Although it’s been available on streaming service Shudder since late 2019, the documentary “Smoke and Mirrors: The Story of Tom Savini” becomes more widely available Tuesday for rent or purchase via digital streaming on-demand (iTunes, Google Play, Vudu, XBox) and cable on-demand (Comcast, DirecTV, DISH Network).

A Blu-ray release will follow in early 2022, and the film will remain on Shudder through at least late November.

At 74, Savini, an actor (“From Dusk Till Dawn,” “Zack and Miri Make a Porno”) and special effects makeup artist (“Dawn of the Dead,” “Day of the Dead”), still lives in the Bloomfield house he grew up in. He credits Jason Baker, a former student at Savini’s Special Effects Makeup Program at the Douglas Education Center in Monessen and now the owner of Callosum Studios in Point Breeze, with the idea for this autobiographical documentary that Baker directed.

“Between him and (George A.) Romero, they essentially started the Pittsburgh film industry,” Baker said, “and he’s doing all of that as a single parent, which is really intriguing to me.”

In addition to being interviewed, Savini worked on some effects shots in “Smoke and Mirrors” and provided hours of behind-the-scenes footage (including decades-old video of a production of “Dracula” at Pittsburgh’s City Theatre) and newspaper clippings.

“There’s a lot of personal stuff in it,” Savini said, noting he was surprised when fans at a festival screening reacted positively to that aspect of the film. “They said they know about my movie career and all that stuff. They didn’t know the other stuff.”

Savini said “Smoke and Mirrors” was made over seven years during a period where he was doing more acting than special effects work, including roles in “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” (2012), “From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series” (2016), “Locke & Key” (2020) and “NOS4A2” (2020). Savini recently auditioned for a part in FX’s “What We Do in the Shadows” that he’s waiting to hear if he landed.

Savini got name-checked in the current third season of Shudder’s “Creepshow,” executive produced by McCandless native Greg Nicotero. (Savini previously directed the season one “Creepshow” episode “By the Silver Water of Lake Champlain” in 2019.)

“Creepshow’s” “Skeletons in the Closet,” directed by Nicotero, debuted earlier this month and uses a real-world event as part of its plot: the 1982 controversy of “Dawn Doe” (AKA “Betsy”), a skeleton used in 1978’s Romero flick “Dawn of the Dead” that Savini maintains was a movie prop while former Allegheny County coroner Dr. Joshua Perper insisted was a human skeleton. Dawn Doe is buried in Mt. Lebanon Cemetery, which also gets a shout-out in the “Creepshow” episode.

Savini said after a lot of physical therapy he’s “100%” recovered from when he was hit by a car while riding his bike earlier this year. He continues to work with students at his effects makeup program, which recently celebrated its 21st anniversary.

“My main thrust is to get their portfolios in shape because that’s what gets them work,” said Savini, whose former students have worked on “Avengers” movies, “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies and “The Walking Dead” series.

Savini and Baker continue to work together, with Savini serving as chief consultant at Callosum (“That’s pretty much a nice way of saying Tom gets to come and go as he pleases, and I’m the one that’s got to make sure the light bill is paid,” Baker said).

The pair most recently teamed for the upcoming Blumhouse movie “The Black Phone,” starring Ethan Hawke and due in theaters Feb. 4 . Savini and Baker collaborated on a mask Hawke wears in the film that’s shown in the movie’s poster.

“We seem to work everywhere except Pittsburgh,” Baker said of Callosum, whose biggest client is the WWE. Baker heads to Florida next week for a photoshoot for Pittsburgh band Code Orange (he worked on one of the band’s previous album covers, shot in Brooklyn). “We never get calls for anything here.”

In “Smoke and Mirrors,” Savini compares special effects makeup work to another type of entertainer.

“It’s the same thing that a magician does: fooling you into believing what you’re seeing is really happening,” Savini said. “From the very beginning, I thought of special makeup effects as magic tricks.”

‘Succession’

Fox’s “Empire” was at its best exploring its characters and their relationships, because teasing “Who’s gonna run the record company?” can only sustain a series for so long before it gets old.

In its third season, HBO’s “Succession” (9 p.m. Sunday) leans pretty hard on “Who’s gonna run the media company?” in its first couple of episodes but gets great again by episode four when the emphasis shifts more heavily to the characters and their relationships.

At the end of season two, way back in October 2019, Kendall Roy (Jeremy Strong) betrayed patriarch Logan (Brian Cox) by staging a press conference where he accused the senior management at his family’s company of wrongdoing.

Season three picks up in the moments after as Kendall — living in a fantasy world of his own making — imagines himself as part of “the resistance.”

Writer/creator Jesse Armstrong’s series always has leaned into the “King Lear” of it all but at its best the show drills down to the microscopic level, allowing the macro issue of the show’s title to simmer.

That focus on the characters brings to the fore the show’s dark humor. There are more laughs to be had watching “Succession” than most TV comedies, a testament to the show’s writers who imbue the Roy children with specific foibles and a general lack of self-awareness.

Whether they’re at a shareholders meeting that threatens to go sideways or attending a conservative political summit — “A nice, safe space where you don’t have to pretend to like ‘Hamilton,’ ” Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) calls it — the Roys are forever calculating and plotting how to best get ahead of one another, forever tripping over themselves in the process.

‘Baseball Boys’ on WQED-TV

WQED-TV’s “A Season to Remember: The Baseball Boys of Mon City” (8 p.m. Oct. 21) uses rare archival film, photographs and interviews with the surviving players to tell the story of a youth baseball team from Monongahela that made it to the final game of the Little League World Series.

Produced by Beth Dolinar, the 30-minute documentary captures the boys’ accomplishments, a tragedy and redemption.

IATSE sets strike date

On Wednesday, the International Association of Theatrical Stage Employees that represents behind-the-scenes workers in the entertainment industry — including 500 who work on TV shows and movies in Western Pennsylvania — set an Oct. 18 strike date if the union cannot come to terms with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents the studios that produce movies and TV shows. Negotiations between IATSE and the AMPTP are ongoing.

Copyright ©2025— Trib Total Media, LLC (TribLIVE.com)