Welcome back to Behind The Scenes Saturday!! I’m so happy I finally got to do an installment on this film!! Ginger Snaps is one of my all-time favorite werewolf movies and I though since its conclusion took place on Halloween night, it was PERFECT for Spooky Season! So, make sure your van’s strong enough to take a werewolf down, always use protection, and enjoy these fun pictures and bits of trivia!!!

(Trivia provided by IMDb.com)

(Pictures provided by google.com, IMDb.com, and youtube.com)

(SPOILER ALERT!!!)

• The films director, John Fawcett refused to have any CGI effects in the film. He wanted all of the special creature effects to be to be done solely with prosthetics and makeup.
• Katharine Isabelle (Ginger) and Emily Perkins (Brigitte) were connected long before starring in this film together. Along with auditioning for the film on the same day, the two actresses were born in the same hospital, they attended the same preschool, elementary school, and private school, and they even worked through the same talent agency.
• The monster makeup for Katharine Isabelle took about 3-7 hours to apply and about an additional 2 hours to remove after filming.
• Because the film depicted teenagers in violent situations, getting funding for it was difficult for production due to the Columbine massacre and other school shootings that occurred at the time.

• Many of the day scenes had to actually be shot at night. The crew brought in a large 18-kilowatt light to sort of flood the locations with light so it would appear to be daytime. The light was supposedly so strong, that it could be seen by an aircraft passing overhead.
• Before Katharine Isabelle and Emily Perkins auditioned on the same day and landed their roles, production struggled to find the perfect Ginger and Brigitte for 6 months.
• Although Ginger is Brigitte’s older sister in the film, Katharine Isabelle is actually 4 years younger than Emily Perkins in real life.
• The film’s writer, Karen Walton was the one who singled out Katharine Isabelle’s and Emily Perkins’ audition tapes, saying their performances were the exact way she had envisioned the characters of Ginger and Brigitte.

• Sarah Polley and Natasha Lyonne both turned down the role of Ginger.
• The voice on the school’s PA system was provided by Lucy Lawless. Lawless paged two students by the name of Samuel and Theodore Raimi. Ted Raimi worked with Lawless on Xena: Warrior Princess. Ted’s brother, Sam Raimi was an executive producer on the show.
• Karen Walton was hesitant on writing the film because of the horror genre’s reputation of negatively portraying women. John Fawcett convinced her that this film would break these clichés, so she accepted the job.
• Katharine Isabelle had to endure quite a bit with her makeup effects. She was covered in sticky fake blood that required Borax and household detergent to remove. The contacts she wore hindered her vision and she had difficulty talking with her fake teeth without lisping. The most aggravating prosthetic was a full facial prosthetic that caused her nose to run constantly and she had to stop the running with Q-tips.

• The film took 6 weeks to shoot.
• After a day of shooting, Katharine Isabelle went to a pharmacy, and the people there thought she’d been beaten up because she was still covered in fake blood.
• Emily Perkins wore a wig for this film.
• Both Katharine Isabelle and Emily Perkins later played prominent roles in the show Supernatural.

• Kris Lemche (Sam) and Jesse Moss (Jason) later appeared together in Final Destination 3.
• This film lies in the same universe as A Christmas Horror Story, as they were both set in the fictional town of Bailey Downs.
• Kate Beckinsale, Anne Hathaway, and Zooey Deschanel were considered for the part of Brigitte.
• Robin Williams and Patrick Warburton were considered to play Mr. Wayne (Peter Keleghan), the school’s guidance counselor.

• Tim Allen was considered for the role of Henry Fitzgerald before it went to John Bourgeois.
• Mimi Rogers readily accepted the role of Pam because she loved the black humor and comic relief in the role.
• The neighbor’s dog, Norman was named after Norman Bates, the killer in Psycho.
• Ginger’s final wolf design was conceived by John Fawcett years before production. He envisioned it as a large, hairless, skeletal creature. The film’s special makeup effects artist, Paul Jones initially wanted to make the wolf as a puppet, but the required range of movement led to the use of a full body suit instead. Emily Perkins later praised the wolf suit, particularly its tactile realism in close interactions. She described it as slimy, cold, clammy, and disturbingly skin-like, exactly how she imagined such a creature would feel in real life.

• For the attack scene in the park, Katharine Isabelle’s stunt double was suspended on a harness and attached to the werewolf head. They moved the stunt performer side to side to create the effect of the creature violently shaking Ginger while holding her in its jaws.
• The opening shots of the girls’ fake suicides were taken on location at someone’s actual house. The homeowner’s 4-year-old child had to be distracted every time Katharine Isabelle and Emily Perkins, covered in fake gore, had to come inside the house to change.
• In some of the scenes, Brigitte is seen wearing shaggy clothes that look as though she’s wearing fur. One heavy gray coat even looks like wolf fur. It supposedly symbolizes Brigitte’s closeness to her sister. It also foreshadows her becoming a werewolf as well.
• In the end, Ginger is killed with the same knife that she puts to her wrist in her first scene.