Xtro II: The Second Encounter (1991)

(Note: I would like to thank Charlie Grant personally for having helped out by sending so many photographs of his work on Xtro II, from the creature puppet to the miniature effects shots, as well as adding context on how the film was made.)

'The people who made this thing (...) define artlessless', was how director Harry Bromley-Davenport described Xtro II producers Lloyd A. Simandl and John Curtis.

Curtis and Simandl's company, North American Pictures, primarily worked in cheap exploitation, and Xtro II was their most expensive movie yet, at a budget of $2 million. Xtro II was new ground for the company, as John Curtis was quoted in Gorezone;

'In the past, we followed a format that had us throwing in a jiggle scene or a car chase every seven minutes. In this film, we've abandoned the traditional exploitation formula, and we've spent more money on art direction and set decoration. When we started out, Lloyd and I used to decorate the set with whatever we could find around the house'.

(If you're the producers of such fine films as Empire of Ash, which was re-released as a fake sequel to itself in various territories, of course you'd view Xtro II as a step upwards!)

The on-set prosthetic and makeup effects were supplied by Tibor Farkas' ET & Company, with Farkas acting as prosthetic supervisors. Their prosthetic crew included Scott Dawson, David Koch, Conor McCullagh and Toby Lindala.

One of Farkas' main tasks at this point was designing the alien creature, coming up wiht a flatworm-like creature with an orchid-shaped head, its mouth resembling a toothed vagina. Farkas' team sculpted a full body prop - I don't know if it was puppeteered.

A possible juvenile form of the creature?

At first, the film was shot with the actors performing alongside Farkas' creature, with at least one photo reaching Gorezone when the film was in its early stage of production.

Farkas' team also handled the film's gore effects, and made a tentacle, a hollow dummy for a head smashing death, and a dummy chest for an impaling death. A mummified corpse with an open chest was made for the aftermath of the film's 'chestburster' scene.

A chest appliance was also made for the demise of Paul Koslo's character, where it appears he is swollen with the monster's spawn. The appliance was sculpted to appear as if Koslo's skin was ripping, with tubes pumping white fluid hidden underneath.

However, the producers were unhappy with the original monster, so Farkas' team was forced to sculpt a new head for the monster, with eyes and teeth. According to Conor McCullagh on a Facebook post, the second head was sculpted in a few days.

However, the producers were still unimpressed. It was at this point that Charlie Grant and Wayne Dang, and their visual effects company Cyberflex, were tasked to redo Xtro II's creature effects, on top of the miniature effects sequences they already were assigned to.

Among the Cyberflex team were Greg Derochie, Victor Gagnon, Gregory Middleton, and Zoltan Selvassie

One of Cyberflex's first tasks was to redo the 'chestburster' scene. Grant told me that this quickly led to a far bigger workload; 'We built and shot the insert, got the emergency phone call at noon (saying), 'Could we have it in the can tomorrow?' It was unscheduled as it was supposed to be done by another on set and did not work. We built the burster and rig, and rolled cameras by 4pm, and got it into lab by closing time.

The most important thing we hit the deadline...that's when we were offered by producers to rebuild all the sets at half scale and re-film our own version of the monster in our shop, redesigning the whole shabang. We upscaled from an in-house model shop to an in-house creature shop. I'm still catching up with lost sleep today!'

Cyberflex also constructed a miniature dummy to show Paul Koslo's scientist exploding as he's teleporting, but I haven't found any behind the scenes photos of that yet.

Wayne Dang sculpted the main creature puppet. Charlie Grant had previously worked under Chris Walas on The Fly II, which influenced the look of Xtro II's creature.

Grant told me the assorted influences behind Cyberflex's monster for Xtro II; 'We were immersed with reptiles as I was breeding burmese pythons at the time and had snapping turtles to inspire the design (...)

Xtro II's monster was as close to Alien as we could get, the producers needed to climb the greasy shirtails of that franchise.

