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In the past year alone, Nicotero and his partner Howard Berger's company, KNB EFX, have rivaled effects legends like Stan Winston and Rick Baker in terms of quality and outpaced them in terms of quantity. ''We've done the last couple seasons of 24, Law & Order, Without a Trace; we did House of Wax, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Sin City, Fat Albert, The Amityville Horror, The Island, Deadwood, Cursed — and that's just one year!'' Nicotero's eyes are bloodshot. He hasn't slept for more than four hours any night in a month.

The next thing you'll need in order to make a zombie is Pros-Aide, an adhesive used to apply foam latex prosthetics. Foam pieces painted to look like rotting flesh are glued to the guinea pig's face. Feel free to vary how decomposed you want the zombie to look. The darker and more leathery-looking the skin, the longer they've been dead. Next come lace eyebrows and a wig. Zombie wigs are treated with conditioner to make the hair look stringy. You have to figure the zombie has been out in the rain and elements, so its hair should be limp and flat. . .

When Greg Nicotero was a little boy growing up in Pittsburgh, he was constantly being woken up by nightmares. Nicotero's father was a well-respected physician, and it was assumed that Greg would follow in his footsteps. But Nicotero was more interested in classic horror movies, and he'd stay up until 4 a.m. every Saturday night watching Chiller Theater marathons.

While sitting through movies like Creature From the Black Lagoon and Frankenstein, Nicotero would sketch the monsters in a notebook. When he felt tired, he'd splash cold water on his face. ''Those Saturday nights were the greatest nights of my life,'' says Nicotero. ''Being 42 years old now, it sounds silly. But I remember there were nights that I would actually fall asleep before the second monster movie came on and I would wake up Sunday morning really depressed.''

Around the same time, a few neighborhoods away in Pittsburgh, a 21-year-old named Tom Savini was enlisting in the Army. Savini had spent his teen years obsessed with making up his friends to look like elderly Japanese men and burn victims. Rather than face the Vietnam draft, he signed up for the Army's photography school. In 1969, he was shipped off to Can Tho, 90 miles south of Saigon.

As part of the Army's 244th Military Intelligence unit, Savini's job was to take pictures of dead Vietcong soldiers. ''I didn't look at it horrifically, I studied it,'' says Savini. ''I think we all have a safety device where you're able to turn off your emotions. I think your mind helps you do that to safeguard your sanity.''

Still, Savini admits that when he returned to the States, the things he saw in Vietnam caught up with him. ''It took years for my emotions to come back. My marriage went right into the toilet because I was a walking zombie.'' After working as a makeup artist on a number of cheapie horror films, Savini was asked by fellow Pittsburgh resident George A. Romero to do the makeup effects on Dawn of the Dead. The movie instantly turned Savini into a celebrity in horror-film circles.


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