Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

Sadly there is little in the way of solid writing or archive photos for the effects of Don Siegel's classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It was the late Bob Burns, film archivist and asisstant to '50s creature suit maker Paul Blaisdell, who was able to explain how it was done.

Burns, who knew many mask makers active in the '50s and '60s, was interviewed briefly for the 2006 featurette 'Sleep No More: Invasion of the Body Snatchers Revisited'.

The pods and the half-formed pod people were overseen by Milt Rice, who was credited under 'special effects'. However, Rice went to mask company Don Post Studios for help, with Don Post making the assorted foam rubber props. It was at Don Post's where the life-casts of Kevin McCarthy, Dana Wynter and King Donovan were taken, to create their duplicates.

The pods were also static foam rubber props, also created at Don Post's.

Don Post also made the 'birthing' pods, which worked via rudimentary air bladder techniques. An air pressure gun was fired to blow up the prop like a balloon, giving the appearance of a person's shape forming. The gunge was a mixture of soap suds, glycerin and shaving foam!

Body Snatchers (1993)

Robert H. Solo, who had already produced Philip Kaufman's Invasion of the Body Snatchers, wanted another shot at adapting the original Jack Finney novel to the screen. Solo told Fangoria about why he was disappointed with Kaufman's film, despite its positive reception.

'The '78 version wasn't a breakthrough film financially. Critics liked it, but it was aimed at thinking adults, and they don't go to the movies a lot.'

Solo's second attempt to film The Body Snatchers went through several scripts and prospective directors; Stuart Gordon was assigned to direct, until he had to abandon the project to work on 1992's Fortress. The job instead went to Abel Ferrara.

In the press at the time, it was noted that Ferrara was an odd choice, as he was more known for crime thrillers such as Ms. 45 or King of New York, as opposed to Stuart Gordon who, what with having directed Re-Animator and From Beyond, seemed like a much better fit.

The film's makeup effects were handled by the Burman Studio, possibly due to Robert Solo remembering Thomas Burman's impressive work on the 1978 film. Thomas Burman himself was not 'hands on' with the production, only personally supervising some gags.

Barney Burman was credited as supervising on the production, with the team consisting of Rob Burman, Jake Garber, Andrew Kenworthy and Nancy Howe-Kenworthy, Scott Stoddard, Nik Carey, Gregy Polutanovich, Hal Miles, Joseph Coswell, and Mark Killingsworth.

Ferrara's inexperience with directing special effects caused some issues with the Burman Studio, as Thomas Burman remembered. 'Abel didn't have a strong vision of the special effects. I love the guy, ad we didn't fight or argue, but at the same time he didn't have a clear vision of what he wanted from us, so it's hard to say what's going to end up in the finished film. He really wanted to see what we could do and then decide. But that's a problem, because you often find yourself painted into a corner, and effects aren't very flexible.'

This resulted in much of the Burman Studio's work makeup being cut from the final film, such as the deformed facial appliances on performers playing dying pod people. An elaborate appliance was made for the demise of R. Lee Ermey's role as a pod person, but the only trace are thumbnail images on the Burman Studio's archived website.

The Burman Studio team also worked on the scenes where humans shrivelling into dust, and pod people melting away. These were achieved with latex 'skins' that had the air sucked out of them , causing them to collapse on camera.

Unlike the previous two Body Snatchers films, this time the 'birth' of the pod people would be shown in detail. Several different puppets were made, each in a different stage of the pod persons development (some fetus-like, some almost 'fully grown). Burman explained;

'(We made) effects that show what's happening inside the pod as the replicas are developing, which is something that wasn't done in either of the earlier versions. In those, you see the pod replicas from the outside as they're forming, and you see them emerge when they're complete. For the pods themselves, we tried to create something that was ominous and unfamiliar-looking, yet organic. We tried to go in the direction of things that looked like a distortion of something you might find here on Earth, rather than something that screamed 'outer space'.

(I truly hope that someone out there has any more images of the assorted puppets and pod birthing effects from the 1993 Body Snatchers, as according to Rob Burman much of the Burman Studio's archives were lost.)

The pods themselves were designed by the Burman Studio, but there was another problem: the Burman Studio was based in California, while the film was entirely shot on location in Alabama. The pod props had to be constructed on the set by Matt Marich and Star Fields.

The workload for Marich and Fields was massive, as Fields remembered. 'Originally they wanted fifty pods. Then they decided they wanted a hundred, just to fill the trucks. But once we hit a hundred, the producer just said, 'Keep going.'. Tom (Burman) designed the prototype, and they wanted different sizes, so, going off his design, Matt sculpted the rest.'

