Gore and grotesqueries: Halloween costumes favor makeup, not masks

Economists predict Americans will spend a total of about $6 million on Halloween this year, and the biggest percentage of that forecast spending will be on costume pieces.

Apparently, people care more about their costumes than decorations or even candy. But part of the reason for the Halloween industry's boom is the sort of costuming arms-race that's emerged, as neighbors try to outdo one another's Halloween disguise.

Comic books, movies and popular television shows such as "American Horror Story" or "The Walking Dead" now fill our heads with nightmarish inspiration, and some folks are all too eager to re-create them. Alicia Kneeland, who works at Younghouse Party Central's Costume Dungeon in Cape Girardeau said that this year, it's not like your grandparents' Halloween costumes either.

"Tons of people are trying to do their own faces instead of buying masks," she said.

They sell all sorts of theater-caliber makeup, and an absurd array of rubber appliques, from rips and scrapes to a unicorn horn.

Shane Bullard applies zombie makeup to Gavin Byars at the Retribution haunted house Thursday in Cape Girardeau. (Laura Simon)

"I think this year, we've almost doubled the [sales of] makeup stuff," she said. "Last year we had a good amount, but this year we ramped it up a bit."

Plus, she explained, gore and grotesqueries are not only more hip and acceptable than ever, they're more accessible as well.

"It's YouTube. It's people going online, learning how to do their own boo-boos and scars and stuff," she said.

And, it seems to Kneeland, the younger the customer, the more seriously they take their costuming.

"We've got kids coming in, some of them as young as 11 years old, and they do [elaborate makeup] all year," she said, "She's in here literally every three or four months, with the money she's saved up and talking about the ideas she's seen and what she's going to do next."

Savanna Talley, co-owner and makeup supervisor for Retribution haunted house in Cape Girardeau, also takes makeup seriously, overseeing the makeup of roughly 50 actors and actresses per night during the busy season. One of those actresses, Ava Eaves, said she usually arrives early so that Talley can help her with her makeup.

"My character is a voodoo lady named Momma Adwe, so my costume is a mixture of things," she said. "Savanna does something that kind of looks like those Mardi Gras sculptures, like those sugar skulls, but basically a little creepier."

She said that this year, her costume is scarier than her previous outfit, even though it's mostly makeup.

"Most of everything we use is makeup," Talley explained. That, she said, gives a more realistic feel to her haunted house than masks would.

Talley has been running Retribution for four years and said she, like many other artists, is always searching for new tricks to get stellar makeup results.

"It's mostly self taught. I pick up things from trade shows in St. Louis or from television," she said. "I'm also picking things up from other artists."

But for her, the real payoff isn't in the horrifying makeup itself, it's in the way it scares the pants off the people who come to her haunted house.

"When people come out of the haunted house and they say how cool it was and how good the makeup looked," she said. "That just feels good, that they know how much time you put into it."

tgraef@semissourian.com

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