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The Spiked Ceiling

This, in the spirit of a quick idea to share...

This is a quick overview of a way to do the dropping ceiling effect with spikes
appearing at the last moment...

This has not been built yet, so we don't know the details. If you get it to work, let us know!

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Darryl Plunkie shared his method of making spikes for an Iron Maiden scene:
I noticed the spikey ceiling link, that you hadn't tried yet and thought I'd mention about the safe spikes I've made. These have been used to make an Iron Maiden that somebody actually gets closed into! I have also used them for many costume bits, you know, spiked collars, spikes on a shield for a warrior type character.
In the local Home Depot there are many weather-stripping products, to seal out the cold Canadian winters. One of these products is a foam "rope" available in different sizes to fill in large areas around windows, doors, etc. It's just a long length of round, grey foam that comes in a few sizes, 1/4" to 5/8" or so. Cut a piece of this about an inch long, then trim one end into a point. Don't try to round the end, make a pyramid type cut with an Xacto knife. (I started making them round, then realized that large nails have a pyramid type tip... what can be easier than that?). There, you now have a cool little spike. It's easy enough to sit down during a football game and have each of your buddies do some. We polished off about 200 between four of us.
Attaching them is easy. Use a low-temp hot melt glue gun and attach them anywhere (well, I don't recommend directly to skin...) Because they are already the grey color, they look fine in lower light or from a distance.
We had almost 100 on the inside of a stand up coffin, about 2 inches long. On two of them we had those electronic blinking eyes, and we carefully covered the eyes of someone inside the coffin to look as if they were empty sockets, but he could still through it. We opened the coffin, everyone seen the eyes and the blind man, and then he came out to attack me. I ushered the crowd into the next room, protecting them from the blind man... Lot's of fun, scared the H out of the kids in the crowd. (It was in my house, a halloween party. I invited the parents too, just to scare them a little...)
One caveat, they tend to deform a little if pressed against something too long, or with too much force, but hey, everything stays safe, and they are cheap and easy to make. That's what it's all about, right?

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