Mortician Breaks Down Dead Body Scenes From Movies & TV | WIRED

[Music] hi i'm victor m sweeney victor is a mortician and funeral director today i'm going to break down clips from movies and tv about dead bodies and just so you know there might be spoilers ahead let's get into it decomposition from the movie psycho [Music] if you look at mrs bates's face you're going to see that her eyes have completely decomposed i'm leaving only the empty sockets likewise you'll notice that her zygomatic arches that is the cheekbones are extremely prominent as the skin is tightened up desiccation would be the breakdown of a body by drying so we're talking about mummification here mrs bait's a skin it would probably be something similar to a football it would be hard and leathery this situation in norman bates's basement would be incredibly illegal most states have a system by which they track a body from the time of death until the time where they are either buried or cremated setting the features and cosmetizing the deceased from the movie bernie you must cast the nails to the person you wouldn't want a mechanic to have the nails of a flight attendant so this clip gets so many things right it's very important to remove any unwanted nasal ear or facial hair so we see bernie here removing facial hair and this is very important across the board male or female ideally when someone is in the casket we really want them to look their best so for a man that might include removing unwanted nose hair or ear hair little dabble do you and it's no more peeking we see bernie glue both the eyes and the mouth this is a common practice not always necessary it might be the case that eyes are are not meeting correctly and you may need to glue them but generally they'll abut quite nicely and we must always be on guard for the mischievous lip drip you'll notice when bernie is gluing the lips that they're kind of a grayish color what that might show me is that there is too much formaldehyde in the solution and too little dye because generally your internal dyes in the fluid are what's going to create that nice rosy color in a body and if there's too much aldehyde it's going to create a gray cast and what you really want is a pink cast if it's already happened it's too late and it would need to be corrected by a lipstick or a heavier makeup then apply highlights do not over cosmetize this is great because you see him actually warming up some of the features you want to try to hit the hot spots with makeup or lush generally the forehead the lower ramus that would be the the lower jaw you're also going to try to hit the tip of the nose and the point of the chin just a note to always remember too much color does not make one look more alive flying body mouse hunt it doesn't matter what color it is they're usually weight tested and strength tested so this terrible terrible thing doesn't happen to people in real life you'll see that the casket has what's called bail handles so they have individual handles for each casket bear typically you're going to see a casket with what's called a swing bar handle so it's going to be a rail that runs the whole length you can see the the light actually poking through so that's going to tell us that this is a non-gasketed casket there's no seal around it it would also be my assumption that it is not locked the lid shouldn't be that wobbly which is going to be a huge problem when you see him totally destroy the hearse and shoot up in the air another odd thing about this dad's not wearing any pants in the casket it's common enough where people don't wear socks or shoes but typically in in an open casket situation you're going to see at least the top of the pants so i can't imagine they had his underwear hanging out or his maybe dress shirt tucked into them i don't know moving casket death at a funeral the casket should be locked the way it flopped open tells me it's not it maybe shouldn't be as easy to move as this shows one thing to notice is that they have dad facing the wrong way what kind of mickey mouse business are these people running anyway this will come into play when they go to the cemetery for burial let's say as most cemeteries are aligned east to west with the head being at the west end and the foot being at the east that's why it's called a head stone because it's typically on the west end of the grave the reasoning for that goes back a long way to antiquity where in christianity they believe that the second coming is going to come from the east so that way if you were to rise out of the grave your feet will be here and your head will be facing east as the sun comes up cough and flop from i think you should leave we showed over 400 naked dead bodies on our show cough and flop every example in here is not a coffin but a casket caskets are rectangular while coffins are generally shaped like a human the other issue i noticed you see this clip where the gentleman falls out of the side his head is on the wrong side of the casket he should be the other way around with the head on the left side in addition there are a number of naked bodies falling out of caskets which would lead me to think that they can't be public visitation funerals they must be closed casket but then the question remains why are they still naked i don't know what to tell you bud mortician's worst nightmare dropping a body taking out the viscera the haunting of hill house do you know what i'm doing right now i'm elbow deep in our sister's chest cavity pulling out a bag of her internal organs that's what happens