Horror Makeup Guys (and Their Mortgages)
Visual effects (including special makeup) can be “imaginative, even astonishing, but [they] are ultimately there to sell a world, a character or a moment,” writes Press Play‘s Aaron Aradillas for a two-parter about horror and makeup. “One of makeup’s greatest triumphs is 1981′s An American Werewolf in London, which became the first film to win an Oscar for makeup in regular competition. Overseen by Rick Baker, who supervised all of the film’s makeup effects, it shows a man changing into a werewolf in real time…right in front of your eyes.”
And the first time I saw this I felt mildly deflated. For me it was a time-out, a prosthetic musical number, a demo reel showing everyone how necessary it would be to hire Baker when and if they made a horror film. For me werewolves were always half-wolves and half-men, so why did we have to do the big trans-species transformation? I didn’t care if David Naughton could grow a real wolf snout and wolf ears, and in fact would have much preferred him becoming a two-legged, Lon Chaney-style werewolf running around in a snarly, feral mode and half-resembling himself. It’s all a metaphor anyway so who needs prosthetics that turn him into a generic four-legged hairball with fangs?
Landis and Baker and all those dug-in, highly-paid special-effects industry guys had to do better. They had to do more. They had to show off, and most horror fans, being the low-lifes that they are, loved this. Gradually horror films, especially with the advent of the digital era, became defined by narrative and thematic coherence getting nudged aside by the effects themselves. It was during the ’80s that effects became the films.
The best parts of American Werewolf were (a) the backpacking section with Naughton and Griffin Dunne, (b) “dead”, torn-apart and progressively rotting Dunne coming back to chat with Naughton, and (c) Jenny Agutter‘s scenes.
There are more than enough half man werewolf movies to go around at this point, what was wrong with trying something new. I am pretty certain everyone who likes the Baker version isn’t a lowlife. The just may be bigger fans of seeing cool monsters rather than obvious metaphors, they are watching a horror movie afterall not an Almodovar film. Some people have room enough in their imagination to be able to watch both. The Del Toro werewolf was pretty awesome though in its half man form and Teen Wolf remains near the apex of 80s radness. Always hated the Underwold versions, thought they got too massive.
At the time, the transformation was pretty impressive, but the film is so much more than that. The dream within the dreams really freaked me out.
I’ve always been more of a HOWLING guy, but I like them both. The early 80s were a golden age of transformative makeup.
The transformation still holds up 30 yrs later too which is damned impressive, ditto on the dreams being amazing. At this point, American Werewolf in London is my favorite horror movie to watch during Halloween.
I may possibly be a low-life horror fan but for me, AMERICAN WEREWOLF is a genre classic and the transformation scene still works.
The only flat note is the ending. AMERICAN WEREWOLF brilliantly reinvents the werewolf movie but ends with the oldest cliche in that particular field.
………and nobody s taking the “horror movie fans are lowlifes” bait, Jeff.
Need to try harder than THAT to stimulate some controversy.
…except MrTribeca…..
Man, you’ll get combative about anything, won’t you? The transformation scene wasn’t about showing-off, it was about showing the considerable pain you’d go through if your physiognomy transformed that radically. Even changing just into a half-wolf half-man creature would probably be deeply unpleasant. And nice slamming horror fans as “lowlifes” only days after you derided kung-fu fans. You need to get more fun into your life.
Whoops, I took the low-life bait… oh well, here we go.
@Parris – dammit, I fell for that one.
Wonder if Jeff prefers THE HOWLING? Plenty of snarly, two-legged werewolves for him in that one.
Wonder if Jeff prefers THE HOWLING?
Plenty of snarly, two-legged werewolves in that one for him.
oh what the hell! With *The Un-nameable* banished forever, he needs the hits.
Come on Jeff, are you seriously saying you never looked forward to some Friday Night late night horror movies before you were old enough to cultivate a quiff? Even if only for the richness ofall that metaphor you acknowldge?
Has a genre ever been used to greater effect to spread subversive thinking?
Hell, even a movie adaptation of a broadway musical wouldnt allow as much raging queenery as can be found in Bride of Frankenstein.
What about the miasma of sexual and gender opppresion in Robert Wise’s The Haunting? You can taste it.
(Of course, if you speak only of the past 20 years, then you get a pass – its all shit for sure!)
Every movie of that era that had Jenny Agutter was better for it, especially if she took her shirt off.
But Jeff was odd man out as far as American Werewolf’s transformation scenes were concerned. I remember audiences (of geeky young men, natch) in awe. The musical number comparison is apt, but not as a putdown at all.
