'Seven' turns 25: How Sloth, the gnarliest victim, gave Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman a real fright

No crime scene in "Seven" was more gruesome than the one that awaited Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman as they burst through a wood door to find "Sloth."

The two Los Angeles detectives followed John C. McGinley's macho SWAT team leader California to find the restrained, skeletal victim of a serial killer using the seven deadly sins as a gruesome motif. California edged just inches away from the visage, allowing McGinley a close-up view of the victim.

"It was so visually arresting that it just looked fake," McGinley recalls. "But it certainly wasn't."

Director David Fincher's most physically horrifying "Seven" casualty, and most memorable jump, was played by a real human. Actor Michael Reid Mackay, 5-foot-5, often hired for his slight appearance, weighed about 96 pounds during the shoot. (These days, he says, he's "a whopping" 108 pounds.)

Prosthetic body makeup made the tortured victim appear all the more starved and the scene forever terrifying – 25 years after the film's release on Sept. 22, 1995.

"People still think they used a dummy in that scene," says MacKay, now 67. "I get that a lot. But that was me."

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His audition was simple for the role of Theodore “Victor” Allen, a pedophile and drug dealer kept alive and tortured for a year by serial killer John Doe (Kevin Spacey).

The actor was told he was basically a corpse, so he had to remain entirely still until his big moment. "So I turned slowly and stared into the camera. And they said, 'Oh, my God, that’s creepy.' It was so fast. I heard very soon afterward I had it."

There were 11 days for experimenting and applying the extensive makeup required: skeletal teeth, skin airbrushed a deathly white with veins highlighted, fake bedsores applied everywhere, hair plastered to his head.

Transported to the appropriately dank Los Angeles location set in full makeup, MacKay recalls Freeman spotting him and saying, "You don't look so good."

"That cracked me up," says MacKay. "And David Fincher told me, 'You look horrific, it's great.' " (Pitt was relaxed, yelling from a side room as MacKay passed, "How you doing? I'm Brad.")

The actor laid on the cot in the dreary set and thoroughly corpsed out without breathing. When McGinley's taunting California leaned over him, telling the criminal, "You got what you deserved," MacKay sprang to life in a death-rattle fit.

McGinley remembers acting shocked and jumping away, as California "basically ejects himself" to escape the near-dead victim, a scene which Fincher shot repeatedly. MacKay insists that an unsuspecting McGinley's real shock at his first move was captured in the first take: "I did scare the (stuff) out of him."

A triumphant MacKay was happy to have the makeup removed. "I was a mess. It felt so good to go home and get a shower."

McGinley calls the final scene "plain horrifying." MacKay saw "Seven" with a friend and "both of us jumped up when I moved onscreen, as did everyone else in the theater. But I even scared myself."

MacKay moved on to play the odd, monocle-wearing "Monopoly Guy" who gets thrown about by Jim Carrey in "Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls," and the small version of Bane in 1997's "Batman & Robin" – before the poison serum makes the villain super-sized, thus played by pro-wrestler Robert "Jeep" Swenson.

Director Leigh Whannell was so pleased with MacKay's villainous audition for 2015's "Insidious: Chapter 3" that he complimented the work by saying, "You reminded me of that guy in 'Seven,' " MacKay recalls. "And then Leigh looked down at my resume, and he said, 'Oh, you are that guy in 'Seven.' "

MacKay still receives healthy residual payments for his "Seven" role and considers it a career highpoint. "I’m pretty proud of it. I think I was pretty cool," he says. There are also the rare "Seven" star sightings.

"Four years ago, I was in Ralphs (supermarket), walking down the aisle. And this guy said, 'Sir, I loved in you in 'Seven,' " MacKay recalls. "And I was like, 'How did you know it was me? I was a corpse for God's sake.' "

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Seven' 25th anniversary: How Sloth gave Brad Pitt a real fright