But they wanted eyes, as they thought their input would make this one better than Alien. Another suggestion we took from them was artificial fingernails for teeth'.

Cyberflex's Xtro II puppet, before painting

Can you spot the design's 'influence' in the second image?

Cyberflex realized a puppet, that was shot in a miniature version of Xtro II's sets to match the footage already shot. Only one 'large' puppet was constructed, and it was both rod-puppeteered and cable controlled. According to Grant;

'The puppet had 17 cables altogether for hands and face, and came apart at the torso with room for a arm and hand in the neck and head. The legs were jointed so we could dolly Wayne Dang along on a skate board and he could raise and lower his legs from below, the rest of us followed slowly with rods and cables. The design of the elbows and spines allowed the poles to be screwed in and removed'.

The puppet was destroyed on-camera for the shot of Jan Michael-Vincent's hero blowing it up. According to Grant, the puppet gained a new life, so to speak; 'We only had one (puppet) and we blew it up. When (Vancouver's) Science World called wanting a display, I picked the pieces of foam out of the garbage yet to be tossed, and glued and sewed it back together for display'

The remains of Cyberflex's Xtro II puppet after its detonation.

Grant's Cyberflex team also had to create several miniature puppets of the monster, as well as several human puppets (including a gored one to depict the aftermath of a falling death), as part of the miniature effects shots made for a lift shaft sequence.

Usually I don't include other miniature effects in these articles, but I'll make an exception to give an idea of how big the film's workload was! Grant's Cyberflex team had to do all the miniature effects sequences, like the lift sequence, and shots of the alien world.

Grant's Cyberflex team also constructed a prop wall coated in heiroglyphics depicting the alien culture's history, but sadly there was no photographs taken, nor did it make it into the film.

Grant's memories of the Xtro II experience were not positive; 'Apparently Xtro II had a Canadian theatrical release, the poster copied the letter style of Terminator 2 which opened same weekend, folks who thought they were getting into the second overflow theatres to see T2 asked for their money back as this was not the film they thought.

I would rate both producers as idiot savants at deception and business practices, they edited clips of ET, Star Wars and Alien to reels sent out to solicit money from Europe for straight to cable shows, they could mass $10 million for ten films, but the fine print was you get what we shoot, and the name of the game was to do it as cheaply as possible. I went to set and saw the craft service table, all that was left was a single whole coconut nobody had the tools to open'.

For such an unoriginal film, the workload for Grant's Cyberflex team was massive. However, there was a sting in the (alien) tale, as Xtro II's producers proved themselves to still be as inept and sleazy even after production completed, as Grant recalled;

'We (Cyberflex) had one thing in common, we were dead broke after, and just to get a demo reel. Unfortunately, producers had the film and did not allow us access to make the reel. The film editor (basically a slave to them as he was trying not to be deported) gave us some work print footage, it was not color timed so it was poor quality but we used it for the reel.

We got dozens of VHS copies made at a duplicate place and mailed them to everyone, Victor Gagnon brought the VHS copy to his home and put it in the VCR to show his family and mother in law. First three seconds was a fucking gangbang! Seems the copy house duped our demos with half erased pornos!

We tried the copies we had left, and yes, everyone's started with a few seconds of PORN! It must have made us look pretty weird and with no creditability sending them off to all the agencies and production houses.

Hit us all hard with all the effort and sacrifices and money we did not have by then, I went in person back to the copy house to show them, they just shrugged with a smirk.

They got their money, they said they might have to recalibrate or erase better next time. The tapes all looked new, but thats that. I folded shop shortly after and I went back to working at shops and later again for myself, I seldom hired anyone after that'.

Promotional photos and posters of Cyberflex's Xtro II puppet.

