Tom Savini - Early Life

Early Life

Savini was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and is of Italian descent. He was raised in the Catholic religion and graduated from Central Catholic High School. As a boy, his inspiration was the great Lon Chaney, Sr. and Savini attributes his earliest desires to create makeup effects to Chaney and the film Man of a Thousand Faces. Experimenting with whatever medium he could find, the young Savini practiced creating makeup effects on himself, later convincing his friends to let him practice his craft on them. He also discovered another passion, acting. Combining his makeup applications and homemade costumes, he especially enjoyed scaring his friends. Savini attended Point Park University for three years, before enlisiting in the United States Army. He appeared in stage productions throughout college and continued on stage after his tour of duty in Vietnam.

Savini served as a combat photographer during the Vietnam War. He continued to practice with makeup in Vietnam, often frightening indigenous peasants by appearing to suddenly transform into a "monster". Using the lens of his camera, Savini separated himself from the real life horrors of war; however, all the images still haunted his mind. Savini said his wartime experiences influenced his eventual style of gory effects: "I hated that when I watched a war movie and someone dies. Some people die with one eye open and one eye half-closed, sometimes people die with smiles on their faces because the jaw is always slack. I incorporated the feeling of the stuff I saw in Vietnam into my work." In 1970, while on guard duty, a flare was triggered in the jungle area Savini was watching. Against military protocol, Savini fired into the bush without informing his superiors. Other soldiers likewise began firing until a duck wandered from the bush completely unharmed. Due to his failure to follow orders, Savini was taken off guard duty from his bunker on the following evening. That same evening, the bunker came under attack and several soldiers were wounded or killed. As a result of this incident, Savini earned the nickname "Duck Slayer" and to this day will not eat duck.

After his tour in Vietnam, he attended Carnegie-Mellon University, as the first undergraduate to be awarded a full fellowship in the acting and directing program. Among the many talents Savini achieved as a young man was the art of fencing. Much of his stunt work and some of his characters reflect these graceful abilities; however, he is also accomplished with a bull whip, which he learned from Robert Mapplethorpe during his Fire Island days, and many of his characters have been bikers or madmen who are cheesy and crusty with a lot of ham.