Mark Rappaport (born 1954) is an American special make-up effects artist.
33-397: Zombeavers is a 2014 American horror comedy film directed by Jordan Rubin , based on a script by Al Kaplan, Jordan Rubin, and Jon Kaplan. The film follows a group of college kids staying at a riverside cottage that are attacked by a swarm of zombie beavers . A trailer for the film was released in early February 2014 and went viral . The film had its world premiere on April 19, 2014, at
66-561: A San Francisco puppeteer and street performer. His work with Hartman sparked an interest in creating effects for the entertainment industry and he pursued employment at Industrial Light & Magic . At ILM he worked on feature film projects, including Innerspace and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home . From ILM, Rappaport went to work with Chris Walas and created effects for films including The Fly II and Child's Play . The production of The Last Samurai required an animatronic horse capable of performing stunt sequences that would put
99-488: A baseball bat, but Jenn and Mary feel something is wrong with it beyond rabies. They put the corpse in a bag and put it outside on the porch. In the morning, they discover it is missing, and Jenn insists that it was not merely eaten by wildlife. All but Jenn go swimming in the lake. Sam and Mary discuss whether to tell Jenn about their affair, but they are interrupted when beavers chew off Buck's foot and scratch Tommy. The same beaver that attacked Jenn earlier chases her back to
132-419: A narrow rock crevice. Veteran creature effects supervisor Mark Rappaport and his team mechanized the puppet with: eye-blinks; head, neck, brow, jaw and tongue movement; saliva tubes and glowing eyes." For I Am Legend , starring Will Smith Mark Rappaport developed full body silicone makeups for the primal, aggressive beings known as "Darkseekers". The translucent makeup creates the look of zombie infection and
165-484: A real horse and rider at risk of great injury. Rappaport was commissioned to build a horse that could seamlessly replace Tom Cruise' real horse for those scenes. Rappaport said "It's probably the most sophisticated horse or animatronic creature ever made for film. It cost $ 1.5 million to make. It gallops in place. It reared up. It fell over. And it looks completely real." Rappaport (creature effects supervisor) and Shaun Smith (makeup effects supervisor) teamed up to create
198-464: A recommendation for genre fans." Metacritic , another review aggregator, rated it 44/100 based on six reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Brent McKnight of giantfreakinrobot said, "It's as much of a blast as you could hope for." Rob Hunter of Film School Rejects called the film "funny, smart, consistently entertaining," and Jason Gorber of Twitch Film "commend[s] its tenacious nature to mine every last drop of narrative and complexity out of
231-472: A spiked metabolism desired by director Francis Lawrence . The makeups were to be applied to very thin performers to create the look of zero body-fat and protruding veins. The makeups included rotten teeth dentures and fully dilated pupil contact lenses. In addition to the creature makeups, Mark's studio created animatronic puppets of the likeness of "Sam" the German Shepherd, a digitally scan model for
264-640: A story in a different direction. Examples of comedy horror films include Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), An American Werewolf in London (1981), the Evil Dead franchise (1981–present), Gremlins (1984), Shaun of the Dead (2004), and The Cabin in the Woods (2011). Horror and comedy have been associated with each other since the early days of horror novels. Author Bruce G. Hallenbeck cites
297-590: A tree in the road, and Tommy sets off on foot, only to be crushed by another falling tree. Smyth rescues Buck and Zoe, and they drive in his pickup truck to return to the house, which has been boarded up by the others. Unable to enter it, they go to the neighbors' house. They discover the neighbors are dead, and their phone lines cut. As a result of her wounds, Jenn turns into a beaver-like zombie and attacks Mary. As Jenn's saliva falls in Mary's mouth, Sam rescues Mary by hitting Jenn from behind. Mary and Sam lock themselves in
330-415: A very slight but very funny idea." On the other hand, Variety gave Zombeavers a mostly negative review, commenting that "this debut feature for standup and sketch-comedy vet Rubin is not without flashes of ingenuity, but the one-joke premise wears thin even before the mercifully brief 76-minute running time is up." However, the critic adds that " Zombeavers is not a total wash, and seen at night, under
363-745: The Scary Movie series or A Haunted House also function as parodies of popular horror films. Well-known director Peter Jackson began his film career with the comedy horror classics Bad Taste , Meet the Feebles and Braindead . Stree2 , Roohi , Bhoot Police and bhool Bhulaiyaa are some popular horror comedy films in Bollywood . Examples of horror comedy on television date back to sitcoms The Munsters and The Addams Family and more recently include gruesome slapsticks Ash vs Evil Dead and Stan Against Evil , mockumentary
