'It was one of these situations where what works well for a novel (...) isn't necessarily going to translate well to film. There had been a previous script which had thrown away the idea of werewolves and instead was about people's spirits going out into the woods and inhabiting real wolves. This meant that you were going to see real wolves, which gets you into The Wilderness Family territory. That's not particularly scary to me'.
(Anyone who has watched the absolute bloody chore that is 1981's Wolfen knows that Joe Dante was correct in rejecting this method.)
Another issue was that by this time the werewolf genre was more or less moribund, with even fairly recent films such as 1973's The Boy Who Cried Werewolf still using similar makeups and transformation effects established on The Wolf Man decades earlier. Dante said;
'The last couple of werewolf pictures had not been notable successes; Freddie Francis' Legend of the Werewolf did not even get distributed here, and after a couple of pictures like The Beast Must Die, it seemed like the whole genre was running out of steam. So if we were going to go ahead and do one of these movies, it seemed like it was important to try to do it differently.'
If The Howling was to make its mark on audiences, then it would be via the special effects, which were handled by Rob Bottin. Bottin earned the job thanks to his work on Dante's earlier Piranha. On that film, Bottin met producer Mike Finnell, who when producing Rock N Roll High School, called on Bottin to realize a giant mouse costume.
However, at this point, it was Rick Baker - Bottin's mentor - who was supposed to handle Howling's makeup effects, but Baker had already promised to John Landis that he would do makeup effects on American Werewolf in London. Even though that film had not yet been greenlit, Baker still wished to be free enough to work on it.
Finell, who had seeked out Baker, but was already familiar with Bottin - who at that time was still Rick Baker's protege - decided on a compromise. Baker would be hired as long as Bottin was brought along with him. Should Baker be called off the project, then Bottin, who had already proven himself capable twice before, would handle it alone.
Just a day before Baker and Bottin were to sign their contract to work on Howling, American Werewolf in London was greenlit. John Landis did not react kindly when hearing that Baker was working on Howling, leading to a vicious phone call in true Landis fashion. Baker, who had sculpted some initial designs for the werewolf, had to leave the project.
Baker recounted; 'As I started sculpting I could see it was taking on the look I wanted for American Werewolf. I told Finnell and Dante that it wouldn't be fair to John Landis to use that design so I couldn't design for them, but would remain available to solve problems and answer questions.'
Rick Baker working on a sculpt early in The Howling's production.
This design was never used in Howling at all, but doesn't it look a little similar to American Werewolf's lycanthrope?
Baker's abandoning of the project meant that the buck was passed to Bottin, who would still have some guidance from Baker but otherwise was now handling the project himself.
Bottin remembered how daunting the assignment was, partly for the massive workload; 'I just spent days wondering, 'How am I going to pull this off?' (...) The list of effects they wanted was amazing. They wanted the most incredible transformations ever filmed. And they kept asking me 'Are you sure you can really do all this stuff?'
Bottin assembled a large crew that at points numbered 25 people, which was a feat given how low Howling's budget was compared to larger productions. Most notable among Bottin's team was Greg Cannom, who applied the bulk of the film's prosthetic makeups.
Some of Cannom's more subtle makeups included brow and forehead applications on Christopher Stone, Don McLeod, and Elisabeth Brooks, for the earliest stages of their transformations. Fake fangs, applied fur and nail extensions completed the look.
'When it came to the wolf scenes, or anything having to do with special effects, Joe had told the scriptwriter, 'Look, we don't know what this guy's going to come up with'. Joe figured, why writer something into the script that we may not be able to do for the budget. So when the script comes to a transformation scene, it only reads '...and then he changed into a wolf.' Nothing about pointy ears, the spine snapping, or the chest bursting. That was left pretty much to me, and it was great to be trusted to that extent.'
However, the prospect to realize a transformation sequence that had never been seen on film before proved to be daunting for Bottin; 'We were stumped for a long time. I talked to Randy Cook, Jon Berg and Phil Tippett about the possibility of using replacement animation, but that didn't go anywhere. At that point, Rick and I were just going to do the transformations in cuts.'