when a body's autopsy so this representation is pretty accurate typically with an autopsy there are two major incisions on the body there's the y incision which starts at the collarbones meets it at the base of the sternum and then goes down all the way to the pubic bone maybe not so accurate that she cracks open the chest cavity because in addition to making that incision the chest plate that is the breast bone is cut out as well so ideally there's nothing to crack because everything should be kind of wide open don't talk to me that way we see her that she's clipping through multiple sutures more often than not when you get a body back from the medical examiner it's just quickly stitched up because i know the funeral director like me is going to have to do most of the work in undoing the body and then redoing everything after the embalming so they don't take a great deal of time making nice tight stitches because we're just gonna have to undo them again that's what happens when a body's autopsied and i have to take it out the red bag that you see or pull out of the chest cavity there is called the viscera bag so this would include all the organs that are removed from the body and then studied by the medical examiner or coroner probably the longest task of embalming a body that's been autopsied is typically the suturing up of the body but then also of the head what you want to achieve is a nice tight suture so that way you don't have any leakage or anything like that coming out of the body there's one method called the whip stitch which is circular movements around the incision in order to get it nice and tight it doesn't have to look good but it just has to be effective in order to keep a nice good seal there's another type of closure called the baseball stitch so if you were to look at a baseball you're going to see threads going left and right and left and right all the way down and almost a chevron this is a great stitch it's one of the most secure as far as leaks is concerned cremation urn costs from the big lebowski this is 180 it is our most modestly priced receptacle now 180 for an urn that you would actually use in a service is not an unreasonable amount you know i would say typically and earn might be even more than that but the fact that the funeral director says it's his most honestly priced receptacle is probably not accurate generally at a crematory built into the fees they're going to have the cremation itself and then the cremated remains that is the pulverized bone dust is going to come back to the family sealed in a bag and it's going to come in an urn much like this just a black hard plastic urn that would be suitable for burial or anything you really need no frills no bells scattering the ashes but especially if they're going to do as they plan and scatter donny's ashes there's no reason a family or friends should be forced to buy an expensive urn for something they're only going to see just briefly and won't really serve any real purpose for what they're planning to do for a service just because we're bereaved doesn't make us sad sir ideally you as a funeral director are doing your job beforehand to make sure it never gets to that point not just talking him off the ledge but making sure he knows what he's getting so he's not surprised and then angry about a funeral bill that he can't afford in accordance with what we think your dying wishes might well have been later we'll see the cremated remains of donnie scattered at sea in the big lebowski here we will see a folger's can being used but i have filled teapots i filled cookie jars jewelry chests you name it anything that could be suitably used as an urn is fair game broken urn meet the parents oh ideally those cremated remains would be sealed in a bag inside that urn so when the urn itself broke the cremated remains would remain intact in the bag and this doesn't seem to be an unreasonable amount of cremated remains for a human it does tend to differ typically the amount of cremated remains you'll get back is based on the size of the person but primarily on their bone density so generally men will have more cremated remains than a cremated woman would it takes a lot out of him embalming from the movie kissed [Music] welcome to embalming [Music] ah that's more comfortable where to begin okay right away you'll see the gentleman is laying on the table his head is not up he puts his head up afterward his head should be up almost from the time you pick him up from the hospital his head needs to be elevated to make sure the blood isn't pooling in the backsides of his ears also this guy is wearing no personal protective equipment he's wearing a smock yes and gloves but he's wearing his daytime clothes he should be in a gown in a smock over that two pairs of gloves a face mask a face shield over top a hair net and shoe covers and as you can see he's wearing none of that so if you were to have blood splatter let's say that guy's shirt is getting ruined the lid needs to be on that embalming machine otherwise he's going to be releasing formaldehyde gases into the air jugular is for draining and the karates for injecting i'll give the guy a little credit he's right on that mirror carotid artery is a very good artery for introducing embalming fluid it's large it's going to be rubbery and fairly flexible and so as you're pumping fluids in at a high volume and at a great deal of pressure that artery is able to withstand that he's also accurate that the jugular is a good place to drain from it's a large vein both of them