Virgil Sollozzo said, "Blood is a big expense." Actually, it doesn't have to be.

If you've done any reading about the Godfather films, then you've probably read about makeup artist/genius Dick Smith and what he calls "Karo blood".

What is it? How did it come to be invented? How can everyone out there make some?

Well, here are the answers. First off, let me say that I've been a makeup artist for thirty years (I've also met Dick Smith several times) and I absolutely know what I'm talking about. I've made the blood many times.

"Karo blood" is actually a theatrical blood made with Karo corn syrup as its main ingredient. It was originally invented by Dick Smith in 1965 for his Dick Smith's Monster Makeup Handbook, a one-shot magazine that taught youngsters (and not-so-youngsters) how to use professional materials and techniques to really make their Halloween makeups look professional. The magazine was reprinted several years later as a trade paperback. I bought it as an impressionable ten year old, and my life was never the same.

In its basic form, the "blood" is totally safe - it can even be put in the mouth (like James Caan did for Sonny's assassination scene) - because all the ingredients can be obtained at the local supermarket.

Start with a bottle of clear Karo corn syrup. If you want your blood to be slightly opaque, carefully mix a little flour or Bisquick mix into it, being careful to avoid lumps. You may get better results if you mix a little flour into 3-4 tablespoons of clear syrup before adding it to to the larger amount of syrup. Anyway, the important thing here is to avoid lumps. Do not add so much flour that you have sludge! You only want to make the syrup slightly cloudy. (If it's too thick, add a little water.)

Next, add pure red vegetable food coloring. You may also want to add a drop or two of yellow, and maybe a drop of blue - but this is up to you. But, buy a bottle of the red food coloring, rather than the little vials that dispense the color one drop at a time; you'll need quite a lot of the red color to make your blood look realistic.

Gently stir (do not shake) the mixture, and you have now made Dick Smith's Karo Syrup Blood Formula. And, it's totally safe.

Another technique is to omit the flour/Bisquick altogether. Just add lots of food coloring until the blood color looks right.

Warning! Most theatrical artificial blood recipies (whether store-bought or homemade) may temporarily stain the skin. And, most certainly, the clothes. Do not use theatrical blood mixtures on good clothing! There is a good chance the stains will not come out, even if you launder the garments immediately. In other words, don't take chances.

Note: If you want to use the blood on the skin, you may notice that it has a tendency to bunch up into drops and not "flow" properly over the area it was applied to. To remedy this, take a small artist's brush, dip it in water, and gently work up a little lather on a cake of soap. Paint a clear film of soap wherever you want to apply the blood, allow it to dry and it will look far more realistic when the blood is applied. Professionals use a photographic wetting agent called Kodak Photo-Flo to help the "blood" flow more realistically over skin and into clothing, but this chemical can be dangerous and the soap works just as well. You can also mix some liquid Tincture of Green Soap into the blood mixture, but then you cannot use the blood in the mouth!

Always, whatever you do, think Safety First. Always.

As I said before, this blood formula was used in The Godfather when Sonny was gunned down at the tollbooths, when Don Vito was shot down outside his office, and when the head of Khartoum was discovered by Woltz in his bed. It was used in many other scenes as well, but you get the idea.

So, now you know a little "trick of the trade", and can make your own artificial blood - just like in the Godfather films.

And what do I get from this? Just the pleasure of having passed along a technique that may come in handy next Halloween - or whenever you choose to use it.

Signor V.

Sounds delicious.

How do you think it would go with a few shots of rum mixed in?

What, no Bloody Mary jokes, Plaw?

Actually, it would work quite well, the syrup's sweetness notwithstanding.

As Count Dracula said, "Blood is thicker than water - and tastier, too!"

Signor V.

Never thought of a "Bloody" Mary.

The only thing I drink besides wine are those sweet, fruity rum drinks.

I like to throw in a little grenadine syrup sometimes to get that red color; maybe next time I'll try some of this.

On a more serious note.....I dunno, maybe it's me, but I usually find "film blood" to be be a little too bright red, especially when it's being depicted after it has ostensibly begun to dry, and should have more of a brownish hue.

You've raised a valid point, and one that has kept makeup artists on their toes for many years.

