Xtro (1982)

EDIT 27/09/2024: I recently interviewed Francis Coates about his work on Xtro, as well as touching on his work on other genre productions as a sculptor and modelmaker. You can read it here!

'To do the most disgusting things that we could possibly get away with' was director Harry Bromley-Davenport's imperative when making Xtro. To this end Davenport hired newer actors from theatre and television rather than star actors, to let the budget mainly go to the effects.

Francis Coates was credited under 'creature effects' and had previously worked as a sculptor on various episodes of Doctor Who (as part of freelance firms contracted by the BBC's VFX Department) and Star Wars (on the R2-D2 suits). Assisting Coates was Richard Gregory, who provided puppets and makeup effects to episodes of Doctor Who and Space Precinct.

Coates and the effects team worked from designs by Christopher Hobbs. Hobbs, primarily a production designer (on Derek Jarman's films, Ken Russell's Salome's Last Dance, and the 2000 Gormenghast miniseries), had supplied the flesh-bubbling burning effects for Ken Russell's The Devils and storyboarded the effects sequences in The Company of Wolves. Hobb's work on Xtro went to visualizing the film's transformations.

Family man Sam Philips, abducted by a UFO, returns to Earth as a scuttling alien. It was Francis Coates who decided the alien should walk on all fours, as he was tired of all the monsters he'd made on Doctor Who that were performers walking upright in masks.

Inside the monster suit was mime artist Tim Dry, of the music duo Tik & Tok. Dry and his counterpart Sean Crawford were chosen for their skill in body movements, with Dry playing the monster and Crawford playing a giant Action Man.

Crawford got the better end of the deal as all he was required to do was wear a large static mask (fabricated by Coates & Gregory) and army fatigues, and walk around a set.

Meanwhile Dry was subjected to a life casting of his body in the crab walking position (a photo of which can be found on Coates' website) for the foam rubber suit to be sculpted around, and then for the actual filming had to crabwalk in a damp forest at night while wearing the suit!

Preliminary sculpt of the monster suit by Francis Coates 

 

At the film's climax, Sam has fully transformed into a skeletal, biomechanical alien, seen only very briefly in close-up shot. I'm not sure if there was more than one puppet made for the monster, but I'd imagine the close-ups were of a puppet (though Francis Coates recalls it as a radio controlled one).

Sources:

- 'Xtro Xposed' interview with Harry Bromley-Davenport

- Fangoria issues #19 and #24

- Famous Monsters of Filmland issue #191

- Rod Serling's Twilight Zone Magazine, December 1982

- Francis Coates' official website: http://www.scopedesign-uk.com/

Waxwork II: Lost in Time (1992)

The sequel to Waxwork again had its special effects supervised by Bob Keen, who also did some second unit directing. Among Keen's team was Paul Jones and Stephen Norrington. Keen's duties alternated between the various pastiche monsters and the copious gore effects.

Keen recounted about why he took the sequels gig so soon after having worked on Clive Barker's Nightbreed; 'The attraction of doing a Waxwork film is the range of things you get to do as an effects person. You get everything from aliens to Godzilla to Jekyll and Hyde. Usually, you never get all that in one movie.'

The original Waxwork was notorious for a gruesome effect where a man's leg had been gnawed to the bone, which Keen matched in the sequel with Bruce Campbell's torn open chest; 'His chest is peeled back for the entire sequence and hawks are pecking out the flesh - it's very impressive. Then there's this other guy who gets his jaw knocked off by a falling beam and has to spend the rest of the scene with it hanging there. Oh, and Baron Frankenstein gets his head squeexed so much, his eyes, teeth and brain pop out.'

The ribcage prosthetic was applied on Campbell by Paul Jones, who reacted in horror when he realized he had accidentally scalded Campbell's chest, but was relieved when it turned out that it was just a temporary burn that healed the next day.

The various pastiche monsters were mostly Gothic horror homages, keeping in line with the first Waxwork. The Frankenstein's Monster did not take any cues from either the Universal or Hammer depictions, instead following more from the original Mary Shelley novel and realized as a prosthetic makeup with a heavy jawline and brows.

One sequence required a maiden being transformed into a 'panther woman'; the transformation's first stage makeup utilized air bladder prosthetics, while the second stage utilized a rubber mask only seen in motion.

The fully transformed panther woman was achieved as a mask fitted with animatronic mechanisms allowing the mouth and eyes to open.

The most elaborate of Waxwork II's pastiche segments was the spaceship segment sending up both Ridley Scott's Alien and James Cameron's Aliens; naturally a facehugger parody was required, and realized as a squid-like animatronic puppet with mechanisms allowing the eyes to blink. A soft rubber puppet head was fabricated for when the alien bursts out of its mouth, evoking moreso The Stuff than the original Alien!

The sequence's parody xenomorph was realized as a man in a sculpted rubber suit, with a head fitted with mechanisms to allow the mouth to shoot in and out. Bob Keen explained the alien's design process; 'The alien wears protective armor; it's a bit like a crustacean. It has adopted the shape of some creature and what it looks like inside is completely different.'

The Godzilla parody appeared to be realized as a puppet, and was only briefly seen - and it's intentional shoddiness reflected the style of suits in many cheaper Japanese TV productions!

The gargoyle briefly seen in the time portal segment appears to be a reuse of the gargoyle stopmotion miniatures seen in Hickox's earlier Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat and will be discussed further when that film is covered here. Sources:

• Fangoria #108 'Waxwork II: Time for Terror' by Anthony C. Ferrante
  
• Assorted behind the scenes featurettes.
   

Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2009)

The Lycan suit moulds from Underworld: Evolution were reused for Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, in order to craft a new batch of suits. These new Lycan suits were given a slightly different paint job, as well as longer fur being applied to give them a more 'wild' appearance.

Rise of the Lycans introduced 'proper' werewolves. The werewolf suits and heads were reuses of the William werewolf moulds from Evolution, with the William suit's head itself being repainted and used for closeup shots of the werewolves. One of these suits was expertly restored by Tom Spina, allowing the suit to be seen in full; the story of the restoration (and recreation of its missing hands and feet) can be seen on his website.