The guy who did do the effects, Lester Loraine, killed himself. “They keep using my name and I did not do the effects on that piece of shit. “I was not involved with that film in any way I want to talk about,” Savini told me when I contacted him back in 2007. Little is known of Larrain (spelt on IMDb as Lorrain and by Savini as Loraine), other than him taking his own life shortly after the release of the movie. Even in an era of excessive gruesome effects and sexualised violence, Scavolini succeeded in infuriating the censors, particularly in the United Kingdom, where it was banned as a ‘video nasty.’Īnother name to appear on the credits for Nightmare was Les Larrain who, along with Savini, had been listed as a special effects artist.
Tom Savini was there – he himself pumped the blood!!!!” There is very little about the nature of Nightmare that did not cause controversy upon its initial release back in 1981. Actually, he pushed the blood’s pump when the boy-actor chopped his mother’s head. “All the main effects of the film were supervised and done personally by him. The only thing he didn’t was working on the prosthetics which were done by another group of young people,” said Scavolini when I brought up the question of Savini’s true involvement in the picture. “Tom Savini was greatly involved in the making of Nightmare’s special effects. Was Savini involved, and if so then why has he denied it for so long? Or was Scavolini purely attempting to capitalize on the success of Savini’s name, with the FX artist having become a star in his own right after providing the notorious makeup for such blockbusters as Dawn of the Dead and Friday the 13th? Yet, to this day, Nightmare is still listed on Scavolini’s website with the credit ‘Special Effects Director: Tom Savini,’ whilst its IMDb page also includes his name. What made this even more interesting was that when I spoke to Savini that same day, he not only denied having any official involvement but also expressed his hatred for the movie. When I spoke to Romano Scavolini back in September 2007, he still insisted that the special effects for his notorious video nasty Nightmare (more commonly referred to as Nightmare in a Damaged Brain) were designed and created by makeup legend Tom Savini.