10 Secret Techniques Films Used To Ensure Perfection

Squibs have been used to simulate the impact of bullets on the human body on film since 1955, when future legend of Polish cinema, Kazimierz Kutz (then only twenty-five) created the effect while working on Andrzej Wajda’s Pokolenie.

Kutz used a condom, fake blood and a smidge of dynamite for his film. Although similar squibs continue to be used in movies to this day, the effect has also evolved considerably in the last seven decades, with air squibs and pneumatics being used on a variety of productions.

For Robert Rodriguez’ seminal neo-Western Desperado, he wanted something a little more over-the-top to match his movie’s graceful yet gratuitous balletic action style. On his no-budget first film, El Mariachi, he’d experimented with placing the squib inside the blood pack rather than behind it. For Desperado (like Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead II, as much a remake of his first movie as a sequel), he created the guacamole gun.

Essentially a device that projected a burst of stage blood from off camera onto actors without the need for the safety protocols and planning that came hand-in-hand with working with squibs alone, the guacamole gun’s other significant selling point was the effect itself. Depending on the consistency of the mixture being used, it was possible to simulate shots to any part of the body with cheerfully gratuitous gore, including a nice line in brain-splattering head shots.

In fact, the guacamole gun was a little too successful: Desperado ended up being snipped by the censor due to the sheer volume of blood spraying everywhere, and much of the film’s action scenes needed to be revisited in the editing room.