Monsters On Screen: The Monster Squad (1987)

To realize The Monster Squad's updated Universal Monsters, Stan Winston designed the monsters on paper, but left the sculpting and painting to his effects studio. The crew was divided into teams for each monster; Frankenstein's Monster was supervised by Tom Woodruff Jr., the Mummy by Shane Mahan, the Wolfman by John Rosengrant, Dracula's transformations by Alec Gillis, and the Gillman by Matt Rose and Steve Wang.

One problem was that the Universal Monsters themselves were copyrighted designs, yet Monster Squad was not actually produced by Universal. Shane Mahan voiced his frustrations, 'The challenge was to suggest those classic creatures, without really copying them because we didn’t have permission or the license to use those specific images. So we could do a ‘Gillman’, for example, but it couldn’t look too much like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. It was frustrating for us at first, because, of course, we wanted to do the original designs! But we couldn’t. We could only suggest those designs. So the Frankenstein monster looks a bit like the Karloff creature; but instead of bolts in the neck, he has bolts in the forehead. There was a certain percentage of changes we had to make to get away from any legal copyright infringement.'

The Frankenstein's Monster makeup also went through different iterations. Woodruff originally went with a pallid, corpse-like skin texture to the Frankenstein makeup, using forensic photographs as reference for the more horrific look. When the film's executive producer, Peter Hyams, arrived on-set to inspect, his reaction devastated Woodruff; Hyams hated the makeup design, calling it 'horrible' and 'something I would find down in Hollywood Boulevard, in a mask shop'. Winston had to help Woodruff in finding a different colourscheme that was approved.

Monster Squad's version of the Mummy was also designed to be markedly different in design to the original Boris Karloff version, looking more dessicated and gruesome; Shane Mahan wanted to find a halfway between the Boris Karloff version, and real mummified pharoahs such as Ramesses III. The Mummy was mostly realized as prosthetics applied to Michael Reid MacKay, who was chosen partly for his very thin frame. Additional Mummys were made; a wax replica for the unravelling scene, and an animatronic puppet for when it appears in a kid's closet.

Additional undead puppets were required for the introductory scene where Van Helsing tries and fails to defeat Dracula; the skeletal zombies that rise up from the ground were radio controlled puppets.

Dracula had brief sequences of transforming into a bat; the sequence was achieved with the use of a rod-controlled arm puppet for closeups showing Dracula's winged arm reverting to a human shape, with the bat form itself being realized as a puppet.

The brief scene where Dracula is injured and in a half-man, half-bat shape was actually fairly complicated to realize for Gillis. A full-size body piece was constructed, designed to blend with Duncan Regehr's upper body, with his real lower body hidden under a slant board on the floor. One of Regehr's arms was pinned behind his back, with a fake bat arm applied over his shoulder. Prosthetic makeups were then applied to Regehr's face and free arm; it took five hours to apply the makeup and body piece.

The Wolfman also required a very brief transformation sequence; this was realized as a radio-controlled 'change-o-head' puppet, similar in function to those made for American Werewolf in London and The Howling with added blinking mechanisms. The cheekbones and nose of the puppet would stretch out, and more than likely a separate puppet was made to show the back transforming.

When reimagining the Wolfman, Winston and Rosengrant wished to keep close to the original Universal desgn rather than take influence from then-recent designs such as The Howling's werewolves. The head was elongated with eyes more far apart like those of a real wolf. Stan Winston used his own face as reference when designing the Wolfman, with even the final sculpt resembling his own face slightly.

Unlike Regehr's bat transformation, the Wolfman's actor in human form, Jon Gries, did not need to have any complex prosthetics applied to him. Instead, Carl Thibault wore the Wolfman suit, which consisted of a sculpted torso, hands and feet, and the head containing radio-controlled animatronic mechanisms that would allow it to blink, grimace and bear its fangs; Winston's design was too complex to be realized with just prosthetics a la Jack Pierce's original Wolf Man makeup.

The gillman proved to be more of a challenge; Winston's final sketch made sure to keep the original Creature from the Black Lagoon's fins, the design would now be far fiercer in appearance, with sharp fangs and larger, reptilian eyes. Steve Wang was entrusted with the realization of the Gillman thanks to winning a costume contest judged by Stan Winston, Rick Baker and Dick Smith; before winning the contest, Stan had disagreed with Wang's idea to give the Gillman a frog-like paint scheme, something that he went through with after winning the contest! The suit head was fitted with animatronics to allow its mouth to open and close.

The Gillman was not played by a stuntman but instead by one of the effects team members, Tom Woodruff Jr.! Apparently he already had a body cast of himself because he had been wanting to build his own personal gorilla suit; because the Gillman's actor had not been cast at that point, Woodruff Jr. offered to play the role and brought up the existing life cast as a money saving reason. Woodruff's life cast had to be minimally altered making the Gillman suit so that it would be tighter, eliminating any chance of creases appearing on the suit.

Woodruff had never done any monster suit performance before, and was not prepared for how little visibility he had inside the Gillman costume. Woodruff could only see out from two tiny holes placed in the tear duct areas of the Gillman's eyes; said eyes were animatronic, and almost right next to Woodruff's actual face. This made the fight sequences, such as when the Gillman attacks several cops, very difficult. A stunt coordinator had to work around it by telling Woodruff what actions to do before the shoot, and count the seconds until the next scripted action on-camera.

Still, some problems persisted; the stuntmen playing the cops remembered to hit Woodruff on-camera with the fake batons, which were still hard enough to hurt when swung with enough force. After several takes had tired Woodruff out, he got careless and swung very hard at another stuntman who had forgotten to duck. The stuntman was knocked to the ground, and Woodruff had apparently swung with enough force that the rivets of the police hat's shield had sunk in and cut the stuntman's forehead!