The Killer's Trophies

As a group, we have decided that our killer will be focusing on  pregnant women, possibly themed at under-aged pregnant teenagers. And, as per a convention of a slasher genre, we have decided on the "trophies" that the killer will keep are the foetus' of the women that he murders.

This sick and twisted idea, has to be research, to see how to portray the removal of the foetus, and to think about how the killer can keep them, to be his trophies. Looking into different ways to preserve organic material, I found that formaldehyde is the most common mixture used. It has been used in art to preserve animals after they have died. It has also been used in other slasher movies.

Typing "foetus in a jar" into Google, the following photographs came up, all of which could be used as an inspiration for our style of trophies that the killer creates. The photos are shown to the right.

Thinking of ways that we could represent this, I thought that we could get a foetus like doll to be the foetus- or we might have to make one with special effects makeup, if the doll doesn't look realistic enough. We could use jelly as the formaldehyde and a large glass jar to hold it all.

I looked into different ways that we could make the foetus, if we need to do so. Below shows a You Tube tutorial that I found, that I thought could help us with this:

In this tutorial, it literary shows you how to make a foetus out of a number of materials that would be early accessible to us.

He starts off with some silver foil, shaping it into a ball initially, and adding a "tail" like piece to that ball. The structures is then added to with bendable wire, shaped into the arms and legs of the foetus.

Clay is then added, covering the structure with the skin like material making the basic form of the foetus. Features are carved into the clay, such as the eyes and the nose- they eyes holding a black bead that is then going to be painted.

The substance that he puts the foetus in is a mixture of water and glue and food colouring and a "jell", all creating a sludgy substance for the made foetus to stay in.

From this You Tube tutorial, we can take aspects of the ideas that were mentioned, to make our own foetus in a jar.

We will have a go at making this using silver foil, paint, clay and wire to make the foetus, a large jar that I had at home for the container and water and jelly as the liquid, but currently as we are not 100% on this idea, we are going to hold back to save materials at the moment.

Through my research, I also found out that in the movie Creep, the killer does a similar ritual, by taking out the foetus of pregnant women that he captures her, keeping the dead foetus in a jar next to his surgery table. Screen grabs of these are shown below:

To the left and right, you can see the trophies that "Creep" has kept of previous murders that he has committed- the foetus' of the pregnant women that he has killed. He has placed them in jars, within a liquid to stop them from decaying- the idea that we had for our props in the film opening that we are planning to create.

To the left, you can see that "Creep" is fermenting the foetus in this preserving liquid within a tub. This is the first step before putting the foetus into the jar and onto the shelf, keeping it as a trophy of his murder.


Because of the idea of our killer being obsessed with foetus' and  pregnancy, I found a few pictures that we could add into his diary, showing drawings of the different stages of the foetus growth, and the positions of the foetus within the body. As an effect, we would have the last stages of foetus growth crossed out, symbolising his hatred of the offspring produced.

To the left and the right, you can see the position of the foetus. This, although repulsive to a viewer, could be part of his obsession, performing the act of surgically removing the foetus perfectly, knowing everything that there is to know about it- possibly even trained at school how do do it.


To the right, there is another drawing of the foetus in the womb, but holding two growing babies. Maybe we could link the idea of twins- one being good and the other being evil- to our opening scene.

On the right is a Da Vinci drawing of a foetus- linking to anatomy, and the accurate precision of the surgical removal of a foetus.