Monsters On Screen: June 2023

A series of Japanese fantasy movies all directed by Tomoo Haraguchi. Sakuya and Kibakichi are more or less martial arts films with Kibakichi's twist being that its main character is a werewolf encountering various other 'yokai' creatures of Japanese folklore. Sadly, both Kibakichi films have not made it onto new releases since their initial DVDs which are in fairly poor quality, so sorry for the screnshots. This post will be updated with images/information about Sakuya and Death Kappa eventually.

Information on both Kibakichi films is very sparse to find online, but Wikizilla lists veteran Toho/Daiei sculptor Shigeaki Ito as having worked on both Kibakichi films, so that's the best I'll have to go with. Both of the Kibakichi films have a variety of practical monster effects. The titular Kibakichi (portrayed by Ryuji Harada) takes on a 'wolfman' style form in both films, with a sculpted torso and facial appliance.

The finale of the sequel film has Kibakichi run into another lone wanderer, Anju (played by Miki Tanaka) who also turns out to be a werewolf; her lupine form was also realized as a bodysuit with sculpted torso and facial appliances.

Various flashback sequences in both films show members of Kibakichi's tribe, whose werewolf forms had much more lupine faces compared to either Kibakichi's or Anju's.

Being themed on Japanese mythology and folklore, naturally there are many yokai realized, some of them being reused from Haraguchi's earlier Sakuya Yokaiden (Sakuya: Slayer of Demons) - the 'mature' kappa of Kibakichi definitely feels like it was reused from Sakuya, meaning I will have to update this entry with images from that film sometime.

A 'younger' kappa is also seen, this being realized as a full monster suit; I think this kappa suit was later reused in Haraguchi's later Death Kappa in 2020, which also had Shigeaki Ito worked on it as sculptor. That will be another film I'll have to watch and update this entry with screenshots from!

Several other yokai prosthetics are seen in both Kibakichi films (especially of oni), though the closeups and moody lighting, combined with fuzzy DVD quality, don't do them justice!

In a similar manner to Stephen Sommers' earlier projects The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, Van Helsing would have the bulk of its monsters realized as CGI visual effects, once more supplied by Industrial Light & Magic. The special make-up effects this time would be handled by Captive Audience Productions with Greg Cannom as special makeup effects designer.

A full prosthetic facial appliance was designed for Kevin J. O'Conner as Igor, with an overemphasized chin and sunken eye sockets.

More prosthetics were applied by Cannon's team to Shuler Hensley as the film's updated Frankenstein's Monster; the facial makeup design followed cues laid out from concept artwork by Miles Teves and Carlos Huante. Sommers was insistent that the updated Monster still follow on from the original Boris Karloff design - keeping the flat head and bolts on the neck - but otherwise playing footloose. Cannom stated about the design, 'I want something like the Nautilus, where it's old iron and looks like 1800, a really beautiful design to it.'

When it came to designing the prosthetics, Cannom recounted, 'Stephen really wanted it to look like Shuler, because Shuler has such a great face. He didn't want a monster or something scary, he wanted a real humanity to the character. When we started designing it, if I kept Shuler's face and built on top of it, it would have been so big in areas, so what I did was took Shuler and built him out, thickened his face up but trying still to sculpt it so it looks just like Shuler but bigger.'

Another issue Cannom's team had was how to realize the more ambitious Frankenstein's Monster design without falling into the usual pitfalls of monster suit effects. Patrick Tatopoulos, fresh off Underworld, stated, 'The most exciting part was saying ''We have to do Frankenstein. It's not just about scars and pieces of skin together, let's do something else.'' We need to make sure the vision's appropriate, because it's already hard to work with guys in suits on the set but if they don't see what they're doing and if they can't walk (...) You don't wanna create too many limitations. You will have limitations, but you try to minimalize it.'

Leg extensions were worn by Shuler to appear taller, as well as a light-up device embedded in the top of the head prosthetic. It was a complex process, according to Cannon, 'It takes two of us (at Captive Audience) to apply his face makeup, it takes three or four people to get him in the suit and then there's mechanics. So when he walks on set, there's about seven or eight people following him down the set'.

The harpy forms of Dracula's brides were a collaboration between Cannon's prosthetic makeup team and ILM. Captive Audience designed and applied the facial prosthetics on Elena Anaya, Silvia Colloca and Josie Maran, but otherwise the bodies were digital, edited in post-production over the motion capture suits each actress wore. The design of the harpies were based on art by Derek Thompson and Carlos Huante.

ILM was tasked with fully realizing most of the film's creatures, based on sculpted maquettes by the ILM team; this included the 'pygmy bat' vampire children that appeared, with a painted version of the maquette also made.

A maquette was also sculpted by Carlos Huante for the 'Hellbeast' demon that Richard Roxburgh's Dracula transforms into, based on designs Huante had laid out in concept art. When it came to the actual model, Ben Snow of ILM recounted how 'sub surface scattering was used to give a more organic look to the Hellbeast creature's model.

One of ILM's main tasks was realizing the werewolves, with Carlos Huante responsible for their design in the concept art. When it came to designing the werewolves, Carlos Huante went though several different versions, 'When they ask you to redesign a werewolf, its like yeah what do you do, it's like redesigning water!'.

According to visual effects art director Christian Alzmann, one inspiration was actual wolf anatomy, 'We love to look at nature, it always has to come back and look real, even though its very much a fantasy creature, a werewolf, it still has to be grounded. So we had a cast of a real wolf skull taken, and checked how the teeth bite and how they overlap, and really getting into that anatomy.'

The werewolf models were scanned from maquettes sculpted by Danny Wagner; a full-body sculpt was used as basis for all the werewolves, with different heads for each one; the unnamed grey-furred werewolf, the Prince Velkan werewolf, and the Van Helsing werewolf.

Real wolves were also used as basis for the fur textures, according to co-model supervisor Andrew Cawrse, 'We had real wolves coming (into the studio) which was fantastic, beautiful animals. We composited their real fur on top of the (digital) creature we were building'.

CGI was also used for Will Kemp's and Hugh Jackman's respective transformations as Velkan and Van Helsing. According to visual effects supervisor Ben Snow, 'The creatures were pretty much the top end of what we can do with creature technology today. All these hair simulations, flesh simulations. (...) We had to transform Hugh Jackman into a big scary werewolf, but also Stephen Sommers wanted the werewolf to be sexy looking, and both of them (Jackman werewolf and Dracula Hellbeast) to be like rockstars, with these manes of elaborate hair'.