I was invited to a script read-through, and my friend goes, 'Hey this is Greg, he did the penis in Boogie Nights.' And I was like, 'I've done 400 other movies, you could have said 'He did the penis AND The Green Mile and Misery an

When I interviewed Hostel director Eli Roth in Bizarre 110 he was banging on about make-up company KNB, who did all the work in Hostel, for a good 10 minutes. I didn't use his comments in the article as we were going wildly off the point, but he did recommend I visit their LA workshop, as they have dismembered limbs and dead dogs falling off their shelves. "Oh man, they'd be so fucking great for your magazine," said Eli, and gave me Greg Nicotero's email, ordering me to contact him.

He wasn't wrong; fast forward to NOW, and I'm in KNB's Los Angeles warehouse, geeking out with Mr Nicotero, one of the three co-founders (he puts the N in KNB). He's giving me a kickass guided tour, pointing out what all the random monsters, burnt humans and fantastical beasts are, stopping now and again to check in on what his co-workers are doing about the place. There are dead people on stretchers. The Loch Ness Monster's head is up on the wall. In a room at the back, someone's working on an animatronic baby Leatherface for the Texas Chainsaw Massacre prequel. People get paid to work here, folks.

One of the men who signs their checks, my illustrious host Mr Nicotero, first got himself work like this assisting his guru Tom Savini on George Romero's Day Of The Dead, in 1984, when he was a wide-eyed 21-year-old. After following that up with jobs on the likes of Evil Dead II and Aliens, in 1988 he formed KNB, with partners Robert Kurtzman and Howard Berger (they're the K and the B, you slow kids at the back), and they swiftly became the coolest gore merchants in the universe.

"In the late 80s you had make-up people like Rick Baker and Rob Bottin and films like ET, and The Thing, and The Howling," says Greg, "and suddenly make-up effects became the reason people would go to the movies, to see the monsters and the transformations. So that was the flavour of the month, and you'd go to a Fangoria convention and get mobbed. I think if we had waited another two years before we started KNB we probably would have missed the wave, because in the early 90s CGI was starting to percolate."

However, KNB were wise enough to avoid being pigeonholed as "the blood guys", and their work on Misery and Dances With Wolves (making buffalo) in 1990 gave them a much broader launchpad. Since then, they've created all manner of coolness for Hollywood behemoths such as The Green Mile, Austin Powers and Narnia. But forget all that hokum - KNB have worked on some of your favourite films ever, including practically everything Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez have done, from Reservoir Dogs to Sin City.

And here I am, gawking at some of their most famous creations in order to share my experience with you, Bizarre's loyal readers. Greg talks to me as we walk, allowing me to stop and soak things up every few seconds. Look, on that shelf, a zombie from Land Of The Dead! Look at this, one of the deformed mutants from The Hills Have Eyes! Look, there's Lucy Liu's sliced-off head from Kill Bill! Speaking of which...

You've worked on practically everything Tarantino's done, from the beginning. How did you feel when your ear scene from Reservoir Dogs got so much attention and caused so much controversy?

It's funny because if you look at the lot of the stuff we do, by nature it's controversial. You know, Joe Pesci putting the guy's head in the vice in Casino... So for me it's intriguing to look back at that stuff in our career, you'll read about JFK Jr being so incensed that he walked out of the screening of Casino because he was offended. All of these people have such a gut reaction. Like in Misery when Kathy Bates lifts the sledgehammer up and swings down and breaks his leg... We're fortunate enough to be involved in things that people walk out of the cinema talking about. If you have a scene that has so much emotional impact people will leave talking about it.

And of course what's also so powerful about the ear scene in Dogs is what you don't see.

