One of the most formidable challenges was the realization of Im-Ho-Tep for The Mummy sequence, staged when he first comes back to life. The primary lab work was created by sculptor Brent Armstrong as a foam latex mask and a full head-to-toe costume. Armstrong fabricated the costume by gluing bandages onto a spandex undersuit, followed by adhering a mixture of sprayed latex and rubber cement to the bandages. He used a 25-gallon drum of tough industrial rubber cement shot through an air gun to seal the suit in. The cement stiffened the suit, holding the bandages together so that they wouldn’t tear. Two hand appliances - palms and backs of hands – were utilized, and the whole thing was painted with rubber cement paints. “On the day of, I was assisted by Rick Stratton,” said Armstrong. “After the actor, Ken DeShan, was in the suit, the suit was coated with a mix of gaf-quad, alcohol and fuller's earth. When it dried and the alcohol had evaporated, it gave a dry crusted dust appearance to the suit. When he’d move, it would crack and dust bits would fall off. The final touch was black scleral contact lenses.”
A variety of other classic characters were achieved with a combination of lab work expertise and on-set makeup artistry. James Roland, a veteran of TV’s “Star Trek” shows, did Una O’Connor’s makeup. “That was a very hard character, because her face changed in every single scene that we saw her in, so we never really got a good idea of what Una O'Connor looked like on her own,” stated Burman. “She was a three-piece makeup: forehead, chin, and then her nose and cheeks were all one big piece with the upper lip.” Another prominent makeup challenge was Colin Clive, even though actor James Sloane was chosen because he plays Clive in live shows at Universal Studios, Hollywood. “Because his features are so prominent, it was really tough on the small face of the actor,” Burman described. “Bruce Fuller had such a fun time doing that makeup. Also, Camille Calvet did a beautiful job making Kevin Isola into Basil Rathbone. Sheilu Burman, my sister-in-law, played Maleva, Maria Ouspenskaya’s character from The Wolf Man, I did her eight-piece makeup. She was a completely different woman when she got into makeup!”
