Thread: Bloody Corpse

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I am looking for a fairly quick and cheap way of making a fresh bloody corpse. The exact effect I am looking for is a kind of ripped open torso with all the wonderful gore within it. My current idea on how to do this is to try to find a cheap manikin torso, cut out the ripped area, and then install some ribs and organs within the wound and dress it up to look bloody.

Might there be an even easier way of doing this? And does anyone have a particularly good method of creating realistic looking gore (organs, wounds and blood) that preferably will completely dry (as in not using typical stage blood that seems to be sticky and doesn't tend to dry well)?

This will be for a haunted house that will be opening fairly soon. I was planning on trying to build this prop this coming weekend.

Thanks!
~Alex

West Systems epoxy found that Rit fabric dye (powder) makes a good colorant for epoxy (a lot of people use acrylic paint. I've found that this makes the epoxy rubbery and brittle, easily crumbling like an old eraser). That way it remains glossy. If this is for a long-term outdoor prop, remember that epoxy is not UV resistant and needs to be coated with spar varnish. There are also glue sticks that are supposed to look like blood, but from what I've seen it really looks more like red candle wax.

If you can find one of those $30 Walgreens skeletons you could probably make a pretty good torso building up over it with papier-mâché or epoxy and fiberglassing or clay. A lot of people here make organs with Great Stuff expanding foam, painted dark red then with gloss spray.

We actually have 8 or 9 of the Walgreens skeletons that we have corpsified with the liquid nails and woodstain method (gives them a decaying look). I guess I technically only need a female torso for the effect I am going for and I know we built several 5-gallon bucket rib cages that I could then build off of. I think I might try papier-mâché since it is fairly easy and cheap to make and then put on an outer layer of latex for the skin (on parts of the torso that still have skin).

I have always thought expanding foam would be perfect for organs. But part of this effect is someone reaching into the open wound to pull out nasty gore and possibly intestines. Any ideas on a good way to make flexible gore? Preferably dry again since we wanted to put the gore in water so that when it is pulled out it splashes on the people standing around it (without staining their clothes with colored blood).

Thanks for the advice though!

Paper mache the ribs using wire duct tape then go over it w/ papermache (pic in my album). Use a sweatshirt or long sleeve shirt fill it w/ rags or old clothes. Insert the rib cage taske cut up latex gloves they are flesh colored for torn up skin. for the intestines I would use dyed nylon stockings tp stuff them soak them in blood and fill the rest in w/ great stuff.