up by the neck so he would be accurate there as well true car many see it as the embalmer's sword i hope funeral directors and embalmers don't talk like that we suck out all the ghoul then we replace it with more magic elixir that way our young friend won't blow it up like a big embalmer's sword and miracle elixir come on also he's pointing it the wrong way typically when you insert a trokar you want to go near the navel and you actually want to go upward first so you want to go into the thoracic cavity and draw all the fluids that are there first the reason being is after you draw out the fluids from the thoracic cavity you can move down to the abdominal cavity without having to remove the trocar and you're not introducing let's say gut bacteria into the thoracic cavity you're doing it the other way around what's happening is he's puncturing all those lower abdominal organs he could be puncturing through the intestines with fecal matter and then what is he going to do turn around and stick that fecal matter right up into the thoracic cavity or up into the throat that'd be terrible you get used to the scale mortician makeup it's always sunny in philadelphia i'm here oh what on earth did you do to your face i had it done at a funeral home for a corpse frank looks great for a live person not so much you go to a funeral home to get gruesome repairs most embalming chemical companies will also have a specialized makeup for the deceased whereas most makeup is meant to go on warm bodies this makeup is meant to go on cold bodies you'll notice he has kind of a pale cast to him look ideally in the casket you don't want to have that look because that's the look a dead body will normally take on you look like you're at your own wake so in his case the mortician could have just used a little bit of rouge you can see he darkened around the eyes quite a bit and that would be abnormal for what i try to do you don't want to draw great great focus to close dark eyes because again that provides the effect of a look of death and we want to avoid that if at all possible i gotta get my makeup redone glass casket snow white and the seven dwarves [Music] historically full glass caskets or coffins were not the norm at a certain point in the 19th century caskets or coffins might have a little window for viewing so it's possible they'd have a little door above where the face is and there would be a pane of glass so you could see your loved one without having to open the casket today we don't often have glass caskets although there are companies that are starting to promote the idea of plexiglas caskets so you can get a full view of your loved one i myself am not crazy about the idea because every so often there are things that go wrong with the body that you can't control and you don't want that to be on full display in front of a grieving family there is always the potential for what we call purge so that would be the expelling from an orifice of something that shouldn't be there so you could have lung purge usually it's like a frothy white color you could have stomach purge which is generally the the consistency of coffee grounds and you could also have brain purge and in a glass casket that might be a major issue if that were to happen and you weren't there to catch it gosh that's a bad sign transporting the body six feet under you grab your shoulders on three ready one two three this is a great example of how to throw your back out probably the proper way to do this would be to have one of the directors roll the body and then there's what's called a slider board it's like a thin plastic almost like a stretcher that can go underneath the body so we'd roll them put the slider board underneath lay them down upon the board and then actually both of you go around to the cot side and pull them off the bed and onto the cot that way working together the body becomes unshrouded whoa and we see the gentleman has an erection angel lust does that happen a lot i've been doing this since i was 18. i've never seen that happen the only time i've ever seen corpses have erections is actually during the embalming process if the pressure is up too high sometimes that will direct fluid to the spongy tissues of the penis causing a slight erection and if that were to happen i would just turn the pressure down and that'll decrease in time wrong dead body death at a funeral who's this you know i asked myself the same thing with my dad pass i said who is this man no no brian who's this in the coffin cause that's not my father oh so it's certainly possible to put the wrong body in a casket but a lot would have to go wrong first okay ideally even from the time you bring someone from the place of death into your care you are tracking who it is every step of the way in my own experience i'm in a small enough area where i'm not dealing with four or five deaths in a night so getting people mixed up just doesn't happen for me in larger areas where maybe they have maybe say a central embalming location it'd be extremely important to identify and tag every individual who comes through and that could be done like by a toe tag in the like in a morgue generally it's actually just done with an ankle or a wrist bracelet with the person's name and the date of death then you're able to track who is going where and at what time because this is the kind of thing you never want to have happen almost never happens i said that a lot it's not burger king you can't just mess up my order i would be just utterly shocked you think the first thing you're