Falls man’s talents offer gore galore for films
Click scares horror fans as makeup artist
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EDITOR'S NOTE: This is one of a series of Saturday profiles of area residents and their stories. To suggest a profile, contact features editor Burton Cole at bcole@tribtoday.com or metro editor Marly Reichert at mkosinski@tribtoday.com.
NEWTON FALLS -- Face your fears is a common bit of advice.
Daniel Blain Click not only faced his, he embraced them.
Click was afraid of scary movies as a child. The original "Halloween" movie terrorized him, as did the television adaptation of Stephen King's "Salem's Lot." The boy in "Salem's Lot" being named Danny Glick had something to do with that.
Now Click, 47, scares kids and adults as a makeup artist on low-budget horror features as well as sharing his talents at attractions like Fear Forest in Lordstown and the Youngstown Zombie Crawl.
Seeing "Scream Greats, Volume I," a video released by horror magazine Fangoria about the work of makeup artist Tom Savini ("Dawn of the Dead," "Creepshow"), at age 14 was the turning point.
"That was it. From there I wanted to be a makeup artist," he said. "Making monsters, I just thought it was cool. I was always good at art. After I saw that, it really made me want to get into it."
The Newton Falls native essentially is self-taught, although he said Cleveland-based makeup artist Alan Tuskes has become a friend and mentor in recent years.
Click started out by buying books on horror makeup and visual effects at the video store that used to be at Eastwood Mall in Niles, and then he moved on to tutorials on the internet. Around 2010, he started putting his own work online as he auditioned for SyFy Channel's makeup competition series "Face Off" (he made it to the semifinals, but never made it onto the show).
Roger Conners, a Cleveland-area actor, saw his work online and reached out about working on a film he was producing called "Chill: The Killing Games."
"That was the first actual film I ever worked on," Click said. "Then I just kept landing jobs and kept doing it."
Click has about 20 credits on his IMDb (Internet Movie Database) page for makeup and / or special effects makeup, and he's also acted in several of the projects.
These movies were made for micro-budgets and didn't open in thousands of theaters, but many of them are available on DVD and a few ("The Curse of Lilith Ratchet," "Urban Cannibal Massacre," "Scarred") can be seen on the ad-supported streaming service Tubi.
The limitations are part of the challenge. Click often has to bring to life the grandiose visions of the directors he works with for little or no money. Some effects are made to look more complex or gory than they are by using camera tricks, and props often are recycled.
Click still has one of the two heads and face casts (a mold of an actor's face to use for a horror effect) he created for "The Curse of Lilith Ratchet." The other one was blown up in another movie.
Creating full-body life casts and facial sculptures are some of Click's favorite things to do.
"It's a big, long process but it's fun, it's messy and dirty and fun," he said. "I love the actual creating … There's not a lot of money in it, but when you get an actual DVD of a movie you worked or are in, that's the most gratifying part."
When Click started working on movies, he said he liked creating wounds and gory special effects. Now he's drawn toward designing creatures and making facial prosthetics.
Click, who also sings in the Alice in Chains tribute act Alice Sin, doesn't do it for the money. He works in maintenance at Trumbull Industries, and he described his makeup work for movies as a "glorified hobby" more than a job. He and the other people who work on these projects do it for the love of filmmaking.
"I'm not going to say all the acting is great, but these people but their heart and soul into these projects," Click said. "As far as the makeup, I think I do a really good job, not to be cocky. I think people should give them a shot."
agray@tribtoday.com