Quentin always intrigues me, the way he does things. That scene is more intense and horrific because you don't see it. In Pulp Fiction, when Travolta accidentally shoots Marvin in the back seat of the car, in the original scripted scene he doesn't shoot him in the head, he shoots him in the chest and he actually lives. And Sam Jackson says, "What are we gonna do, he's dying!" And Travolta says "I don't know, I think we gotta shoot him, put him out of his misery." And Sam Jackson's like, "You wanna shoot him again?" And they have this dialogue and then Travolta goes "This is some fucked up shit man, I'm really sorry", covers his eyes with his hand and shoots him again. That's how it was in the screenplay. And the day we got to the set, Quentin goes, "I can't do it. It makes these guys really cruel. It's really cold-blooded." I was disappointed because I loved the dialogue, but he couldn't do it. And his instincts are always right on, every single time.

Another one of your iconic landmarks is Mark Wahlberg's 13inch penis in Boogie Nights.

The funniest thing about that was, the first penis we had sculpted, we did a film test and it was pointing at a 45 degree angle. And they said "We need to get the tip to point down, pointing out is bad." They were concerned about the rating, and if he appeared semi-aroused, that would be a problem.

Are you proud of that penis?

I am. The irony is, that will be one of the movies that people will remember us the most for. I was invited to a Simpsons script read-through, and my friend goes, "Hey this is my friend Greg, he did the penis in Boogie Nights." And I was like, "I've done 400 other movies, you could have said 'He did the penis AND The Green Mile, and Dances With Wolves, and Misery...'" So for a while there, it was like, "Oh you're the guy who did the dick in Boogie Nights."

Staying on prosthetics, you gave Mickey Rourke an amazing look in Sin City, based on the illustrations in Frank Miller's comics.

The first time Frank saw Mickey in the make-up, he literally backed away. It was the most visceral reaction I've ever seen. I'll tell you, Mickey's got a presence which is palpable, WITHOUT make-up. He's a great guy, I would literally do anything for him. But when he walked on set for the first time, in the final make-up, with the wig on, the brows on, dentures, the muscle t-shirt and leather jacket, he walked in and... Frank was afraid of him. Literally. They were reading lines together, sitting down, and I got the impression that if Mickey went "Boo!", Frank would have jumped 15 feet. Mickey made that character, he really brought it to life, but it was really dramatic make-up.

What did Alexandra Aja want you to do with the mutants' faces in the Hills Have Eyes remake?

We wanted each character to be individual and stand on his own. The script was pretty specific, with Pluto, Alex referenced Sloth from The Goonies, he wanted that sort of hydro-syphalic kind of look, they were really referencing the atomic radiation mutation in the remake. With Google, the idea was that he was featureless, he doesn't have a nose, the eyes are kind of slits. And Lizard was much more about the dental work, he had a cleft palette, and we added a whole bunch of prosthetics to simulate the sunburn, so he was really leathery. And then Cyst, who was played by me, was the pus-drippy, disgusting guy-

I didn't recognise you in it.

It was me. It was one of those things where Alex said "Hey, you wanna be one of the mutants?" And I said, "Yeah, that sounds like fun!" Then cut to me in Morocco, sand blowing in my eyes, 120 degrees, and me saying "What the fuck did I do this for." Then there was Big Brain, the guy in the wheelchair with a head so big he can't even support it, which later on I realised was inspired by Chris Cunningham's short film Rubber Johnny. And also Ruby, the girl, they used digital effects to slightly spread her eyes apart, I think that was partially influenced by Chris' PlayStation commercial.

Is there anything you'd like to do that you haven't done?

Well we really haven't had the time to split off and develop other projects, I'd love to direct, as would Howard... There's a couple of scripts that I've developed, but I don't have time. But I've done second unit directing quite a bit - in Land Of The Dead I was given entire scenes to do. And to sit in the movie and see people react to stuff I'd shot, stuff I'd made up the night before we shot it, like, "Hey, bring his head over here, let's have a zombie stick his hand in and pull the inside of his throat out and his tongue comes out..." To sit in the theatre and have people go, "That was the grossest thing I've ever seen", it's like, "Woo-hoo!"