doing something like that i hope it never happens to me is you just fall on your sword you just apologize you don't make excuses and you make it right and it might be that that funeral is free i'm trying draining blood from the body final destination the risk of cheating the plan of disrespecting the design could incite a fury that could terrorize even the groundwater in this clip we're seeing a specialized embalming tool called the drain tube so we have on the rounded end here this is going to go down the vein we have to cut the vein and insert this in the vein and then as pressure builds in the body we can then pull the end here and this stop opens up and the blood will actually pour out of the side so you're able to direct the blood and then if you need to decrease the flow or stop the flow or open it up you have some control over how much blood is exiting the body at a certain time so that's spot on actually the deceased has a drain tube in his right jugular but there doesn't appear to be any sort of insertion for the embalming machine now it's possible it could be going into his femoral artery down on his thigh but it just seems peculiar that he's going to be draining blood without also introducing any fluids into the system as well the removal of the drain tube is fairly accurate in this scene interestingly enough we don't see any ligature so there's no string at all typically when we're embalming we want to have some ligature to tie off those arteries and veins that we're working with otherwise you're going to have leaking right if we've made a hole in the circulatory system it's got to go somewhere ideally he'd have those veins ready to tie off he'd have the ligature there he'd pull out the drain tube and tie it tight taking a dead body little miss sunshine one of the many things wrong with them taking grandpa through the window as opposed to through the proper channels is that the state wants to track where a body is from the time they pass away until a time of what we call final disposition either burial on the ground or cremation generally what's gonna happen to grandpa initially they're going to track the place of death which would be in this case the hospital and then they're going to have a transfer permit which would be to the funeral home so missing that step there nobody's going to know where he is until he gets back in the care of someone with proper jurisdiction so as far as getting a dead body out of a hospital window i think they did a really good job some points for improvement winding that shroud a little tighter would prevent some of that floppiness if they had a little more time to plan ahead it wouldn't be the worst idea to have something firm underneath him so they can make that smooth transfer without him falling down ideally they would want to put him out feet first because then those in the receiving end would have less weight to carry initially and then they could even rest his shoulder blades on the windowsill before making that final transfer out calling the mortician the godfather my friend are you ready for doing the service so typically people don't show up to me bringing the body with them usually i go to where the death has occurred in this case i feel very very bad for the undertaker if it's good that he's making good on his favor to the godfather so the first thing we'd have to do is perform a very thorough embalming with something like this where you have multiple punctures of organs certainly arteries and veins you're going to have to make sure you have a high index fluid so that would be a fluid that has a more aldehyde than normal because you want to make sure that anywhere that fluid touches is preserved and fixed then you're going to have to make sure that you do a very thorough examination of the body because all of his extremities i would think are not going to get as much circulation as i normally would being that the fluids going into the body are going to take the easiest exit which is going to be one of those many many bullet wounds look how they mask with my book preparing the body for an open casket the haunting of hill house we put her in her favorite clothes and finally i take extra special care to make sure she looks just like she's supposed to we're seeing in this clip this is called a head block so this rests under the head you can see it it's concave on two sides so it provides the ability to lift the head either lower or higher depending on the person's build what we're trying to achieve when we use a head block during embalming is we're trying to lift the head up enough so that way when it rests on the pillow in the casket it looks natural instead of being perfectly flat because then you'd have their chest raising up along with their neck one other thing you're going to notice too is that the lady in the clip here her head is tilted slightly to the right ideally when someone is is laid out on the table you want to have them looking over the end of their right toe with their head neither too far forward we'd call that navel gazing or their head too far back which we call star gazing we want to have it just right in the middle so that way they have a restful posture and then their head tilted slightly so that way when the family approaches the casket they're seeing their loved one face on instead of just their profile from the side so when i'm done she will look just like she always did just like you remember her one thing that she mentions to the boy that i really really like is she's describing what's sometimes called