'We're making about 70 'hero' pods which can be used for people carrying them. We're spending a little more time on these pods. They're going to be dressed with all sorts of mud and moss. The pods turn somewhat translucent in their most mature stage. They grow to 3 or 4 feet. Burman's handling the heavy effects makeup. The pods turn somewhat translucent. We're also making about 75 of the rigid lightweight foam ones becuase when the're harvesting them, they have big nets and so we had to make some light enough to be carried.'

The pod props themselves were made out of an AB urethane-type foam, but the paints were actually dangerous! Marich explained, 'It's a pretty toxic paint that we're using because we wanted to be sure that once we start working in the swamp that it doesn't rub off. Heck of a buzz from it. We had to go home early a couple of days.'

Sources

• Fangoria #118
  
• Cinefantastique Vol. 24 No. 2
  

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

The makeup effects for Philip Kaufman's downbeat remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers were handled by Thomas Burman and Eduoard Henriques. Burman had worked with Kaufman before on 1972's The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid, and remembered how he got the gig.

"(Kaufman) remembered me so he called me to come in and told me they were starting this movie in less than three weeks and told me what they wanted to do. Kaufman asked me if we could do these parts and pieces and I said we could do it but three weeks wasn't enough time.

I told him, 'You're shooting up in San Francisco and I'm in Los Angeles.' I've got a lot of work to do in just three weeks time. So we did the FX simultaneously as the movie was being shot. We would do the next gag for the following week. Eddie Henriques, a guy who worked for me, he and I would fly up to San Francisco, do the gag, jump on a plane, fly back and start working on the next one. I loved working on the film."

Burman and Henrique's work was mostly on plant-like alien 'pods' and the resulting doppelgangers they birth. The sequence of a pod almost copying Donald Sutherland's character needed a performer to wear a static mask in Sutherland's likeness.

There sadly is not much in the way of behind the scenes material for the film's other makeups, such as a shrivelled husk in Brooke Adams' likeness, or the infamous mask worn by a dog as the result of a pod 'copying' gone wrong. Kaufman explained,

“That was a case of what would happen with DNA if it got skewed or went awry, and if two pods were side by side, one of man and one of dog, and their (bodies) became fused in a crazy way. What monster could be created?"

An extra touch to this already grotesque image was the dog licking its human lips with its canine tongue, which was done very simply according to Kaufman. "We put something on the lips of the mask so that the (dog) would lick at it, and it worked.”

The 'birthing' sequence, where a fetus-like being emerges from a pod, was a much grislier update of the original film's rudimentary effects. In the original film, the birthing was achieved with an inflatable dummy, whereas this time it would realized via prosthetics.

Joe Gieb wore the prosthetics, consisting of a misshapen face appliance with discoloured makeup applied on his arms and torso, and clamber out of a modified pod prop.

The pods themselves were, I assume, made by Burman and Henriques as static props. Some of the pod props were specially designed so they could 'bloom' with flesh-coloured latex 'petals'. Several miniature pods were also made for the opening sequence.

The shots of both the miniature and full-size pods blooming were achieved via simple means according to Howard Preston, who handled the miniature effects. 'All of the sequences involving the pods flowering or sprouting tendrils were all shot in reverse. It amounted to pulling nylon threads through the surface of the leaf (...) In the case of the flower, the petals were made of latex and we just pulled them gently back into the pod.'

The life-sized pods.

The miniature sized pod.

Unlike the Don Siegel original, or Abel Ferrara's later 1993 remake, Kaufman opted to open his film with an effects sequence of the pods, in an almost ethereal state, abandoning their dying home planet. This sequence was handled by Howard Preston and Ron Dexter.

Howard Preston was skilled with plate photography, and so was able to work around the film's low budget. "The set was a piece of plywood. It was relatively small, I think it was 28 inches wide and 24 inches deep. There was a landscape integrated into the plywood that was actually consisting of ground-up volcanic rock, to make this kind of sandy, desert-looking area.

The foreground was the same volcanic rock, but in big chunks to give a look of forced perspective. So at least from one angle, with a very wide lens, it would look like the set was very, very large. The other component was the background of stars and planets; that consisted of a plexiglass sheet that was painted deep black and then holes were just pecked out of it to give the illusion of stars."

(To show the pods floating through the cosmos, Kaufman just used a vat of paste that, when poured into water, formed into clumps. He filmed this and simply reversed the footage!)

When compared to other Hollywood science-fiction films of the time, Invasion of the Body Snatchers had a fairly low budget. Yet if anything, Thomas Burman in particular was still proud of the work he did on the film.

