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Fake Blood

What You Need

1-1/2 cups Karo Light Corn Syrup
1/2 cup Rose's Grenadine
Bottle of red food coloring
Three drops blue food coloring
Clean, empty glass jar
Spoon

What to Do
Mix the corn syrup, grenadine, and food coloring in the jar to produce a nice, deep blood red. Stir well.

What Happens
You've made a fairly realistic prop blood for stage or screen.

Why It Works
The grenadine improves the flow of the corn syrup "blood" and lets it soak more realistically into clothing and other fabric.

Bizarre Facts

Hershey's Chocolate Syrup was commonly used as fake blood in black-and-white Hollywood movies.
Lobsters have blue blood.
The ancient Aztecs used cochineal, a red dye prepared from the dried bodies of female Cadtylopius coccus, an insect that lives on cactus plants in Central and South America. Cochineal is still used today in food coloring, medicinal products, cosmetics, inks, and artists' pigments.
The heart of a shrimp is located in its head.
Bloody horror movies worth missing: Blood Orgy of the She Devils (1972), Blood Suckers from Outer Space (1984), The Blood Spattered Bride (1974), and Bloodsucking Pharaohs from Pittsburgh (1991).
To simulate bullet shots in movies, the special effects department attaches "squibs"—small, non-metallic explosive charges—beneath the actor's clothing. Latex "blood bags," filled with a bright red, gelatin-based fluid, can be attached to the squibs, which, when detonated, burst the bags and send the fake blood flowing.
People who live in high altitudes have up to two quarts more blood than people who live at sea level.
English author Bram Stoker based his novel Dracula on Vlad Tepes, the cruel prince of Walachia (now a part of Romania). Prince Vlad was nicknamed Dracula, which means "son of the devil" or "son of a dragon" in Romanian.
The common vampire bat, which does attack people and drink their blood, is only three inches long.

Fill 'Er Up
In 1970, Warren C. Jyrich, a fifty-year-old hemophiliac undergoing open heart surgery at the Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago, required nineteen hundred pints of blood. That's roughly the blood of 190 people.

Our Friend, the Bloody Mary
The Bloody Mary, invented in 1920 by Ferdinand Petiot, a bartender at Harry's New York Bar in Paris, was originally named "Bucket of Blood" after a club in Chicago. Contrary to popular belief, the Bloody Mary was not named after Mary, Queen of Scots, although she was beheaded by her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I. The red concoction was named after Queen Mary I of England, who was known as "Bloody Mary" for the brutal persecutions she caused the Protestants in an attempt to bring them back to the Roman Catholic faith. During her five-year reign, more than three hundred people were burned at the stake.

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