous colleague, Dr. Bohmer, plans to transplant Ygor's brain so he can rule the world using the monster's body, but the plan goes sour when he turns malevolent and goes on a rampage.
03 June 1938
A merciless district attorney prosecutes a case that mirrors his own life.
17 May 1946
A young heiress finds evidence suggesting that at night she acts under the influence of a family curse and has begun committing ghastly murders in a nearby park.
05 June 1946
A boy's tall tale about a gun puts his parents and school principal in jail.
01 July 1958
The new manager of a small-town cemetery becomes convinced that he triggered the untimely deaths of several plot owners by tampering with a certain map.
20 October 1944
Dr. Hohner, theatre physician at the Vienna Royal Theatre, murders his mistress, the star soprano when his jealousy drives him to the point of mad obsession.
17 May 1946
A black cat is suspected of being possessed by the spirit of a elderly murdered woman.
21 December 1955
When a great film director accepts an Academy Award, he reflects on a comedian he worked with in the early film days, owing his success to him, not realizing that man is now destitute, watching the show on TV from a barstool.
06 January 1928
Charlie, a wandering tramp, becomes a circus handyman - soon the star of the show - and falls in love with the circus owner's stepdaughter.
03 November 1933
After experimenting on himself and becoming invisible, scientist Jack Griffin, now aggressive due to the drug's effects, seeks a way to reverse the experiment at any cost.
04 May 1933
When a famous doctor kills his adulterous wife, he is defended by his best friend, an attorney who suspects that his own wife is having an affair.
18 April 1937
The inventor of a new top-of-the-line burglar alarm system is kidnapped by a gang in order to get him to help them commit robberies.
12 December 1941
After his brother's death, Larry Talbot returns home to his father and the family estate. Events soon take a turn for the worse when Larry is bitten by a werewolf.
30 August 1946
Two hit men walk into a diner asking for a man called "the Swede". When the killers find the Swede, he's expecting them and doesn't put up a fight.
12 December 1949
Nelson Leigh assumes the role of Jesus Christ in this drama that depicts such historical events as the Sermon on the Mount and the Last Supper while portraying the period in which Christ roamed the countryside preaching the gospel.
22 October 1934
A young boy, Pip, encounters an escaped prisoner, Magwitch, and steals food for him. After the convict is captured, Pip meets the reclusive Miss Havisham and her niece, Estella, eventually becoming friends with the girl.
27 April 1928
Gwynplaine, son of Lord Clancharlie, has a permanent smile carved on his face by the King, in revenge for Gwynplaine's father's treachery.
