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: 105
12 February 1931
A British estate agent travels to Transylvania to meet with the mysterious Count Dracula, who is interested in leasing a London castle.
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.
31 October 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.
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.
21 November 1931
Obsessed scientist Dr. Henry Frankenstein attempts to create life by assembling a creature from deceased body parts.
22 December 1932
An ancient Egyptian priest named Imhotep is revived when a British archaeological expedition finds his mummy and one of the researchers accidentally reads an ancient life-giving spell.
20 April 1935
After recovering from injuries sustained in the mob attack upon himself and his creation, Dr. Henry Frankenstein falls under control of his former mentor, Dr.
24 November 1950
In 1625 France, D'Artagnan joins the king's musketeers, meets three new friends - Athos, Porthos and Aramis - among them and, together, the four quickly find themselves embroiled in court intrigue with Prime Minister Richelieu attempting to sabotage the congenial relationship existing between France and England.
09 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.
14 January 1944
Orphaned as a young child and adopted by a band of notorious thieves, now-grown Ali Baba sets out to avenge his father’s murder, reclaim the royal throne, and rescue his beloved Amara from the iron fist of his treacherous enemy.
15 December 1922
Jack Meadows and sidekick Toby are looking for whiskey smugglers along the Canadian border. They find a badly wounded Seriff who earlier caught one of them and a nearby hoofprint of a horse with a broken shoe.
23 April 1943
A native boy plays Cupid for a shark fisherman and a South Sea Islands princess.
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.
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.
12 March 1943
After being resurrected by grave robbers, Larry Talbot searches for Dr. Frankenstein in the hopes of being cured of his lycanthropy.
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.
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.
25 December 1945
Cashier and part-time starving artist Christopher Cross is absolutely smitten with the beautiful Kitty March.
18 April 1945
A desert pickpocket, his sidekick, and an escaped slave help an incognito queen in danger.
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.
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.
11 May 1936
A countess from Transylvania seeks a psychiatrist’s help to cure her vampiric cravings.
22 December 1948
In the 15th Century, France is a defeated and ruined nation after the One Hundred Years War against England.
27 January 1932
In 19th century Paris, a maniac abducts young women and injects them with ape blood in an attempt to prove ape-human kinship but constantly meets failure as the abducted women die.
14 July 1929
The second version of Louis Joseph Vance's 1907 mystery melodrama The Brass Bowl. The story of a wealthy world traveler and his evil lookalike, the master criminal Anisty.
20 October 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.
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.
04 November 1928
When a proud noble refuses to kiss the hand of the despotic King James in 1690, he is cruelly executed and his son surgically disfigured.
13 May 1935
A strange animal attack turns a botanist into a bloodthirsty monster.
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.
17 July 1946
In 1850s Oregon, a businessman is torn between his love of two very different women and his loyalty to a compulsive gambler friend who goes over the line.
26 October 1945
After the King of Rovenia has been assassinated, Holmes and Watson are engaged to escort his son to Europe via Algiers, aboard a transatlantic ocean liner which also carries a number of suspicious persons, any of whom may be involved in a plot to also assassinate him.
05 June 1946
A boy's tall tale about a gun puts his parents and school principal in jail.
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.
01 February 1946
Holmes and Watson board a passenger train bound from London to Edinburgh, to guard the Star of Rhodesia, an enormous diamond worth a fortune belonging to an elderly woman of wealth; but within the first hour of the trip, the woman's son is murdered and the diamond stolen and any of the passengers in their car could be the killer thief.
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.
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.
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.
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.
28 July 1932
A wealthy landowner living in Haiti convinces a sorcerer to lure the woman he has fallen for away from her fiancé.
15 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.
18 February 1935
In 1930s Budapest, naïve orphan Luisa Ginglebuscher becomes an usherette at the local movie house, determined to succeed in her first job by doing good deeds for others and maintaining her purity.
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.
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.
24 May 1946
A convicted thief in Dartmoor prison hides the location of the stolen Bank of England printing plates inside three music boxes.
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.
17 May 1936
Sheltered beauty Magnolia Hawkes takes over as the leading lady on a Mississippi riverboat show when mixed-race Julie and her white husband are forced out of town by a prejudiced sheriff.
28 March 1941
Mad scientist turns a man into an electrically-controlled monster to do his bidding.
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.
03 June 1938
A prosecutor trying a case where a husband shot his adulterous wife begins to suspect that his own wife is having an affair, and starts to have his own thoughts about killing her.
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.
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.
12 May 1944
A man tracks his kidnapped bride to a jungle island, where her twin is the high priestess.
01 May 1933
A circus on the verge of bankruptcy decides to save itself by staging a animal act with lions and tigers for the first time.
25 December 1928
A story about a haunted old theater where an old Broadway play is being brought back despite threats from the ghost of a dead actor.
20 April 1930
A large-scale revue musical built around Paul Whiteman and his orchestra, presenting a series of musical performances, sketches, and staged tableaux in early two-color Technicolor, emblematic of Hollywood’s early sound-era “all-star” musical productions.
03 July 1962
Many years after a nuclear war, the human survivors have created a new society where much of the work is done by androids, referred to derisively by humans as "clickers".
30 June 1944
An Egyptian high priest travels to America to reclaim the bodies of ancient Egyptian princess Ananka and her living guardian mummy Kharis.
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 September 1940
A couple of young, out-of-work archaeologists in Egypt discover evidence of the burial place of the ancient Egyptian princess Ananka.