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#1732787035449396-477: The Tribeca Film Festival . The film was released in the U.S. on March 20, 2015. In December 2014, Zombeavers was released on DVD. While transporting toxic chemicals, a pair of truckers strike a deer and lose one of their canisters. It rolls into a river, floats downstream, and splashes several beavers at their dam. Later, college students Mary, Zoe, and Jenn arrive at Mary's cousin's cabin near
429-898: The What We Do in the Shadows (franchise) , Wellington Paranormal , comedies Todd and the Book of Pure Evil , Shining Vale and Santa Clarita Diet , and cartoons Beetlejuice , Courage the Cowardly Dog , School for Vampires , and Scooby-Doo . More recent examples include The Owl House , Wednesday , Don't Hug Me I'm Scared , Gravity Falls , Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss . Creature Effects, Inc. Working in film and theater, Rappaport and his company Creature Effects, Inc specialize in creating hyper-realistic make-up effects and animatronic animals , including
462-406: The 1820 short story " The Legend of Sleepy Hollow " by Washington Irving as "the first great comedy horror story". The story made readers "laugh one moment and scream the next" and its premise was based on mischief typically found during the holiday Halloween . Shortly after the publication of Mary Shelley 's Frankenstein , comedic parodies appeared. Edgar Allan Poe put humor and horror on
495-474: The Tribeca Film Festival and was theatrically released in the U.S. on March 20, 2015. In December 2014, the film was released on DVD. Rotten Tomatoes reports that 71% of 38 surveyed critics gave the film a "positive" review; the average rating is 5.90/10. The consensus reads: " Zombeavers obviously isn't high art, but it delivers just enough of the gory insanity promised by the title to earn
528-526: The bathroom and check each other for scratches. Satisfied that neither is wounded, they begin to have sex, but zombified Jenn interrupts them and kills Sam by biting off his penis. Meanwhile, Buck turns into a zombie and attacks Smyth. Zoe escapes by jumping through a window, bloodying herself in the process. As a beaver accidentally sets Mary's cousin's house on fire, Sam rises as a zombie. Once Mary kills Sam, she reunites with Zoe. Smyth, now zombified, shoots at them as they flee in his truck. Jenn jumps on top of
561-485: The cinematic graveyard and feel secure in the knowledge that the monsters can't get you". In the era of silent film , the source material for early comedy horror films came from stage performances instead of literature. One example, The Ghost Breaker (1914), was based on a 1909 play, though the film's horror elements were more interesting to the audience than the comedy elements. In the United States following
594-452: The dam. Although Zoe and Jenn are distraught that there is no cell phone coverage, Mary insists that they spend the next two days without interruptions from technology or boys. While swimming at the lake, the girls discover the beaver dam. When Jenn swims closer to see a beaver, they are surprised by a bear. Smyth, a local hunter, scares off the bear and admonishes the girls to stay away from the beavers and dress more appropriately. At night,
627-657: The film. Principal photography took place in Santa Clarita, California at the Disney Ranch over a period of 21 days and with a small budget. Epic Pictures Group uploaded the first official trailer for the film on February 6, 2014, and the trailer quickly went viral, amassing over a million views in less than a week. The same month the production company also created several film posters parodying Oscar Award nominated films Gravity , American Hustle , and Her . The film had its world premiere on April 19, 2014, at
660-400: The girls' boyfriends – Buck, Tommy, and Sam – arrive and play a prank on them. Annoyed, Mary orders them to leave, but Zoe, who knew they were coming, insists they stay. Jenn talks Mary into letting them stay, as she wants to resolve her relationship issues with Sam, who has cheated on her. As the couples separate, Jenn leaves to take a shower, only to be attacked by a beaver. Tommy kills it with
693-740: The horse rode by Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai , and prosthetic makeup effects for 300 and I Am Legend . Rappaport was born in Yokohama, Japan. At the age of three, his family moved to the Napa Valley in northern California. He graduated from Justin-Siena High School in Napa and attended San Diego State University where he earned a Bachelor of Science Degree. Upon graduation, he returned to Northern California and worked in law enforcement before meeting and working with Bob Hartman,
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#1732787035449726-405: The house. She pins it to the counter with a knife, but not before it scratches her leg. Sam throws Zoe's dog into the water as a distraction, and the rest of the group flee to the house, where they realize the beavers have cut the phone lines. As zombie beavers surround the house, Tommy offers to leave with Buck to get help, and Zoe accompanies him. Their drive is interrupted as the beavers bring down