Sources:

• Gorezone #16 'Xtra! Xtra! Xtro II Arrives' by Steve Newton
  

The Howling (1981) - Part 1: Transformations

Joe Dante's main concern when adapting Gary Brandner's The Howling was how to realize the werewolves. In the novel, the werewolves' lupine form was just that of a real wolf, something that Dante was not keen on. Dante explained;

'It was one of these situations where what works well for a novel (...) isn't necessarily going to translate well to film. There had been a previous script which had thrown away the idea of werewolves and instead was about people's spirits going out into the woods and inhabiting real wolves. This meant that you were going to see real wolves, which gets you into The Wilderness Family territory. That's not particularly scary to me'.

(Anyone who has watched the absolute bloody chore that is 1981's Wolfen knows that Joe Dante was correct in rejecting this method.)

Another issue was that by this time the werewolf genre was more or less moribund, with even fairly recent films such as 1973's The Boy Who Cried Werewolf still using similar makeups and transformation effects established on The Wolf Man decades earlier. Dante said;

'The last couple of werewolf pictures had not been notable successes; Freddie Francis' Legend of the Werewolf did not even get distributed here, and after a couple of pictures like The Beast Must Die, it seemed like the whole genre was running out of steam. So if we were going to go ahead and do one of these movies, it seemed like it was important to try to do it differently.'

If The Howling was to make its mark on audiences, then it would be via the special effects, which were handled by Rob Bottin. Bottin earned the job thanks to his work on Dante's earlier Piranha. On that film, Bottin met producer Mike Finnell, who when producing Rock N Roll High School, called on Bottin to realize a giant mouse costume.

However, at this point, it was Rick Baker - Bottin's mentor - who was supposed to handle Howling's makeup effects, but Baker had already promised to John Landis that he would do makeup effects on American Werewolf in London. Even though that film had not yet been greenlit, Baker still wished to be free enough to work on it.

Finell, who had seeked out Baker, but was already familiar with Bottin - who at that time was still Rick Baker's protege - decided on a compromise. Baker would be hired as long as Bottin was brought along with him. Should Baker be called off the project, then Bottin, who had already proven himself capable twice before, would handle it alone.

Just a day before Baker and Bottin were to sign their contract to work on Howling, American Werewolf in London was greenlit. John Landis did not react kindly when hearing that Baker was working on Howling, leading to a vicious phone call in true Landis fashion. Baker, who had sculpted some initial designs for the werewolf, had to leave the project.

Baker recounted; 'As I started sculpting I could see it was taking on the look I wanted for American Werewolf. I told Finnell and Dante that it wouldn't be fair to John Landis to use that design so I couldn't design for them, but would remain available to solve problems and answer questions.'

Rick Baker working on a sculpt early in The Howling's production.

This design was never used in Howling at all, but doesn't it look a little similar to American Werewolf's lycanthrope?

Baker's abandoning of the project meant that the buck was passed to Bottin, who would still have some guidance from Baker but otherwise was now handling the project himself.

Bottin remembered how daunting the assignment was, partly for the massive workload; 'I just spent days wondering, 'How am I going to pull this off?' (...) The list of effects they wanted was amazing. They wanted the most incredible transformations ever filmed. And they kept asking me 'Are you sure you can really do all this stuff?'

Bottin assembled a large crew that at points numbered 25 people, a feat given how low Howling's production budget was. Most notable among Bottin's team was Greg Cannom, who sculpted and applied the bulk of the film's prosthetic makeups.

Some of Cannom's more subtle makeups included brow and forehead applications on Christopher Stone, Don McLeod, and Elisabeth Brooks, for the earliest stages of their transformations. Fake fangs, applied fur and nail extensions completed the look.

Several latex face masks and prosthetics were made for the barn fire during the film's final act. The more wolf-like latex face mask later was reused in an episode of The X-Files over a decade later, loaned by Greg Cannom to Toby Lindala's Vancouver crew.

