Editorials
[It Came From the ’80s] The Legendary Dick Smith’s Faceless Nightmare in ‘Ghost Story’
With horror industry heavy hitters already in place from the 1970s, the 1980s built upon that with the rise of brilliant minds in makeup and effects artists, as well as advances in technology. Artists like Rick Baker, Rob Bottin, Alec Gillis, Tom Woodruff Jr., Tom Savini, Stan Winston, and countless other artists that delivered groundbreaking, mind-blowing practical effects that ushered in the pre-CGI Golden Age of Cinema. Which meant a glorious glut of creatures in horror. More than just a technical marvel, the creatures on display in ‘80s horror meant tangible texture that still holds up decades later. Grotesque slimy skin to brutal transformation sequences, there wasn’t anything the artists couldn’t create. It Came From the ‘80s is a series that will pay homage to the monstrous, deadly, and often slimy creatures that made the ‘80s such a fantastic decade in horror.
Adapted from Peter Straub’s novel of the same name just two years after the book’s release, Ghost Story opened to mixed reviews. In the decades that followed, it’s mostly fallen into obscurity. It’s easy to understand why; its horror unfolds slowly in a murder mystery, set in a quaint New England town in the middle of snowy winter. With four elderly friends at the heart of the mystery, Ghost Story often feels more like a Victorian mood piece than a modern horror film (at the time). For the novel purists, there’s a lot that’s cut out in favor of brevity and peripheral characters never quite get explained. But the vengeful ghost at the core of the film is captivating, both thanks to actress Alice Krige’s performance and the fantastic special makeup effects by Academy Award-winning artist Dick Smith and his protégé Rick Baker.
Nicknamed the Godfather of Makeup, Smith was the first makeup artist to receive an honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement, in 2011. He was 89 at the time. He also won an Academy Award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling for his work on Amadeus in 1985. All of this to say that the makeup effects alone for Ghost Story makes it worth the watch. Though Smith might have earned accolades (rightfully so) for his stellar work in aging makeup outside of the horror genre, his work in horror was equally masterful.
Alice Krige plays Eva and Alma, two women that haunt the two generations of men in the story in different ways. For the elder generation, Eva is seeking revenge for a wrong they caused her in their youth. In the present, Eva’s jarring, ghastly appearances usually result in the death of those that see her in her decayed state. Smith and his team created multiple head and shoulder, life-sized puppets of Eva, each with a vastly different stage of decay reflective of her death. There’s one apparition of Eva they created that wasn’t used in the film, however, and it’s the scariest one of them all, with its gaping mouth and eyeless visage.
Left: Dick Smith’s Unused Apparition in Ghost Story (1981), Right: House on Haunted Hill (1999)
The unused apparition of Eva was so effective, though, that it did eventually make its way into a horror film decades later with Smith’s permission; 1999’s House on Haunted Hill. During the surreal underwater sequence, while Stephen Price (Geoffrey Rush) is locked in the saturation chamber, he encounters a ghostly woman that turns into a terrifying faceless apparition. Credited as the “eyeless apparition” designed by Dick Smith, the monster was based on his unused design from 1981. Seeing it in the context of House on Haunted Hill makes it easy to see why it didn’t make the cut for Ghost Story.
Smith passed away in 2014, leaving an impressive legacy in horror and cinema. His horror credits include The Exorcist, Burnt Offerings, The Sentinel, Altered States, Scanners, and The Hunger, but it is Ghost Story that often gets most overlooked. Krige’s chilling performance and the makeup effects compensate for the more glaring plot and pacing issues, but even if you don’t want to seek this one out then at least rewatch House on Haunted Hill for Smith’s gruesome, faceless specter.
I first heard about The Mandela Catalogue through a couple of nephews who were obsessed with the ARG’s sinister mythology. It was only after watching Wendigoon’s in-depth analysis of the series that I realized just how deep this rabbit hole goes.
In fact, I’d already been exposed to the nightmarish visuals of Alex Kister’s YouTube creation for years at that point without even realizing that it was the origin of several viral “cursed images” and spooky memes that had leaked into the wider internet – with this viral element actually being a part of the Catalogue’s overarching narrative.
Flash-forward to 2026 and the unprecedented success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms has led to Hollywood betting on horrific internet properties with existing fanbases, which means that Kister’s unique hybrid of both religious and analog horror is finally headed to the big screen with a script written by Kister himself alongside Tyler Clifton.
While this news shouldn’t be too surprising if you’ve been keeping up with the ongoing success of The Mandela Catalogue (both myself and Wendigoon having previously predicted that the series would inevitably make the jump to theaters one day), plenty of horror fans are likely confused as to why so many folks are excited for what appears to be a Hollywood adaptation of a series of creepy .jpeg images under a VHS filter.