By the way, any horror fan interested in the genre’s long use as a metaphorical playground needs, NEEDS to read David Skal’s The Monster Show. Best book on the subject by far.
I GENUINELY FELT DISENGAGED by having to sit there for X minutes and watch Baker show everyone how inventive and authentic his prosthetic work was. I felt that transforming Naughton into a more-or-less generic wolf was needless and dull. The movie certainly stopped while this was happening. (Although Dunne’s rotting -corpse makeup, as noted, was great.) Is there any way to say this without being accused of baiting? Low-lifes will never get that showing less (i.e., being less explicit and even as bit primitive in terms of prosthetics and CGI) always stirs something more withint the viewer than being super-explicit. The coolest monsters of late were the aliens in Attack the Block, which were…what?…guys in K-Mart black felt costumes with green neon eyes? For me the words “makeup by Rick Baker” always produces a groan and a sigh. Because the movie will be at least partly about Baker’s “musical numbers” in which he gets to strut around and prove once again to the industry why he’s “Rick Baker” and gets the top dollar, etc. I obviously realize that he’s good, but I don’t give a shit about his skills when I’m watching a film. All I want to do is get lost in the all of it. The prosthetic effects can blow me. If anything I’d like to avoid any film henceforth that Baker works on because I know it’ll feel like an ’80s movie on some level. Unemploy Rick Baker and his big white beard!
@MrTribeca – I dunno about our host but I enjoyed the sleaziness of The Howling over the Landis movie.
I actually agree with him about the famed transformation scene.It was fake lookng even then and took me right out of the movie. Landis’s real triumph was the affable casting, the humour and the unapologetic geekiness of the plot.
But the real guilty pleasure of that era for me was Albert Finney in The Wolfen. Noble native American wolf spirits roaming the gutters of NYC and eating both the homeless and wealthy, cavorting late night drunks alike…..all viewed in vomit-cam.
(Jeff stopped reading this one at line 2)
You wriggling on the hook a bit there, Jeff?
I dont know any discerning movie lover AND horror movie fan who would disagree with your views on intrusive F/X work.
With you all the way on THAT one, regardless of genre.
But you specifically targeted horror movie fans as lowlifes seemingly because they like horror movies…….not as lovers of big F/X
Pawn to King 4…
I prefer The Howling, too, but any self-proclaimed critic who can’t appreciate the deep influence and creative ingenuity of the transformation scene in AAWiL has extremely suspect taste in my view; it really calls everything into question.
“Deep influence?”, ” Extremely suspect taste?”
Just because *discerning* moviegoers who were prepared to thiink for themselvse, ignore all the movie publicist braggadocio and see through blatantly obvious use of latex, little air bladders, pneumatics etc and dismiss it as a distracting F/X showcase scene in an otherwise entertaining confection of a movie, I wouldnt let it shake the foundations of my world Raising_Kaned……..really I wouldn’t.
It needn’t “call everything into question” for you.
I think people are using the term “baiting” Jeff because you are calling out the character and taste of those who enjoy an iconic and to be totally honest, hip culturally significant film scene that isn’t really for low lifes. I doubt the dregs of society have even seen the bloody movie. You may not like the scene, which is perfectly fair, but I’d hardly call enjoying it worthy of an assault against someone’s character or taste.
DeafEars makes the most significant argument in that I think the scene also captures the physical agony of transforming into this beast instead of using a dissolve transition to make a man have a really big beard with fangs and nails. You can feel how excruciating the transformation must be, decimating the 500 other films and tv shows for repeating the same transformation shot for shot is perfectly acceptable though.
AmWolf was the first Horror movie to my mind that blended gross-out FX with black humor. Everyone working within the genre’s ripped it off since then. Landis wanted Baker to do an on-camera transformation that would show how painful it was for Naughton’s character to transform with the stretching of bones and limbs, not the usual/usual with dissolves. Again, a first.
By the way, Jeff, Rick Baker isn’t just “good”, he’s a genius in his field, 7 Oscars on his mantle and trained by Dick Smith who obviously recognized Baker as a young prodigy. Dunne was awesome and Jenny Agutter looked great naked and how about those wonderful Brit character actors in the The Slaughtered Lamb scene?
The dream within a dream was lifted from Bunuel as Landis noted in interviews. How more film buffy/Film Catholic do you get than that? The movie still holds up…
A more interesting sidebar would be what the hell happened to Rob Bottin, Baker’s buddy, who did The Howling and The Thing effects? He disappeared off the planet.