Bottin found inspiration from Dick Smith's work on Altered States the year before, which had utilized air bladders for the transformations. Bottin came up a prosthetic appliance fitted with air bladders under the latex 'skin', conveying the idea that the flesh was reshaping itself.
Robert Picardo, starring as the lycanthrope Eddie Quist, had air bladder prosthetics applied on his chest, arms, neck and face; the 'air bladders' underneath the facial prosthetic were condoms, while the air bladders under the throat and chest appliances were hot water bottles. The throat appliance proved to be a safety hazard, as Picardo was not be able to breathe when they inflated.
Fur was also applied on Picardo's arms by Greg Cannom, who applied all of Picardo's makeups; Picardo's facial prosthetic - again with air bladders underneath - was sculpted to give him a slightly more 'brutish' appearance.
'One day, being very glum, when it was the big makeup day, the acid face where they burned half my face off. I'm sitting in the hallway, after my 6 hour makeup session, looking very despondent. Like gosh, trained at Yale, two leading roles on Broadway, my first movie in California and my face is melted off in a low budget movie. And I'm sitting there with that look on my face, and Denis Dugan comes up to me and says 'Bob, next time, read the whole script'.
Several puppet heads and werewolf masks were created by Bottin's team, utilizing similar techniques Baker and Bottin had used for the ape mask in Tanya's Island. The transforming 'change o head' puppets had internal mechanics of gears and level assemblies, as well as a device invented by The Burman Studio specialized for facial movements.
The mechanisms of the change-o-heads were designed to reshape the puppet's skull, via a cable controlled mechanisms. Doug Beswick provided assistance on getting the mechanical 'change o heads' to work. At least three 'change o heads' were made to represent Eddie Quist's transformation. Bottin explained the design process;
'What I did was put Bob Picardo through an all-day casting session, making 5 full-head casts - a terrible experience for him - and made all these face studies. Rather than making the wolf *on* Bob's face, I made it *from* his face. That may sound like about the same thing, but I was taking Bob's features and distorting them, making them animalistic. I looked for characteristics in his face that could be frightening to me, and exaggerated them. I think we came up with a very weird look.'
The first stage Quist change-o-head puppet
'I thought, well, maybe his nose go UP first, looking something like a pig's, and then grow out from there. Then, I thought, what sould the next step be? I had to guess. And I really wanted everything to be fresh. I'd do sculptures and then show them to my friends. If they reminded anyone of Island of Dr Moreau or Planet of the Apes, I'd start over.
The change-o-head puppets had a problem; other than their intended function, they were static. This fell to director of photography John Hora to solve; 'One of the things we would do was always make sure the camera was moving. What we did when we filmed it was change the speeds during the shot. The shot might start at 24 frames per second, which is normal speed, and as the action is progressing we would drop to 12 frames, and speed it way up so it had an uncanny fastness about it. Or as it drooled, we might go at a high speed, and slow it down so the saliva would drool slower'.
The second stage Quist change-o-head puppet
The transformation had been intended to be smooth and fluid, but technical limitations gave the on-screen transformation a jerky, shuddering look. Dante recalled; 'When we came to do it on the set, we would press buttons, or pull things, and sometimes things would pop. We tended to view it as a mistake, and when we were editing the scenes we tried to cut around the parts that changed abruptly.'
The scene was saved in post-production sound editing, as crunching and cracking sounds were played over the footage; 'All of a sudden they looked like they were on purpose. So the whole concept, instead of being this sort of supernatural, smooth, gliding change, became this torturous, painful, bone-cracking metamorphosis. In addition to covering up our mistakes, it improved the whole scene.'
The third stage Quist change-o-head puppet
A puppet hand was also made for the shot when Eddie Quist raises his hand (during the air bladder stage of the transformation), showing claws bursting out the end of it.
Another puppet was made from the castings of Picardo's head, for when Quist pulls a bullet out of his skull before transforming. This puppet was designed to match the bullet wound forehead appliance Picardo wore.
Was *this* one of the makeup tests that Baker and Bottin had brought to Avco's executives? Or was it the TC Quist change-o-head? Or were neither so, and they were both made during Howling's production?
'That (final) scene was not written as the way it is. (Wallace) was supposed to transform into a horrible werewolf. She didn't want to be remembered by the audience that way. So she had to be a cute one!'
