Demon Knight (1995)

The success of the Tales from the Crypt series led to a movie deal, resulting in Demon Knight. Todd Masters, already with several episodes of Tales under his belt, had to realize a horde of demon minions working for Billy Zane's 'Collector'.

However, this almost did not happen at all. Masters originally intended the demons to be 'monster suits' of the classic demon design, but producer Gilbert Adler, fearing the possibility of going over-budget, revised the script to remove all the demons, replacing whem with demon-possessed humans 'in sunglasses and dressed in CIA suits and ties', whose only inhuman traits were 'fire in their eyes'.

Masters was aghast at this proposal, recounting 'you can't do a movie called Demon Knight and not deliver any demons, we'd get egged', and offered a compromise; if he could realize the demons in a more ecomonical fashion, they could stay in the script. Masters decided the demons would be 'less monster suits' as he originally wanted; instead realized via the cheaper method of very thin actors wearing prosthetics.

The cheaper method was actually more complicated to realize according to Walter Phelan, who was on the film's make-up effects team and played one of the demons; 'most (monster) suits are a one-piece rubber pajama you put on, zips up the back, glue hands on, they put a head on you, and these (the Demon Knight demons) were almost all bodypainting with specific prosthetics, we had stilts on which were about a foot high and a mechanical tail which had a harness around our waists and a battery in our crotch to run the tail'.

According to Scott Wheeler, '(Masters) had a very strong concept for what he wanted these demons to look like, he didn't want them to be particularly anamtomical, he wanted them to have a very loose, vague quality to them as if even our makeups look like they're lurking in the shadows'. Masters and Wheeler decided the demons should also have a 'rock and roll look', hence their wearing of ear-rings, nose-rings, nipple-rings and Phelan's demon having a 'Gene Simmons topknot', details that wouldn't have been seen clearly in the final film.

When the young boy Danny is possessed, he transforms into a snarling monster with a wide open mouth. The possessed Danny was achieved with an animatronic headpiece (based on a cast of Ryan O'Donohue's face) that could curl the upper lip and move the eyes, worn over the performers head, hidden by the creature's maw. Another one of the radio controlled tails was worn under the actor's trousers.

Billy Zane felt he was 'really glad he wasn't one of the creatures, glued into one of these amazing suits', so just his luck that his own character's demonic form would be realized as a special effect he didnt even need to have a cast made of. Zane's demon form was a miniature effect.