Reporter: Peter Overton
Producer: Hugh Nailon and Garry McNab
Well we can truly say, we've seen it all. And when you get a good look at the Lizard Man, the Stalking Cat and the Horned Man in action, you'll understand why.
They call it extreme body modification. But that doesn't begin to cover it. It's more a total transformation.
These guys aren't satisfied with a few tattoos, spiky hair and an ear-ring. They sport real cat-like whiskers, real horns, even, a real forked tongue.
They claim it's living art- the ultimate in self-expression. Or maybe, it's the ultimate 21st century freak show.
Read Peter Overton's blog. Click here to read it and post your own thoughts
Full transcript
PETER OVERTON: Venice Beach in Los Angeles is world-famous for its people-watching. A promenade full of colourful and shady characters who will try anything to grab your attention. But today, there's only one show in town. A fully-fledged freak known as '
STALKING CAT'.
ONLOOKER: Look at the tiger...
PETER OVERTON: One of the most heavily modified people in the world.
ONLOOKER: You're decked out!
PETER OVERTON: It's not a mask or make up. No costume, no Hollywood special effects.
PETER OVERTON: Do you think he's a masterpiece?
ONLOOKER: A masterpiece, I mean all of it. I read about it, I've seen all the... Yeah, very cool. Keep it up man, I think it looks great.
PETER OVERTON: This is for real. Head-to-toe tattoos and a fully reconstructed face render this feline transformation permanent. Even those whiskers are surgically attached.
STALKING CAT: Ah, I have tiger-type teeth, my septum was relocated, my lip was cleft, I've had silicone injected in my upper cheek or upper lip and cheek, and down in my chin to give a more cat-like profile.
PETER OVERTON: Are you comfortable? It looks awkward.
STALKING CAT: No, not at all.
PETER OVERTON: No? It feels right?
CAT: Yeah.
PETER OVERTON: This is about as far as most people would dare to go to modify the body they were born with - a permanent stamp of individuality. OK. I admit it, I'm not even prepared to get the real thing done. But for some, a simple tattoo or piercing is never going to be enough. Nowhere near it. Brace yourself for the human form as you've never seen it. This is the new frontier. Full body tattoos, piercings through every body part imaginable, deliberate scarring and three-dimensional implants under the skin.
STEVE HAWORTH: Body modification is the ability to take your inner soul and inner self and express to the world around you through the ability of manipulating your canvas.
PETER OVERTON: If body modification is an art form, then
STEVE HAWORTH is a modern master. In a makeshift surgery at his home in Arizona he transforms thousands of individuals helping them find their inner freak. Remarkably, he has no formal medical qualifications, and is entirely self-taught.
STEVE HAWORTH: My tools that I use I invented, I made, I designed, because there are no tools in the medical industry to do the kind of work that I do.
PETER OVERTON: What is the difference between plastic surgery and the body modifications you do?
STEVE HAWORTH: Plastic surgery is modifying the body towards what society considers normal. My art form is extreme individualism. Making you look more like everyone else is absolutely against everything that I do.
PETER OVERTON: Our strange journey is only just beginning. If you thought the Cat was was feral, well you ain't seen nothing yet. On the streets of Austin, Texas motorists share the road with a green man riding a scooter.
LIZARD MAN: I am a freak. I am definitely a freak.
PETER OVERTON: This is the
LIZARD MAN.
LIZARD MAN: If people stare at something they stare at something because it's interesting. You know people stare at the Grand Canyon, they stare at Mount Rushmore, they stare at the Eiffel Tower, they stare at beautiful architecture, they stare at masterpiece paintings and they stare at me. I'm in pretty good company.
PETER OVERTON: And there's plenty to stare at. A full body transformation of man into reptile. The stunning result of a lifelong obsession. And he's not finished yet.
LIZARD MAN: Well, that is about 700 hours worth of tattooing it goes all over my body - the front and the back. I've also had teflon implants placed on my forehead to create the horned ridges over my eyes I've also had my teeth filed down to points and, of course, my tongue has been bifurcated.
PETER OVERTON: How much has all of this cost you?
LIZARD MAN: I don't really have a good money total on cost, but the insurance estimate of retail value is right around $250,000.
PETER OVERTON: As they say - you look a quarter of a million bucks.
LIZARD MAN: Thanks.
PETER OVERTON: Long before his blood turned cold
LIZARD MAN was simply Erik Sprague, growing up in what he calls a typical American sitcom family. And despite appearances, he leads a pretty normal life for a reptile - happily married to wife
MEGAN. What do you think of him when you look at him?
MEGAN: I look at him and see the man I love, I see my husband. Every now and again the light will catch him just right and it's like Michelangelo or something.
PETER OVERTON: So it's a love story?
MEGAN: It is, it really is. It's a traditional girl-meets-lizard love story.
PETER OVERTON:
LIZARD MAN's transformation has now become his livelihood - the basis of a unique sideshow.
LIZARD MAN: Are you ready for a show? Everybody's mum, when they're a kid, pretty much told them, "Don't run with scissors!" at one time or another, because they were worried that something horrible was going to happen. They were worried they'd come home and they'd find the kid looking kind of like this. This actually isn't the worst-case scenario. The worst-case scenario if you're running around with scissors is that they will actually fly directly back into your skull completely like this.
PETER OVERTON:
LIZARD MAN travels the world performing these tricks for a paying audience. Somehow it has made him a wealthy reptile. But just a sample was enough for me.
LIZARD MAN: For my next trick I'll attempt to make Peter disappear, using this giant corkscrew.