I’ve no idea if it’s true but a RUE MORGUE interview with Bottin – or a follow-up comments thread referencing it – mentioned that he now reportedly works in Californian real estate. A picture of Rob from 2007 (with ex-RM editor Jovanka Vuckovic, who normally photographs much better than this) is below:
http://www.outpost31.com/todd/images/board/jovankabottin.jpg
Best old age makeup is Winona Ryder in Edward Scissorhands.
http://thethoughtexperiment.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/3viadiaryofasecretwriter.png
The coolest monsters of late were the aliens in Attack the Block, which were…what?…guys in K-Mart black felt costumes with green neon eyes?
They were CG. Though, some were motion capture.
Where the hell does all the fur go when he transforms back into human form?
The best part of the transformation scene in American Werewolf were the reactions and facial expressions of McNaughton’s character. I’ve always said that if characters reacted to the things they were seeing in these horror movies the way someone would in real life, it would be quite funny. It’s one of the reasons I have such a soft spot for Return of the Living Dead.
An awful lot of grey hair/white beard jokes from Jeff today.
And the Attack The Block aliens had no eyes.
“AMERICAN WEREWOLF brilliantly reinvents the werewolf movie but ends with the oldest cliche in that particular field.”
The cliche is a bit subverted because you don’t see him change back, leaving open the possible interpretation that the entire werewolf thing has been in his mind. Look especially at the way the police officer at the end responds to him and tell me that he’s not responding to a naked snarling American human being.
Uh, no Bobby L…he was a wolf in the porno theater in front of witnesses…remember the Doctor mentioned about a wild animal let loose? And how did a naked man bite the head off of a cop? Interesting theory…but as to why not show the change back? I don’t know…budgetary reason?
Yeah, this is bullshit, Jeff. Baker didn’t shoot the film, or edit it. So there’s THAT. If you don’t want to get accused of baiting, don’t say things like “prosthetic effects can blow me.” You don’t like genre movies anyway, so I don’t know why you bother.
Sean Penn’s prosthetic nose in Milk CAN SUCK MY COCK
Funny, I recall my reaction to the scene being “holy shit that seems to really hurt”, not “hey this guy has mad prosthetic skills”.
I agree with others who said that the Nazi demons were scarier than the Werewolf scene.
The transformation scene is a great work of body horror ( I’ll admit I had to turn away the first time I saw it). It catches you off guard because you’re still not sure about the tone of the film. The problem is that the movie dooeesn’t go anywhere after thaot sequence. And how the hell does the wolf get out of the apartment without anyone noticing?
Above was written on iphone sorry for sticky typos.
No, Rashad. The aliens in “Attack The Block” were not mostly CG. They were on-set creature suits. The primary one was performed by Terry Notary, and in some cases, he was doubled digitally, but it was him performing the creature each time.
And this post by Jeff is a classic “If you think differently than me, you are a LOWLIFE” piece by him.
You’re wrong about the scene, Jeff. It is one of the most excruciating physical moments in a horror film. You are meant to feel every bit of the pain of what happens to him. That’s why it’s better and more deeply felt than the old Lon Chaney dissolve between appliances trick. It isn’t designed to show off Rick’s work. Rick’s work is designed to make us feel something that no one had done in the genre before.
Thanks Drew
Yeah, the Nazi mutants slaughtering an entire family while “The Muppet Show” innocently played in the background haunted my dreams for YEARS. The werewolf stuff, not so much. Although it was a bonafide mind-blower when I realized that David Naughton was the “I’m a Pepper, you’re a Pepper” guy.
Always liked the dream sequence in the hospital.
I thought the end had a real missed opportunity. Been years since I saw it, but, as I recall, the bitten guy is haunted by the victims of the werewolf, which is why his rotting buddy keeps following him around and trying to get him to commit suicide. I thought it would been nifty after all the carnage at the end, with apparently dozens of people killed, for the pregnant Jenny
Agutter to return to her apartment and see all of them waiting for her, with Naughton standing in the front, “Um, we need to talk…”
Put me in the Howling camp, which I think beat American Werewolf into theaters by a couple months.
CGI SUCKS CGI SUCKS CGI S–
Oh, wait. JEFFREY WELLS HAS SPOKEN.
PRACTICAL FX SUCKS PRACTICAL FX SUCKS.
People who hate Rick Baker hate MOVIES.
I remember reading an interview with Baker some years back where he said he would preferred a less-is-more take on the transformation scene and begged Landis not to shoot the scene in full light, wanting more shadows in order to make the make up look more realistic – and Jeff: let’s not forget for every “show off ” fx movie Baker has been involved in (Werewolf, Videodrome etc) there are plenty of other more subtle credits on his cv (Gorillas In The Mist, Ed Wood etc)
This is a very classical horror movie. This is not bad at all. Though it needs a little suspense. – Garrett Hoelscher
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