Wallace herself explained; 'I had it in my contract that I wouldn't be seen as a werewolf! I said, I really feel she should be vulnerable and losing her fight. And that's why they came up with, what I think, looks like a Bambi werewolf!'.
The Karen werewolf scene was shot in the studio's production office on the day just before the film's prints were to be made. Hence the Karen puppet head being shot in extreme close-up - there was no set!
Bottin said, 'I thought to myself, if I'm going to do a werewolf, I don't want to do Chaney Junior with a pompador and hair on his cheeks. The Wolf Man is one of my favorite films, so there's no reason to do that again'.
Bottin sculpted several werewolf heads to decide what the final werewolf should look like. Every time Steve and Jeff Shank would approve a sculpted, Bottin would start over and make a new one. Bottin recounted, 'I've never sculpted so much in my life as I did on The Howling. For the final look of the wolf I sculpted ten different heads - I wish I kept them all, but I tore most of them apart. We wound up using one of my earliest designs, which I thought was horrible at first, but I would up really liking it.'
Mike Finnell reportedly asked Bottin, 'Rob, are we ever going to have a werewolf?'
Various photos of one of Bottin's earlier werewolf head sculpts
An early werewolf head sculpt by Dale Kuipers
When the final look of the werewolf was finalized, there was still the question of how the werewolves should be realized, resulting in several misfires that never made it into the final film. The Howling's production schedule placed all effects shots as last to film, meaning that for most of production there was no proper werewolf effects, as Joe Dante recalled;
'One thing people don't know about this picture is that when we first shot it, we only had so much money. Rob Bottin only had $50'000 to build all the werewolf stuff. So basically what he built were hands, and werewolf heads, which looked great, but they only went (to the shoulders). So any time someone wanted to be menaced by a werewolf, and there are some stills of a scene where Belinda is on a phone and menaced and killed by a werewolf, there's this big head. Then you have to cut, if it goes any further you're gonna see that it's a guy holding the head.
We had to go back to Embassy and say 'Listen, if you give us a couple more bucks, we can probably do better than this. And so that whole scene where she's killed by the werewolf was done rather perfunctory originally with these werewolf heads and hands.'
Bottin's werewolf puppet did make it into the final film, albeit slightly redressed (to match the final werewolf suits) and hidden in silhouette, during the barn fire and car attack scenes, as there wasn't enough money at that point to make extra suits.
Bottin's werewolf puppet head in one of its fleeting appearances in the film
Another early effect, that was scrapped entirely from the final picture, were the three 'rocket wolf' props, made for the finale during which each werewolf would leap out the barn and through the air.
Each rocket wolf was a fully-sized fiberglass dummy layered with hair. Jeff Shank remembered 'They were fired from a launcher tank through a pipe that was connected into the rectum of the wolf. When maximum compression was reached, the ignition system fired and the wolf would shoot out through the air, as far as 50 feet across and maybe 15 feet high.
The rocket wolves were rejected after several shots had been filmed for two reasons. Firstly, they were obviously fake effects, looking like stuffed animals launched from a catapult. Secondly, the stream trail that trailed from the dummy's rear end looked, frankly, ridiculous.
Joe Dante with the 'rocket wolf' props
Bottin's aim was to have werewolves that resembled upright wolves, a design that had so far only been seen in illustrations and comics. Bottin had discussed his ideas to Dante before shooting on Howling started, during production on Piranha;
'While shooting the mechanical piranhas in an LA Olympic swimming pool during a raging lightning storm, I remmeber waxing to Dante about my all-new concept for a mind-blowing comic book-style werewolf - a towering hairy slathering monster from hell! Joe said, 'That sounds incredble!' Then he told me I was weird.'
During the film's principal photography, Dale Kuipers was handed the job of building the werewolf suits for Bottin. Originally, the idea was to make *thirty* wolf suits!
Steve Shank recounted, 'They (the suits) were all supposed to have a sculpted foam base with hair, a head, hands - everything. That was a lot of work, even for a big crew, and Dale was working alone. I told Dale, who was obviously working under some duress at this time, to forget about doing so many suits and to aim for four or five at the most'.