With that in mind, today I’d like to invite fellow readers to accompany me as I explore the origins of Alex Kister’s viral hit and attempt to explain exactly why we should all be excited about the Mandela Catalogue adaptation!
From High School Writing Project to Internet Horror Phenomenon
The first seeds of The Mandela Catalogue were sown when Kister was still in high school and developed a writing project subverting religious tropes in a world where biblical history had been altered by demonic forces. A little while later, Kister came across an analog horror contest on Reddit and decided to adapt his ideas into a standalone video where he would edit a religious kids’ cartoon –The Beginner’s Bible: The Nativity, to be specific- into something far creepier. This is how the iconic Overthrone video was born, with this viral short film taking on a life of its own as fans demanded more eerie content from Kister.
Though the video was originally meant to be a one-and-done sort of affair, with Kister actually regretting some of its primitive visuals and considering the editing amateurish and “YouTube-Poop-like” when compared to his current standards, fan reaction and free time during the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged the (then) seventeen-year-old filmmaker to continue producing content set in this same world. The Mandela Catalogue name was inspired by the Mandela Effect conspiracy theory, as the series would slowly begin to explore the subtle horror of alternate histories.
Inspired by existential dread brought on by extended periods of quarantine as well as a personal crisis of faith, Kister continued to expand his alternate timeline where the rise of Christianity had been prevented by what was presumably the Devil disguised as the Archangel Gabriel. This alternate course of fictional events led to the existence of certain paranormal anomalies that had come to be accepted as “normal” by the 1990s, which is why most of the series’ supernatural horror is presented in such a matter-of-fact manner.
Most of this background information and religious lore is delivered by increasingly cryptic broadcasts and in-universe PSAs, as well as the occasional found footage video, that often have to be decoded by clever viewers. Of course, it’s the consistently disturbing imagery that made the series so popular – much of which was originally created by Kister on a smartphone!
The Alternates: Horror’s Most Unsettling Modern Monsters
The show’s early episodes mostly take place within the fictional Mandela County in Wisconsin and depict life in a world where demonic entities are capable of using media to enter our reality. This process usually involves scaring victims into killing themselves and then repurposing their bodies as horrific doppelgangers referred to as “Alternates”. This terrifying phenomenon has become so common that local police already have specialized procedures in place to deal with the issue, though this usually consists of simply ignoring calls for help so as to avoid spreading so-called “Metaphysical Awareness Disorder” any further.
Over time, Kister would expand this mythology and incorporate different kinds of Alternates into the mix, though the story never stopped deconstructing religious concepts. The series’ second volume exponentially increased both video quality and the overall narrative scope as we began to follow the lives of characters who had already grown up in this dystopian hellscape where the government is forced to prohibit religion, television, and even mirrors in the hopes of mitigating the damage done by the ongoing invasion of otherworldly entities.
The really interesting part comes into play when you realize exactly how the Alternates make use of scary media in order to spread their demonic influence, with the analog horror of it all being a diegetic part of the story and something of a memetic trap orchestrated by the false Gabriel.
I particularly appreciate how some characters begin to suspect that there’s something wrong with their version of reality and that things weren’t meant to play out this way, especially when Mark utters the haunting line “who have I been praying to all this time?” That’s why I think The Mandela Catalogue is an effective piece of religious horror even if you don’t subscribe to the Christian worldview, as the mere idea of a world where evil has already won is a universally terrifying concept in and of itself. Not only that, but the series’ uncanny analog imagery alone is already worth the price of admission, as you’ve likely already noticed by looking at the pictures accompanying this article.
Why The Feature Adaptation Could Be Horror’s Next Big Success
It’s actually been a whole year since Kister first announced that he had been working on a feature-length screenplay for a Mandela Catalogue movie since 2022, with his proposed story following an ensemble of high-school graduates who uncover a supernatural conspiracy after the mysterious disappearance of a fellow student. This premise sounds similar to narrative elements present in the series’ second volume, but I’m pretty sure that Kister is going to go the Kane Parsons route and make the movie more of a spin-off than a re-imagining of its source material.
While notable Hollywood producers like Aaron B. Koontz, Scott Stuber, and Steven Spielberg himself are backing the upcoming project, I feel like there’s no one better to adapt this deeply personal exploration of faith and the dark side of communication than the person who first came up with it. That’s why I can’t wait to see Kister’s work on the big screen, as I have a feeling that this young filmmaker is the next one on the list about to make cinematic history – especially since this is clearly a passion project that has been in the works for years at this point!
That being said, there’s always a chance that the film could end up unleashing a fresh wave of Alternate incursions, but I guess that’s just a risk we’ll have to take.
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