Netflix’s Locke & Key arrived on Netflix and the Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez comic book’s love for Tom Savini showed through on the streaming series.
Both kept the entire idea of the kids in the town of Matheson (Lovecraft in the comics) loving Savini, and the series honored the legendary effects artist — one of the kids saying he is why they are referred to as “artists.”
Who is Tom Savini?
Anyone who loves horror movies knows exactly who Tom Savini is. He is one of the masters at practical special effects.
Savini, 73, got his big break thanks to none other than George Romero, the man who invented what the world knows as zombies.
Before Romero, zombies were a Caribbean legend, people buried until they were on the edge of death, their brains already shutting down, and then revived as a blank servant for a Voodoo priest.
However, Romero made them the actual walking dead in his seminal movie Night of the Living Dead. The zombies in that movie were mostly just people lumbering slowly along, trying to kill the living.
However, when Romero wanted to create something scarier and more gruesome in his sequel Dawn of the Dead, he called on Tom Savini.
The 32-year-old makeup effects artist then created the zombies in different states of decomposition. When you see zombies on The Walking Dead with parts of their bodies falling off, their heads split open, or their entire bodies withering into nothingness, that all originated with the work of Tom Savini.
Savini went on to have an amazing career in Hollywood and on television.
Fans can see his work in movies such as Friday the 13th, Creepshow, Alone in the Dark, and The Texas Chainsaws Massacre 2.
He also directed a few of his own projects, including the 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead and episodes of Takes from the Darkside and the 2019 revival of Creepshow.
He also acted in movies. Fans can see him in Dawn of the Dead as the biker gang member Blades, in From Dusk Till Dawn as Sex Machine, and in Django Unchained as Tracker Chaney.
Tom Savini in Locke & Key
Mostly, Tom Savini is a source of pride for the kids of Matheson, Massachusetts, and the film students making their own horror movie named their group after him.
However, there is also a special moment for fans of Locke & Key, as Savini himself appears in the series in a special cameo everyone needs to watch out for.
All 10 episodes of Locke & Key are currently streaming on Netflix.