The fact that Kuipers had to work alone, along with the low budget, resulted in only three suits being constructed, all three being derided by the crew. Bottin especially was scathing; 'So we made a couple of suits and it looked like a giant chipmunk'.
An early head of the loathed 'chipmunk suit'?
Shank explained in detail as to why Kuipers' suit was such a misfire; 'The problem with the (early) suits was that the dimensions were modeled on a werewolf's scale and not a man's. They were too big in the wrong places. Ideally, a werewolf should be large enough to appear formidable, but svelte enough to be wolf-life. Most of the early suits had bodies resembling black bears.'
One big problem with the Kuipers suit was the head. Bottin's original suit head design was a stove-pipe neck that the wolf head was fitted on. The intentional was the actor would bend over, making it appear that the werewolf had a loping animal-like gait.
In theory, this was intended to avoid the suit coming across as an obvious 'man in a hair suit and Halloween mask', In practice, the neck wasn't able to rotate, and heavy for the actor inside to wear, making it hard for them to see and breathe.
The early suit was used in the Mendocino forest location shooting but almost no footage with the original Dale Kuipers 'chipmunk suit' made it into the final film barring *one* shot, when TC Quist is clawing to get Belinda Balaski in the cabin outhouse* before getting his arm cut off.
*Not to be confused with the shot of the werewolf INSIDE the cabin tearing the door down, as that was one of the later reshoots starring the final Shank suit. The 'chipmunk suit' was so despised they did not want it seen at all.
Left: Kuipers with the loathed 'chipmunk suit'.
Right: Don McLeod in the 'chipmunk suit', shooting the cabin attack.
The 'chipmunk suit's ONLY appearance in the film is in the cabin outhouse shots where its attacking Belinda Belanski. Notice the strangely long neck of the 'stove pipe' wolf mask.
The Howling had its special effects shots shooting done last, so that Joe Dante could convince Avco for an increased budget based on the strength of the footage that had already been shot. Dante recalled how awkward it felt to have not done any convincing werewolf suit effects up to that point;
'We went through the budget and finished the film, we had no photography of werewolves. By the time the story was in the can, there was shots of basically a guy in a bear suit in the dark, and that was it! They took the film, standing on its own without the effects, and showed it to (Avco) and on the basis of that, they got the additional money to let Rob do the work that he had to do. But we had the whole film done with no werewolves, which was a little lacking!'
With the increased funding just in time, it was decided to make a final push on how to realize the werewolf. Jeff Shank was adamant that a suit was the way to go, but Bottin had been left bitter from the failure of the Dale Kuipers suit.
Instead, Bottin suggested they should have the werewolf realized as a rod puppet, inspired by those he had seen in Japanese theatre, with the bonus that it didn't need to require a person inside it. Jeff Shank stated in Cinefantastique;
'Rob wanted a simple puppet, just a working prototype. When he first came up with the idea of a Japanese rod puppet, I didn't think it would work. But as I began designing and building it, I realized the potential it had, not the least of which was showing the werewolf in a full-body shot'.
The rod puppet under construction.
It took two weeks to build the eight-foot tall werewolf puppet, which was constructed from wooden dowel rods and aluminum tubing covered in foam rubber, fur fabric and crepe hair.
The puppet was controlled by hand-operated cables that connected to the wrists and mouth, that would let the puppet do swiping movements for scenes where it menace its victims. The neck was fully articulated, allowing the head to rotate, with the shoulders and hips also able to swivel.
The rod puppet's body being sculpted - note the skeletal ribcage, a feature present in the final Eddie Quist suit as well.
Unfortunately, the puppet presented a whole new set of problems. It was not able to walk around the room, like Joe Dante had wanted. It also required several people to operate it at all times, yet this meant the operators would be visible if it was shot from the front.
Bottin was adamant on the puppet method, and wished for a new puppet to be constructed just less than a month before effects photography would start. Bottin had a machinist build an aluminum armature for the second puppet, that was met with dismay from the crew.
Steve Shank recalled; 'There wasn't nearly enough articulation in the movements. The wrists, for example, only moved a fraction of an inch. To make hand movements believable, you need big movements.