759-474: The infected dogs, scar and knife wound moulage for Will Smith and numerous other effects for the production. After designing and producing a rideable animatronic horse for The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian , Mark's Studio created a second ride-able horse for Bedtime Stories . The motion and animatronic features of the two horses were enhanced and refined for True Grit and further developed for Cowboys & Aliens . The animatronic horses are used where
792-403: The right combination of low expectations and controlled substances, it may even seem better than it really is." The Los Angeles Times was ambivalent as they felt that the film was "a fun idea and, like a good undead animal, has some solid designs on hitting its target" but that this "doesn't necessarily save the experience of watching the film from being anything other than hairy." Zombeavers
825-489: The road, she encounters the same truckers who had earlier dropped the canister, and they run over her accidentally. In a post-credits sequence, a honeybee becomes infected from a corpse and returns to its hive in a zombified state. Al Kaplan, Jordan Rubin, and Jon Kaplan began working on the script for Zombeavers in 2012. Rubin then put together a proof of concept trailer compiled from footage from various horror movies, BBC nature shows, and social media outlets and presented
858-406: The same continuum, and many nineteenth century authors used black humor in their horror stories. Author Robert Bloch called them "opposite sides of the same coin". In comedy horror film, gallows humor is a common element. While comedy horror films provide scares for audiences, they also provide something that dramatic horror films do not: "the permission to laugh at your fears, to whistle past
891-415: The trailer to BenderSpink and Armory Films. The two companies agreed to finance the film and the film went into pre-production shortly thereafter. The film features animatronic models of beavers as opposed to CGI special effects, and the models were created by Creature Effects . Actresses Cortney Palm , Rachel Melvin, and Lexi Atkins, along with comedian/actor Bill Burr, were all confirmed to be performing in
924-427: The trauma of World War I , film audiences sought to see horror on screen but tempered with humor. The "pioneering" comedy horror film was One Exciting Night (1922), written, directed and produced by D. W. Griffith , who noticed the stage success of the genre and foresaw a cinematic translation. The film included comedic blackface performances and footage of a hurricane for a climactic storm. As an early experiment,
957-415: The truck, but Zoe runs her over. Together, Mary and Zoe reach the spot where Tommy died and turned into a zombie. With the road blocked, they decide to walk. Believing that Zoe may be bitten due to her bloody appearance, Mary holds her at gunpoint with a pistol recovered from Smyth's truck. As Zoe protests that she is not infected, Mary begins changing into a zombie. Zoe kills her with an axe and walks away. On
990-402: The various genres were not well-balanced with horror and comedy, and later films improved the balance and took more sophisticated approaches. Charles Bramesco of Vulture.com identifies Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein as the first commercially successful comedy horror film. Its success legitimized the genre and established it as commercially viable. Some comedy horror movies, such as
1023-414: The world of effects for 300 . This extensive body of work included prosthetic makeups, animatronic animals, props, weaponry and costume elements. In addition to the amazingly lifelike horse effects for this film, Rappaport created an animatronic wolf puppet for scenes where young Leonidas faces off with the predatory animal. "The filmmakers shot interactions of the practical puppet attacking young Leonidas in
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1056-536: Was released in Austria on November 7, 2014, where it grossed $ 29,133. It opened in the United States on March 20, 2015, and ended the weekend with a 63rd-place finish grossing $ 8,163 from eleven screens. As of April 5, 2015, the total US gross is $ 14,947, for a total worldwide gross of $ 44,080. The soundtrack was composed by Al and Jon Kaplan. It features songs from the Kaplan brothers' band, Legolambs. The soundtrack
1089-508: Was released on April 24, 2015, via La-La Land Records. The film also features soundscape from soundcloud. Horror comedy (genre) Comedy horror (also called horror comedy ) is a literary , television , and film genre that combines elements of comedy and horror fiction . Comedy horror has been described as having three types: " black comedy , parody and spoof." Comedy horror can also parody or subtly spoof horror clichés as its main source of humour or use those elements to take
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