PETER OVERTON: That's enough. That's enough. Next stop -a bowling alley in suburban Phoenix. There's not a tattoo or piercing in sight, the only body modifications here are plenty of extra kilos around the waists of the locals.
ONLOOKER: Nice job!
PETER OVERTON: But tonight they're sharing their lanes with a modified freak -
LOUIE SANCHEZ - infamous for having the biggest horn implants on the planet. The locals have never seen anything like it.
ONLOOKER: Oh, my God!
ONLOOKER: How long have you had this?
LOUIE SANCHEZ: Oh, going on 10 years. This is the best one.
ONLOOKER: Ooh, you're funny. This is wild, I've never seen... You're impressive, I've got to say.
PETER OVERTON: What would you do if one of your kids came home like this?
ONLOOKER: I'd kill him, I'd absolutely kill him.
LOUIE SANCHEZ: This is the best one:
ONLOOKER: Oh my god.
PETER OVERTON: Is it hard to meet girls?
LOUIE SANCHEZ: No, I actually have a girlfriend.
PETER OVERTON: Is she heavily modified as well?
LOUIE SANCHEZ: No not really, I don't go out looking for extreme tattooed girls I tend to date the girls that kind of look girl next door.
PETER OVERTON: You don't look like the boy next door but you like the girl next door?
LOUIE SANCHEZ: Exactly.
PETER OVERTON: In fact Louie was once the boy next door himself, growing up on a farm in Wisconsin. But one day he dyed his hair to try something different and he never looked back. Are you proud of this man's horns?
STEVE HAWORTH: Oh, hell yeah.
PETER OVERTON: Now he's another of
STEVE HAWORTH's creations, a work in progress. When you look in the mirror what do you see coming back at you?
LOUIE SANCHEZ: Um, horn-wise they're not big enough. They still seem like they're half inch - the small size so I want to get them bigger.
STEVE HAWORTH: The way polite society reacts to my art form pleases me immensely.
PETER OVERTON: You like it when people go, "Whoa!"
STEVE HAWORTH: You know, when you shake someone up a little bit, it's a memory that goes with them for the rest of their life, and, you know, if I'm partly responsible for burning something into that individual's brain for the rest of their life then I've got something accomplished.
PETER OVERTON: But
STEVE HAWORTH's work has disturbed some in the medical profession who believe what he does is not just modification it's mutilation.
STEVE HAWORTH: Nobody's ever died from body modification, nobody's ever been seriously hurt from body modification
PETER OVERTON: But you're cutting into people's skin, isn't there a chance you could damage a nerve?
STEVE HAWORTH: There is a possibility that a small amount of nerve damage could take place.
PETER OVERTON: For a doctor to do what you do would be illegal?
STEVE HAWORTH: Yes, he would lose his license.
PETER OVERTON: The difference is Steve is not allowed to administer any sort of anaesthetic. If you want his services be prepared to bite the bullet.
COOKIE: Oh, just get it in.
PETER OVERTON: And tonight, Steve's wife
COOKIE is biting hard.
STEVE HAWORTH: It's a big implant that I'm going to force in through a small hole.
PETER OVERTON: She's getting a silicone star implanted under the skin in her forearm. Remember, there's no anaesthetic. It's a short and bloody affair but after a few minutes, she's modified. All done?
COOKIE: Yep.
PETER OVERTON: Well, there you go.
STEVE HAWORTH: That's the star.
COOKIE: After a few minutes endorphins kick in - and you feel like... cloud nine.
PETER OVERTON: When will you come off cloud nine?
COOKIE: Tomorrow morning when I feel like someone beat me up with a baseball bat.
PETER OVERTON: Extreme pain, huge expense and what looks like permanent disfigurement, it all leads me to the most obvious question of all - why on earth do people do this?
LIZARD MAN: People want to know why, they want a quick, sound-byte answer. They want to know... the fact of life is there are no easy answers.
PETER OVERTON: It's the fairest question of all, and it's the question everyone wants to know the answer to.
LIZARD MAN: Why didn't you do it? The simple fact of the matter is the way I want to look is a lot different from the way a lot of other people want to look that just happens to be me.
PETER OVERTON: But
STALKING CAT says more mystical forces drive him to look and act like a furry animal. Oh, you even purr too?
STALKING CAT: Yeah, makes the kitties feel a lot better.
PETER OVERTON: As a native American, he started his body modification as a spiritual quest to get closer to his Indian totem - his animal symbol, the Tiger. They love you, don't they. You're at home and they're at home.
STALKING CAT: It's a part of a journey to get close to the spiritual and emotional aspect of the cat which are my totems. They're my helpers, they're there when I need them and it really has helped in getting closer to who I am.
PETER OVERTON: OK, I just have to take the Cat at his word. Louie's reasons are a little less complex. He loves the way he looks, nothing more, nothing less, and that's as philosophical as it gets. Is it true your grandmother carries a photo of you in her wallet?
LOUIE SANCHEZ: She does. She, my grandma, is a bar fly and she has actually laminated the first picture I had with horns and she takes it to the bar and when she gets all trashed she just brings it out. She's like, "This is my grandson."
PETER OVERTON: And how do the other old ducks at the bar react to "This is my grandson, I'm so proud of him"?
LOUIE SANCHEZ: I'm pretty sure they freak out.
PETER OVERTON: What I've learnt from my modified friends is that no matter how outlandish it looks, body modification is only skin deep. Beneath the exotic exteriors, they're really just a mixture of well-adjusted weirdos.
LIZARD MAN: I am the cliched American dream. I am a self-made, self-employed successful businessman. I'm happily married, I own my own home and doing pretty well in life. You know, a lot of people could do far worse than to have my life.
STALKING CAT: MEOW