'Jeff and I finally had to prevail on Rob to end all discussion of a second puppet. We had to use a suit at this point. There wasn't enough time to develop another puppet intricate enough to do all the things suggested by the script. Besides, Joe was never too keen on having to deal with a bunch of operators standing behind a puppet.'
Shank also now had the chance to fix some design problems he'd had with the rod puppet. 'I had less than three weeks to complete the suit and there were a number of modifications I wanted to make on the puppet in order to solidify the final suit design. For instance, the first puppet's mouth was relatively small, only the front teeth and fangs were visible. I wanted a much more menacing mouth, one that would open a lot wider.'
At Shank's insistence, Bottin modified his sculpture of the werewolf face, with Greg Cannom running off a new slipcover latex face. Shank stated; 'I also felt that the hands I had originally used on the puppet were too small. So while I began mechanizing the head for the suit, Shawn McEnroe sculpted a pair of enlarged hands, which turned out beautifully. '
At this point, it was intended that the werewolf suit and original rod puppet be used alongside each other. Shank made modifications to the puppet to resemble the suit more, shortening the puppet arms and giving them new arm prosthetics, which were duplicates of Shawn McEnroe's new suit hands.
For inset shots showing the werewolf's legs, it was not possible to use the suit; instead, Ed Jensen made a pair of mechanical legs, based on the rod puppet's legs, that would be shot in closeup.
Jeff Shank wore the suit, which was tailored to his 6'6'' height. Shank recalled, 'I was the only one tall enough, thin enough and dumb enough to do it'. Shank's work on the suit ironically almost complicated the actual shooting, as he was so tired out, 'I was up three days and three nights to finish the suit, because time was running out. Needless to say, the first day I was out with the suit, I was a zombie. I could hardly move.'
'I realized the only way to divert attention away from the neck problem we had on the (Dale Kuipers) suit was to make the face as compelling as possible. To that end I packed ten facial mechanics into the head, six into the snout alone. By giving the upper and lower lips movement, as well as each cheek, the quality of the latex foam created the look of real musculature'.
The suit was also designed to get past the 'Man in a suit' problem; the head was able to rotate, and Shank was able to see from ouside the werewolf head's mouth. The werewolf head was also made to appear taller by being attached to a block of wood worn on top of a full-head skull cap worn around Shank's face.
The suit itself, which was sculpted with a ribcage in a similar manner to the rod puppet, was a one-piece suit with a zipper around the back, and the head itself was attached with safety pins, all hidden by the fur fabric.
The cables that controlled the Quist mask's expressions went down inside the back of the suit, and came out through a hole in the leg of the spandex undersuit that Shank wore. The head and body of the suit were sprayed in shades of 'Spray and Tips' aerosol.
The cable-controlled animatronic Quist head.
Shank wore the suit for about a week, filming the doctor's office attack, and the car attack, as well as later on, reshoots of the location footage, replacing Kuipers 'chipmunk suit'.
Filming the suit was itself a harsh affair as while the suit wasn't heavy, it was hard to breathe inside. 'My head wasn't very accessible to the outside because of the way it was positioned. It was somewhat claustrophobic.'
The final Shank suit in the film.
(Presumably several stunt heads with more limited actions were also made, In an email conversation I had Joe Dante, he confirmed to me that while only one final suit was made, several other heads and arms were used in different scenes. Perhaps the shots below were of the other heads?)
(The Monsterlegacy article on The Howling states that the first image is of one of the early rejected heads. I don't think that is the case and may be an error on their part)
The 'dummy' heads used in the cabin, woods and car attack scenes.
The 'dummy' heads in the film?
There had also been another method utilized for the werewolves in distance shots; stopmotion, courtesy of David Allen. Roger Dicken sculpted the werewolf puppets, while David Allen and Ernie Farino beuilt the armatures. Allen completed at least three sequences with the stopmotion puppets.
One reason why Dante had been eager to use animation for the wolves was thanks to the various misfires, such as Bottin's puppet head, Kuipers' chipmunk suit and Jeff Shanks' rod puppet. 'Part of the reason we contracted the stopmotion in the first place was that we weren't sure that we could get enough on the set to really suggest the appearance of a whole werewolf.'