Blood (real blood, that is) can vary in color from bright red (vein blood) to bluish (arterial blood). The problem is exacerbated when you have to determine how the film stock you are filming with will register the artificial blood you are using. Some film stocks make the blood look a little more blue than it would look to the eye, some seem more orange, and so on. Also, the lighting, film exposure, and how the lab processes the film will have an effect as well - think Taxi Driver and GF3.

The only way to properly gauge what you are going to get would be to do a test shoot - but for reasons of time and money, this is not always possible. So, we fall back on intuition and experience. And, hopefully, we don't end up with egg on our faces. But, on any film shoot, communication is the key. If the left hand doesn't have the slightest idea what the right hand is doing, everyone loses. (And I'm speaking from personal experience.)

Black and white films were simpler - though there were special "bloods" made for b&w photography, they would often times use chocolate syrup! (Or a strongly concentrated solution of instant coffee.)

Signor V.

Bloody good thread IMHO

Moe Greene's blood looked like Kool-Aid.

Don Andrew has pointed out a particular difficulty inherent in certain types of blood effects in films.

The death of Moe Greene was accomplished by using a pair of specially adapted eyeglasses concealing hidden tubing. One tube carried compressed air and blew a small pellet outward through the breakaway lens in front of the actor's right eye. The second tube pumped out the "blood". To properly flow through the extremely thin tubing, the artificial blood would have to be thinned down quite a bit. This would also mean that more red pigment would have to be added so the blood wouldn't look too pink.

At this point, I'm not agreeing or disagreeing, just providing a little behind-the-scenes information (though I'll probably take another look at that scene later this evening).

Signor V.

Edit: Yeah, now that I've looked at it again, it would appear that Moe Greene had rather thin blood! Guess he didn't have his dose of iron that day. (But he did have a good shot of lead!)

Fascinating thread. Here's what I'd like to know:

1. Don't any studios use ketchup anymore? I read about a soap opera actress whose character died giving birth, and she recounted how the cast and crew were practically swooning under the hot lights from the stench of the ketchup that was used to resemble blood (but this was in the 80s or so) ... which leads me to my next question:
2. Does karo blood smell, fresh or dried? Is it more tolerable than ketchup?
3. To achieve the Moe Green effect, with the pellet coming through the right eyeglass lens to mimic the bullet's impact, was there any risk of injury to Alex Rocco's eye?

Signor Vitelli, you do both makeup AND miniature houses/rooms. You are truly a Renaissance man!

Great thread, though I have to admit that the technical details are a little overwhelming for me

To answer Cristina's Way:

1. This is, indeed, a strange tale! Mind you, I am absolutely not doubting that you read this, but I am doubting the words of the actress. We do not use ketchup to represent blood! At least, no professional that I know of would ever use it. All the major theatrical makeup manufacturers make artificial blood; some make a half-dozen or so different varieties - depending on the requirements of the particular scene(s) the blood is needed for. (Examples: fresh blood, dried blood, scab-colored blood gel, specially made blood for use in the mouth, etc.) Ketchup is the wrong color and the wrong consistency. And, as far as smelling under the studio lights? Doubtful. After (quite) a while, the ketchup would just dry out and look quite a bit darker. But, a foul stench? I honestly find this a bit hard to...ah, swallow. I think she (the actress) was embellishing the tale to make a good story. Or, she may have been under the mistaken impression that ketchup was being used to simulate blood (Don't ask me why!).

A small digression: What you really have to be careful with when you are shooting for very long hours under hot lights are fresh meats (including fish and poultry) and dairy products. Now you're talkin' stench. BTW, many years ago, when Soupy Sales had his television show, the pies he was hit in the face with were filled with shaving cream. Real whipped cream would have eventually spoiled and smelled under the lights; shaving cream allowed for a quick and easy clean up.

2. Karo syrup should not really have any smell, to speak of. However, if you are shooting a film outdoors, in the woods, in the heat of summer, the syrup-based blood may attract flies - which may not be inappropriate if the actor is playing a bloody cadaver.

3. Here is what Harlan Lebo's book The Godfather Legacy says about the death of Moe Greene:

...All effects that involve eyes are potentially dangerous, but [special effects expert A.D.] Flowers and his crew rigged the effect so that the glass appeared to be crushing inward, although it was actually blowing outward. For the scene, Alex Rocco, who played Greene, lay on his stomach getting a massage as the hit man came into the room. Rocco put on a real pair of glasses, and the camera stopped rolling. Then Flowers brought in a pair of glasses rigged with sugar glass and plastic tubes running down the stems. One tube contained thinned Karo blood, the other tube - connected to a cannister of compressed air - contained a tiny pellet. To create the effect, the pellet was fired through the lens away from Rocco, then the blood in the other tube was released to create the gory simulation of Greene being shot through the eye.

