Monsters On Screen: Werewolf (1987 TV series)

When Rick Baker accepted the Werewolf gig, it was for slightly flippant reasons, as recounted in an interview with Fangoria; 'I received this call from (producer) John Ashley. He wanted to know if I could design these two werewolves on rather short notice. I was real busy and was ready to pass on the job when it dawned on me who I was talking to. I said, 'You're the John Ashley who made those bad Filipino monster movies aren't you?' The idea of working with the guy who had made Chlorophyll Man famous was too much of a temptation. I told him I would do it.'

Baker was responsible for the werewolf designs, but the realization would fall to Greg Cannom, whose crew included John Vulich, future head of Optic Nerve Studios. Most of the transformations were achieved with quick shots showing prosthetic makeups, similar to the facial makeups Cannom had designed for Jon Gries' werewolf in Fright Night Part 2.

A change-o-head puppet was made for the grisly transformations of Chuck Connors' evil werewolf Skorzeny where he rips his skin off his lupine skull, homaging Christopher Tucker's work on The Company of Wolves. Cannom had planned a more elaborate transformation effect, but it was cut short by Werewolf's cancellation,

'I had a great werewolf transformation sequence planned for the new season. It was a full-body werewolf transformation with o cuts. Eric's face and back would stretch completely out, and his body would have filled out from his face all the way down his back. As dar as I know, nothing like that had ever been attempted before. Hopefully, I'll find another project to use it in one day'.

Several werewolf suits were designed by Baker and Cannom for the series. Baker designed the werewolf form of series' protagonist Eric Cord first, but the design was swapped to be the villain Skorzeny thanks to appearing too scary! As Baker recounted in Fangoria;

'What they wanted was one werewolf that is really bad and another that is sort of the good werewolf. I designed the good werewolf first. When I finished, everybody thought it was so scary that it had to be the bad werewolf. So that became the bad one, and I went ahead and designed the good one. The good one is pretty scary too. Hopefully, people will be able to tell the difference.'

The 'good' werewolf had a few copies made of it with some minor alterations to represent one-off werewolf antagonists in various episodes of the series. Unfortunately, the show has never made it to high-definition, making discerning each suit at a glance rather difficult.