Unfortunately, almost all of Allen's stopmotion was removed from the final cut, barring one very brief shot. Joe Dante justified the decision in Fangoria; 'Dave Allen did three shots of the stop-motion creatures, which we were able to cut into several more shots. All of them were very good, especially one very complicated shot that opened with a moving camera and ended on a static shot.
'But at various screenings, after the picture, people were coming up at me and asking what picture the neat stopmotion footage came from. There was nothing wrong with those shots, it was just that the werewolves movied differently, like in a Ray Harryhausen film where they cut from a stopmotion creature to a full-size live action shot.
Also, the colours of the werewolves were slightly different from the full-size wolf, which we didn't have at the time Dave Allen started up. We ended up cutting all but one shot, which was left in for the sneak, and Avco feels it will be a better picture without it, so that's coming out too.
All of which is kind of embarrassing for me, all the while I was fighting to keep it in, saying that I'm not gonna be the guy who made the first stopmotion werewolf picture and then cut out all the stopmotion. It's just very hard to match live action and stopmotion footage. The Empire Strikes Back is the only picture I've seen where it was really successful.'
This shot was all that was used of Dave Allen's work in the final film
Rob Bottin's work on The Howling was enough to not just have him credited as the film's associate producer, but also earned him an invitation from Avco to promote the film on publicity tours alongside Joe Dante.
Bottin was still anxious about how the effects would be received, as none of them had anything to be compared to. It was not until Dick Smith - whose methods had provided inspiration for the initial transformation effects - saw the film that Bottin changed his tune;
'Dick Smith was in town (...) and said he wanted to meet me, and that he'd heard from Rick that I was doing some interesting work on The Howling. It was really a thrill - 'Dick Smith wants to see MY work!' - but I was a little afraid he might get mad when he saw it so I said 'Dick...I used some of your tricks on The Howling'. There was this pause on the line, and he said 'Well, I certainly HOPE so!'
'I took him down the editing room, we ran it for him and he said it was very good. That's when I knew it worked. I really didn't know whether I could be proud of it until that minute. Now I'm overjoyed about the way it came out, but I've learned so much, and in seeing The Howling footage, I'm really excited about what I'm capable of doing now. I've learned so much in doing it, that I really wish I could do it again.'
As The Howling had came out before American Werewolf, it may have also proved an inspiration on how Rick Baker's own effects diverged;
'It’s pretty incredible. He did a great job and I’m really proud of him. I’ll have a hard time [with American Werewolf] competing with what Rob has done — it’s almost like I’ve created a Frankenstein!'
'Now I have some crewmembers on American Werewolf that worked with Rob on The Howling - people I've corresponded with that I put in touch with Rob. I'll be sculpting away at something, and somebody will come over and say 'Hey, y'know, Rob did one that looked like that' I'll do another one, and they'll say 'Rob did one that looked like that, too'. I guess I was a pretty good teacher'.
Also, an addendum; naturally, many props from The Howling survived, in particular the rod puppet that never made it into the film; a photograph of Bottin's house, used in the book Weird Rooms by Alexander Vertikoff, Hanging from the wall appears to be another Howling prop, though I can't be sure if it's part of the final Jeff Shank suit, or one of Bottin's puppets.
(Alongside the rod puppet is another werewolf mask - one of the test masks Bottin and Baker had shown to Avco? - as well as the mouse suit Bottin made for Rock N Roll High School and a gored dummy Bottin had made (based on a sculpt of his own face) for Piranha).
Greg Nicotero, with help from Norman Cabrera, Tom Spina, Alex Diaz, Jeff Himmel and Beth A. Hathaway, set about restoring the rod puppet to its former glory, albeit with some slight changes. You can read more about the restoration of the Jeff Shank rod puppet on Tom Spina Designs' official page about it!
Sources:
- Fangoria #11 & #20
- Cinefex #12
- Cinefantastique Volume 11 #1 (1981)
- Cinefantastique Volume 11 #3 (1981)
- Make-Up Artist Magazine #50 ' Rob Bottin: Shapeshifting Visionary—The Early Years' by Ron Magid
- 'The Making of The Howling' featurette
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