A.D. Flowers had a long history in movie special effects, so you can be absolutely sure that this effect was tested many times before it was actually used on a live actor.

Lastly, me a Renaissance man? The mind boggles at the thought!

Signor V.

Oy, my memory could be going, even at such a * young * age . But I read the article (in TV Guide as I recall), 20-plus years ago, so I could have some facts wrong. Maybe this article is from the 70s. Did the television industry (as opposed to motion pictures) always use karo blood (or other professionally concocted screen blood), even from its earliest days in colour (in the 70s, I assume)? What if this soap opera was on an extremely tight budget? Would they resort to ketchup then?

But as for ketchup not smelling, it calls to mind a school skit put on in the classroom where one of the pupils pretended he was wounded. The youngsters used ketchup for blood and really poured it on. I can't say it was "unscented." Many of us kids exclaimed, "Ew, you can smell the ketchup" or, "This smells like Kraft Dinner."

Anyway, I can see why studios wouldn't want to use it .
Just to clarify, does this apply to karo blood as well? If people wanted to use it on their children for Halloween, how long would it be before the reddish tinge to the skin disappears? In other words, could the children go to school the next day without being laughed at?
You are too humble, Signor Vitelli! I wonder, are you listed in the imdb (Internet Movie Database) for your makeup work? Since your real name, I'm sure, is not Signor Vitelli, we wouldn't know where to find you. But to protect your identity, you can just tell us, "Yes, I'm in there" or "No, I'm not" without giving us the names of the films (or your own real name, for that matter). Just curious.

P.S. Thank you for the Moe Green special effect info. I don't have the Harlan Lebo book, so I always wondered how they accomplished the shot through the eyeglasses.

Actually, I worked as an uncredited fill-in makeup artist here and there on soap operas in the 1970s. Primarily on Ryan's Hope, but I did do a little work on All My Children and Guiding Light. The makeup department budgets would certainly have allowed for the expenditure of a few dollars for a bottle of theatrical blood. Remember, we're talking about 2 oz., 4 oz. or 8 oz. bottles, usually - not the gallons of blood used in the Godfather films.

Karo blood was invented by Dick Smith in 1965. Color television had been around since the 1950s, but TV was usually pretty reticent about showing very much in the way of blood. Same with most motion pictures. Remember, in those old gangster and Western movies, people would get shot, stabbed, die, and usually do all of this without bleeding! If there was any blood shown at all, it was usually made by the Max Factor company (though there were other brands). They were a leader in the field of theatrical makeup until they stopped production of that entire line in the 1970s. They made a Panchromatic blood for black and white photography (a dark red with a touch of blue in it), and a Technicolor blood (a more realistic color). Some other brands, over the years, were Stein's, Mehron, Zauder, Miner's, Leichner, Bob Kelly and Ben Nye.

Today, there are many other brands. In fact, some companies specialize in making nothing but blood and blood-related products. A very good blood is made by a relatively new theatrical makeup company called Graftobian. The color is quite good, but, like most artificial bloods, it does stain. Stains on the skin should not last more than a day or two at most, but this can vary according to skin type - dry, oily, etc. Best to do a test on a small area of skin, preferably on a Friday night so you will have the whole weekend to stay indoors if needed! Karo blood is supposed to stain less, because of the corn syrup. I can't swear to this, though. According to Dick Smith, however, it will stain just as strongly as any other blood if it is diluted with water. So, let the bleeder beware.

I am listed in the IMDb, but I have done a bit more work over the years than my listed credits would indicate. I also have worked in venues that would not exactly be relevant to them (theatre, print advertising, etc.).

I will concede, regarding ketchup, that if you pour an entire bottle of the stuff over somebody, chances are that the smell would be a bit noticeable. And if, by chance, you hate the aroma of ketchup, it probably would be a stench!

Signor V.

So we have a celebrity in our midst! Amazing, Signor Vitelli; you certainly know your stuff. And who knew that colour television had been around since the 1950s?

Like I said, I learn something new on these boards every time I visit .

Believe me, I am the furthest thing from a celebrity!

Signor V.