7 Special FX That Were Made Out Of Food (And Super Gross)

Oh, that's right, we mean babies plural -- there's always more than one, because of that whole "multiple takes" thing. New mothers sign up for this shit, seemingly unconcerned that their offspring may permanently imprint on some boom operator as their mama. Naturally, SAG takes putting food on newborn actors very, very seriously. Grape, red currant, and cherry jelly are all good, while strawberry and raspberry are banned due to allergy concerns. KY Jelly is also frowned upon, because that's supposed to be an aid in making the baby, not birthing it.

Unfortunately, when they did a test run, producers discovered that the stream Robbins was going to flop out into was in fact super toxic, and he'd have to swim through the very pipe that made it that bad. The only way to prevent Robbins from emerging transformed into a giant muscular turtle was to clean the pipe and fill it with something decidedly less shitty.

That less-shitty thing was chocolate syrup and sawdust, both of which are technically consumable (if you're a beaver). It worked out really well -- the unholy combination produced just the right amount of reflectivity and matte finish to totally pass as poo. Keep that in mind for your next Shawshank-themed party!

Director Ridley Scott knew that the big reveal that Ash was a total shitlord would have a bigger emotional impact if he could gross us out beyond belief. He wanted it to seem familiar and gross, but also not bloody, because this thing wasn't really human. So rather than going with a deep red marinara, he went a little more Alfredo. The gunk seemingly pouring out of Ash is a mixture of white-dyed water, pasta, cheap black caviar, and some glass marbles. Heck, he might as well have ordered takeout from Olive Garden, if that's all he needed.

20th Century Fox

Going back to the 1940s, It's A Wonderful Life required about 6,000 gallons of sugar, water, and soap flakes mixed with something called foamite (the stuff in extinguishers) to make California in July look like December. This was a huge challenge, since California in December doesn't even look like December. Still, it worked.

Paramount Pictures

Prior to this groundbreaking discovery in soap-as-snow, the industry standard was painted cornflakes. The biggest problem was that corn flakes are kind of, you know, crunchy. They'd have to film the snow scenes, record dialogue separately, and dub it in later. As image quality improved and the falling cereal became easier to recognize for what it was, those using practical effects needed to move on to more convincing solutions. Now they've got scientists working on artificial snow, which we have to say is way less fun. Who wouldn't want to build a cornflakeman?

But how did they get the horse to look like that? They couldn't simply paint it (horse torture was only allowed on Ben-Hur adaptations, apparently). Feeding the horse nothing but beets for a month was also out of the question. So they dipped into the handbook of preteen girls in the early 21st century and figured out a way to make purple hair dye out of Jell-O powder. There was obviously a little trial and error -- imagine nobody telling you to bleach your hair before using that blue hair dye the summer after seventh grade, but on a horse -- but eventually they figured it out.

Once they got the horses the proper shade of purple, the only problem was that the animal actors started licking their delicious hair. It seems nobody told the horses that Jell-O is essentially the bones of other farm animals. Fortunately, they figured out a way to keep the horses apart before the licking escalated to a full-blown Jell-O-fueled equine orgy.

Pig intestine is already a common sausage casing, so there was a lot of that (along with hollowed-out intestine) strewn about in the most murdered-y way possible. It looked absolutely great, but the problem was that for these extended shoots lasting hours upon hours at a time, actors had to basically sit directly below these piles of rotting meat. That shit got rancid, and fast. Hence the mask in this photo:

United Film Distribution Company

PAs were walking around Febreezing it as best they could, but this was still rotting meat they were dealing with. Then, when it came time to film, these actors had to play dead. That means no choking on the smell of the rank-ass meat rotting in front of them. When you're about to get sick while half of you is tucked inside of false floor and the other half is covered in pig entrails, it's not pretty. But hey, that's movie magic!

Isaac wanted to be in special effects as a kid but that was before CGI. He's on Twitter now instead.

Try to dye your own hair or just make a delicious mold with copious amounts of Jello. You'll probably get a bunch of Instagram posts, especially if you take the photos with a dope vintage camera. Double boo-yah!

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