The first major challenge were the transformations. Bottin and Dante were firm in that they were not going to do mere cutaways or time lapses. Bottin was given free reign, to the point that even the script was written to allow his imagination do all the work;

'When it came to the wolf scenes, or anything having to do with special effects, Joe had told the scriptwriter, 'Look, we don't know what this guy's going to come up with'. Joe figured, why writer something into the script that we may not be able to do for the budget. So when the script comes to a transformation scene, it only reads '...and then he changed into a wolf.' Nothing about pointy ears, the spine snapping, or the chest bursting. That was left pretty much to me, and it was great to be trusted to that extent.'

However, the prospect to realize a transformation sequence that had never been seen on film before proved to be daunting for Bottin; 'We were stumped for a long time. I talked to Randy Cook, Jon Berg and Phil Tippett about the possibility of using replacement animation, but that didn't go anywhere. At that point, Rick and I were just going to do the transformations in cuts.'

Bottin found inspiration from Dick Smith's work on Altered States the year before, which had utilized air bladders for the transformations. Bottin came up a prosthetic appliance fitted with air bladders under the latex 'skin', conveying the idea that the flesh was reshaping itself.

Robert Picardo, playing the lycanthrope Eddie Quist, had air bladder prosthetics applied on his chest, arms, neck and face. The 'air bladders' under the face prosthetic were condoms, while the air bladders under the throat and chest appliances were hot water bottles. The throat appliance proved to be dangerous, as Picardo was not be able to breathe when they inflated.

Fur was also added on Picardo's arms by Greg Cannom, who applied all of Picardo's makeups. Picardo's facial prosthetic was sculpted to have a 'brutish' appearance.

A gruesome makeup, also with air bladders underneath the forehead and throat appliances, was designed for Picardo to wear as Quist after having been disfigured by acid. Picardo was unhappy wearing the gorey makeup, which led to an amusing incident;

'One day, being very glum, when it was the big makeup day, the acid face where they burned half my face off. I'm sitting in the hallway, after my 6 hour makeup session, looking very despondent. Like gosh, trained at Yale, two leading roles on Broadway, my first movie in California and my face is melted off in a low budget movie. And I'm sitting there with that look on my face, and Denis Dugan comes up to me and says 'Bob, next time, read the whole script'.

An extra air bladder prosthetic facial appliance was made for Elisabeth Brooks to wear during the barn fire sequence; it is only seen briefly.

While air bladders were used for the early stages of Quist's transformation, the rest would be achieved by puppetry - a method that Baker also had planned for American Werewolf, and which he would eventually realize the same year Howling was released.

Several puppet heads and werewolf masks were created by Bottin's team, utilizing similar techniques Baker and Bottin had used for the ape mask in Tanya's Island. The transforming 'change o head' puppets had internal mechanics of gears and level assemblies, as well as a device invented by The Burman Studio specialized for facial movements.

The mechanisms of the change-o-heads were designed to reshape the puppet's skull, via a cable controlled mechanisms. Doug Beswick provided assistance on getting the mechanical 'change o heads' to work. At least three 'change o heads' were made to represent Eddie Quist's transformation. Bottin explained the design process;

'What I did was put Bob Picardo through an all-day casting session, making 5 full-head casts - a terrible experience for him - and made all these face studies. Rather than making the wolf *on* Bob's face, I made it *from* his face. That may sound like about the same thing, but I was taking Bob's features and distorting them, making them animalistic. I looked for characteristics in his face that could be frightening to me, and exaggerated them. I think we came up with a very weird look.'

The first stage Quist change-o-head puppet

'I thought, well, maybe his nose go UP first, looking something like a pig's, and then grow out from there. Then, I thought, what sould the next step be? I had to guess. And I really wanted everything to be fresh. I'd do sculptures and then show them to my friends. If they reminded anyone of Island of Dr Moreau or Planet of the Apes, I'd start over.

