The special effects bar seems to climb with every other film these days.
Think Gollum from the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy seemed spectacularly real? What about Davy Jones, the man with the writhing snakes for a chin in the third “Pirates of the Caribbean” feature?
You can thank computer-generated effects for modern movie magic, but once upon a time (before “Terminator 2″) special effects gurus created some wonderful things with makeup, epoxy and a whole lot of imagination.
Here are five great examples of what can be done with old school movie effects:
- “An American Werewolf in London” (1981) – Bad moon rising, all right. Poor, cursed David turns into a werewolf in the amazing transformation sequence courtesy of special effects maestro Rick Baker.
- “Alien” (1979) - No movie monster looks creepier than this otherworldly killer, simply a man in a suit. But oh, what a suit? Honorable mention goes to the chest bursting sequence, which offered the jolt of the decade during its theatrical release.
- “Scanners” (1981) -Hard to pick just one moment from this alternately cheap and chilling shocker. The early head explosion is pretty spectactular, but so, too is the “scanner-off” between the main characters.
- “Frankenstein” (1931) /”Creature from the Black Lagoon” (1954) – Can’t decide between these classic movie monsters. Both set makeup standards for their era, and both are so darn good I wouldn’t want to change a thing about them.
- ALL SKATE – Which old school makeup effect knocked your socks off years ago?
(Photo: David Naughton finds himself in quite the predicament in “An American Werewolf in London,” one of the best throwback special effects sequences of all time.)
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing. Specifically when one of the character’s head rips slowly from the body, falls on the floor, spouts giant spider legs and walks across the room.
Strangely the scene has the funniest line in the entire film also.
I thought the sfx in “The Howling” were better than “An American Werewolf.”
I need to watch The Howling again, Mike … it’s been a while.
And yes, the Thing really works the FX magic
“Alien” is just about the most impressed I have ever been with monster sfx. I shudder to think what would happen if that film had been made today. The alien would be an ill-conceived mess of video game level CGI and the crew would all be in their 20’s.
David Cronenberg’s The Fly.
Interesting tid-bit: Rick Baker was originally slated to do the makeup effects for Joe Dante’s The Howling but then John Landis got the money for American Werewolf, so he had to bow out. Rick had promised Landis years before while working on Schlock that he would do the makeup for American Werewolf if the money ever came through (by the way, Landis wrote American Werewolf while working as a PA on Kelly’s Heroes.) But…Rick arranged for his then-assistant, Rob Bottin, to take over the effects for The Howling (Bottin would later go on to do the amazing effects for The Thing.) There’s a photo floating around out there of Rick sculpting a test head for The Howling. Cool stuff.