It gives me great pleasure to post this information with the blessing of Dr. Barnes, and great hopes that more information and pictures may follow in the future.  Please keep tabs on my news and updates section for anything added to this section or any other section of my web site.

Thanks,

Tim...
Webmaster

"As I mentioned before the female lead [Marilyn Burns] was a friend of mine and when she told me that she was going to be in this movie and that they needed somebody to do special effects makeup, I told her I could do it (even though I really had never done any before). However, in medical school In my senior year I was put in charge of makeup for a mock casualty drill in Houston and so I figured out how to make the appearance of compound fractures, facial wounds, etc. I had also done some sculpture in bronze (two of my bronzes were on eBay a couple of weeks ago) so I had used wax, silicone rubber, etc. I had always been interested in the movie industry--from the standpoint of makeup, model building, etc., so this was fun. I could have been involved in more movies after that one but movie schedules and surgical schedules don't work the same way so I didn't pursue it any further. I practiced plastic surgery for 37 years but also was a professional photographer for 30 years, primarily photographing women, although I photographed scenery and animals when I traveled."

      "I had a pretty busy surgical practice so I couldn't stay out there all the time. I did the makeup in my office, however, and then we would drive out to the set. You should have seen some of the looks from people in other cars particularly when we had to stop at stop lights. I stayed out at the set one time for over 24 hours straight because they shot all that time. When it was time for John to eat I would cut away the latex parts of the makeup around his mouth so he could eat and would then patch him back up afterward. I was used to just sleeping 4-5 hours a night normally at that time so a lot of the facial molds, etc. were done at night in my office. One of the masks for Leatherface was made from my face but we made molds of a lot of faces for them. It isn't a particularly pleasant feeling having the mold made because you breathe through padded straws in your nose while the dental alginate, followed by plaster strips, is being applied. It takes 20-25 minutes before it can be removed. I felt that I should know what it felt like before I did it to somebody else. I had no problem because I'm not claustrophobic at all (I've even done a little cave exploring in some pretty tight places), but one lady was and I had to stop and get the stuff off her face without finishing the mask. "

     "Marilyn Burns, the female lead, was really a pretty girl, although it doesn't show much in the movie. I think her basic part was screaming at the top of her voice and she stayed hoarse most of the time."

    " Somebody from California came to my house last year and interviewed me about my part in the film (it was a video interview which I wasn't expecting), and he took video of all the pieces I have on eBay. He said they were going to put out another DVD on the original TCM sometime this year and he had been trying to interview everybody that had a part in making the film. He had apparently interviewed Marilyn and a lot of other people already. He was just doing the interviews but not producing the DVD. He is to send me a copy of the DVD when it comes out but I have no idea when that will be. There are already 2-3 other DVDs about the original TCM out."

     "One other thing about shooting the TCM was that it was done on an extremely low budget, most of it was photographed in an old unairconditioned house in the middle of the summer. With the skeletons, chickens and other weird props the smell in the house was almost overpowering at times. But it was still fun. "