The change-o-head puppets had a problem; other than their intended function, they were static. This fell to director of photography John Hora to solve; 'One of the things we would do was always make sure the camera was moving. What we did when we filmed it was change the speeds during the shot. The shot might start at 24 frames per second, which is normal speed, and as the action is progressing we would drop to 12 frames, and speed it way up so it had an uncanny fastness about it. Or as it drooled, we might go at a high speed, and slow it down so the saliva would drool slower'.

The second stage Quist change-o-head puppet

The transformation had been intended to be smooth and fluid, but technical limitations gave the on-screen transformation a jerky, shuddering look. Dante recalled; 'When we came to do it on the set, we would press buttons, or pull things, and sometimes things would pop. We tended to view it as a mistake, and when we were editing the scenes we tried to cut around the parts that changed abruptly.'

The scene was saved in post-production sound editing, as crunching and cracking sounds were played over the footage; 'All of a sudden they looked like they were on purpose. So the whole concept, instead of being this sort of supernatural, smooth, gliding change, became this torturous, painful, bone-cracking metamorphosis. In addition to covering up our mistakes, it improved the whole scene.'

The third stage Quist change-o-head puppet

A puppet 'chang-o-hand' was also made for the shot when Eddie Quist raises his hand (during the air bladder stage of the transformation), showing claws bursting out the end of it.

The change-o-hands with an early werewolf head sculpt.

Another change-o-head was used to depict Don McLeod's transformation as TC Quist in a very brief shot. I have seen it shared online that this was a preliminary transformation test puppet made by Baker and Bottin to convince Avco's executives that they were able to supply the effects on a budget. But, I so far haven't came across a concrete source, so this could have been made later in production for all I know.

During the barn fire scene, a puppet head - it does not appear to be a prosthetic makeup - is also briefly seen, and seems to take on a different shape in the snout in different shots, indicating that it was also a 'change-o-head'.

Was *this* one of the makeup tests that Baker and Bottin had brought to Avco's executives? Or was it the TC Quist change-o-head? Or were neither so, and they were both made during Howling's production?

A puppet head was made at the last minute to represent the transformed Karen White; the Karen-wolf puppet's design, which Dante likened to a Pekinese, was thanks to Dee Wallace not wishing to be seen as a monster, as Hora recalled;

'That (final) scene was not written as the way it is. (Wallace) was supposed to transform into a horrible werewolf. She didn't want to be remembered by the audience that way. So she had to be a cute one!'

Wallace herself explained; 'I had it in my contract that I wouldn't be seen as a werewolf! I said, I really feel she should be vulnerable and losing her fight. And that's why they came up with, what I think, looks like a Bambi werewolf!'.

The Karen werewolf scene was shot in the studio's production office on the day just before the film's prints were to be made. Hence the Karen puppet head being shot in extreme close-up - there was no set!

Bottin also was tasked with Howling's assorted gore effects. Another puppet was made from the cast of Picardo's head, for when Quist pulls a bullet out of his skull before transforming. This puppet matched the bullet wound makeup on Picardo, with a similar wig.

A pair of puppet hands were made for when TC Quist gets his arm chopped off in the cabin. Both puppet hands - one werewolf, one human - were fitted with air bladder mechanisms.

A grisly 'stub' hand prosthetic, the aftermath of the cabin attack, was also fabricated and worn by Don McLeod when TC Quist reappears in the barn finale sequence.

The barn finale also showed the brutalized corpse of Terri, having been mauled by Eddie Quist. This was realized as a torn throat and ripped chest appliance on Belinda Balaski.

Sources:

• Fangoria #11 & #20
  
• Cinefex #12
  
• Cinefantastique Volume 11 #1 (1981)
  
• Cinefantastique Volume 11 #3 (1981)
• Make-Up Artist Magazine #50 ' Rob Bottin: Shapeshifting Visionary—The Early Years' by Ron Magid
  
• 'The Making of The Howling' featurette 

Read more on The Howling's special effects in the 'Part 2' article, covering the werewolf effects.