a memory picture so one of the reasons we have open casket funerals which may seem very strange to other cultures and other parts of the world is exactly as she says we want to create an environment that is peaceful and create an environment where an individual can look like themselves again burying a body with their glasses my girl his face hurts and where is his glasses he can't see without his glasses put his glasses on you guys this is the saddest movie but the scene is really great because it does speak to the truth that you normally see people with their glasses on even though i'm not wearing my glasses when i'm asleep and laying down in the casket it's another thing because you're usually looking at a person and trying to make that image of them as you would normally see in everyday life poor thomas j you can see him here he's still in the casket with the effects of those bee stings that's one thing if i were the funeral director i would work very very hard to cover those up not that you want to deny the fact that that's how he died but his family isn't going to want to see him with the cause of his death all over his face there are two ways that you can reduce swelling in a body one way is to actually weight down the swelling with a soaked piece of cotton that would just be soaked in water but heavy enough to reduce that swelling to a flattened area and then once the tissue is fixed then it would not be a raised swollen area anymore the other method is to actually use what's called a tissue reducer so this is quite an older model but if it's not broke don't fix it but a tissue reducer is basically a small iron and you can see the foot on the end here it gets hot hot hot and you actually would use this in conjunction with some face cream you'd put cream over the swollen area and then use the hot iron to actually iron out those raised areas so it would cause the tissue to constrict and then therefore the swelling to go down it takes a fair amount of skill and care to use something like this but in a situation like thomas j here for the family you would want to do everything you could to decrease the swelling of those bee stings american military funeral american sniper [Music] i would say in this clip they absolutely had the military funeral down perfectly so every veteran that passes away that has been honorably discharged from the military is eligible for certain burial benefits these would be things like a flag to drape over the casket it would be military honors at the graveside and that would include rifle volley so the firing of the guns it would include taps and it would include the folding and presentation of that flag to the next of kin veterans are also eligible for marker from the government for their grave whether upright or flat whether granite or bronze [Music] so with the shooting of the rifles in this clip you'll hear that often referred to colloquially as a 21 gun salute but that is actually technically reserved for only the president former president or heads of state so actually at the graveside a veteran is going to get just what's generically called a rifle volley it could have seven riflemen it could have two it could have one lowering the casket the royal tannenbaums [Music] so i have to say that this ending scene for a funeral is just fantastic typically when a casket is lowered into the ground more often than not there's actually a device set up over the grave to kind of automatically and slowly lower it into the ground in this case you see the family doing it manually which i think is a good thing generally anytime you can get a family to step in and do some manual work themselves i think it makes it all the more meaningful in addition to that kind of manual work families might put a scoop of earth into the grave fire we see the little boys firing their bb guns in honor for their grandpa probably my favorite part of this whole thing is the absolutely false epitaph that is on his headstone i would love something like that for myself someday my favorite epitaph i ever saw had the person's name and when they passed away and the only epitaph was a good man and that's always kind of stuck with me i mean that that really should be the goal of all of us to just be a good person and if that's all that's said all the better conclusion being a mortician i think there's a lot of stigma against morticians and funeral service generally there's always the idea that we are greedy or vultures or preying on the vulnerable but really can you think of many more professions where people are working holidays nights and weekends to take care of someone you love on your behalf as we're all going to experience or maybe we've experienced already death is a part of life and it's always a fun and interesting challenge to see it portrayed on film or in tv you

Channel: WIRED

Views: 1,961,358

Keywords: arts & entertainment, dead body scenes, dead body support, dead body wired support, embalming, funeral movie scenes, funerals, funerals explained, mortician dead bodies, mortician explains, mortician support, mortician wired, my girl bees, my girl death, my girl ending, ott technique critique, victor m. sweeney, victor m. sweeney wired, victor sweeney, victor sweeney wired, wired, wired mortician, wired mortician interview, wired mortician support, wired victor sweeney

Id: B5ytcg5pYEA

Length: 27min 21sec (1641 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 02 2021

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[u/pony707]

yeah you could say I liked that episode