Blood (And Guts) Simple

Both ER and Chicago Hope boast bloody hospital scenes so realistic they could make Marcus Welby pass out. But since even the most desperate-for-work actors won't let the likes of Eriq La Salle carve them up with a scalpel, what are the shows' secrets? Herewith, some prescriptions for creating medical special effects:

What passed for a rib cage on a recent episode of ER was actually the teeth of a remodeled animal trap.

A sticky mixture of syrup and red food dye, the blood on ER comes in two colors: bright red for freshly pumped blood and dark reddish purple for older, drying stuff.

If you want that fresh-out-of-the-womb look, Chicago Hope medical technical advisor Linda Klein has the perfect recipe: Lather the baby with a mixture of soft cream cheese and chunky cherry and blueberry preserves. ''It's not one of my favorite things to do,'' says Klein, who heats the goop to make the tiny actors more comfortable, ''but it really looks good.''

For drawing blood, ER will stick a tube of fake blood on the actor's body, cover with a flesh-colored plastic, mark with a freckle, then poke it with a syringe.

For a recent Chicago Hope chest-surgery scene, a dummy subbed for a body. But above the neck, it was the real thing: An actor sat underneath the table and poked his head through a hole.

Chicago Hope's secret for turning two unattached babies into a pair of Siamese twins: Fit each into translucent flesh-toned adjoining vests stuck together in back with Velcro.

In the quest for realism, Chicago Hope's Klein sometimes raids the leftovers bin at the butcher. Cow intestines, calf hearts, and pork bellies make good substitutes for human parts. But there are risks. While shooting one of the early episodes, the show's organ-crammed freezer was accidentally unplugged all night. In the morning, not only did the soundstage have a stomach-turning stench, but the hearts and innards had become blackened and discolored. The solution: Klein dunked them in Clorox bleach. Since then, the show has switched to using more plastic parts.

If the ER nurses look professional, it's because they are: The extras are recruited from Los Angeles-area hospitals. ''The nurses know which way things go and can hand things to the actors so they're pointing in the right direction,'' says Dr. Lance Gentile, the show's technical advisor and staff writer. ''The actors don't have to fumble around — they can keep busy acting.''

As in many real hospitals, the Chicago Hope operating room is equipped with TV screens to provide nitty-gritty close-ups for surgeons at work. But on the show, the views come from pretaped, real-life operations. For one sequence, a Los Angeles surgeon took a second out from a heart operation to pose for a fake heart massage on his patient, with the nearby Chicago Hope cameras shooting a close-up of his hands. Strange? Not for sunny Southern California, where everyone's in showbiz.

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