"Over the years I realized one of the things I enjoyed the most was pulling a rabbit out of the hat. I like to be able to do things quickly and fast and solve them. (...) You don't always have the finest work, by the way. You have to save yourself sometimes using creativity. Invasion of the Body Snatchers is one of the most fun things I've done. I really enjoyed working on it. We got to do stuff that had never been seen before."

Sources

• 'The Special Effects Pod' featurette
  
• Cool Ass Cinema interview with Thomas Burman
  
• The Hollywood Reporter 'Why Invasion of the Body Snatchers Still Haunts Its Director'
  

Gothic (1986)

(I would like to thank Graham High for having sent so many images of his work on this film, as well as giving me valuable informatiom on how these effects were achieved!)

(As of September 2026, I would also like to thank Stephen Volk - scriptwriter of Gothic, Ghostwatch, and many other things - for kindly getting me in touch with Peter Ettedgui, who also worked on the film's effects for Christopher Hobbs)

"I felt pretty positive about the story when it was sent to me. It was extremely visual, which attracted me, and the use of laudanum gave me a springboard for my ideas. It was extremely prevalent in 19th century English literature, of course; Wordsworth and Coleridge were heavy into it. In his journal, Wordsworth said, ‘I take it only for a headache.’ His wife’s journal noted: ‘Poor William had another headache today. He has them most days, poor dear.’"

Those were Ken Russell's feelings about Gothic, the Stephen Volk script he had been assigned to direct. Volk's script was a retelling of Mary Shelley's stay at the Villa Diodati in summer of 1816, where she wrote the first draft of Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus.

Shelley was not the only writer to stay at the villa that summer, nor was Frankenstein the only work of Gothic literature to come out of that fateful visit; John Polidori was inspired to write The Vampyre, one of the earliest examples of modern vampire fiction.

Volk's script emphasized the psychological undercurrents of these novels, and when combined with its focus on laudanum, would allow the film to include many surrealistic, grisly images.

The special effects for Gothic were overseen by Christopher Hobbs, the film's production designer. Hobbs, a regular collaborator with director Derek Jarman, already had some experience with effects; he had designed the flesh-burning effects in Ken Russell's earlier The Devils, and also designed grisly transformation effects for the horror film Xtro.

Hobbs designed the effects on paper, assisted by a small effects team consisting of Graham High, Jeremy Hunt, Steve Onions and Ian Whittaker. High, Onions and Whittaker all had previously worked on Neil Jordan's The Company of Wolves.

High was especially important, according to Hobbs. 'We really needed a brilliant sculptor on that film so I stole him. I rang him up one day and told him I wanted to bribe him with lots of money. High is now the best in the business. One of the reasons I was able to do this film so cheaply was because he gave me good prices for being instrumental in this newfound career.'

One of the film's first 'shock' moments is when a phantom knight lifts his visor, revealing a rotting face covered in leeches. This effect proved to be a problem to film, according to Hobbs.

'The leeches were upset, so they wouldn't cling to his face and kept slipping off. This meant we had to rig the suit on its back six feet off the ground with a false wall on the floor behind it. I had to sew a mask made of fresh steaks to a skull, exposing the teeth in the process, and pin lugworms on it as a base. Just before the shot, our leech handler threw on the bloodsuckers and we slammed the visor down with me poised to raise it wearing a chainmail glove.'

Another briefly glimpsed phantom, that I sadly cannot find any behind the scenes images of, was of the hairy primate-like creature that steals a horse. This was not handled by Graham High, and thus likely the work of a freelance costume or prop maker.

Similarly, I haven't been able to find behind the scenes shots of the masks (and breastplate) made for the performers playing the clockwork automatons; one a piano player (seen above), the other a belly dancer. Again, these were not High's work, so made by another freelancer.

Graham High made Polidori's anatomical sculpture, and explained to me via email how he made it. "As a person who arrived at the film industry via being a scientific model-maker at the Natural History Museum (and freelancing for other museums and teaching hospitals) I loved this aspect of the movie. As you see I acquired a real skeleton and used it as the 'armature'."

High elaborated in the same email, 'Here are more pics of the flayed man. Sculpted by me and Jeremy Hunt in my studio. It turned out that Ken Russell and I had a shared love of the La Specola museum in Florence, the oldest science museum in Europe featuring many wax anatomical models, some going back to the Renaissance. Russell wanted a kind of Classical pose with a Renaissance feel. He was delighted by the figure and I was told that he took it to his own house after the film was finished! Certainly I never saw it again.'

High also designed one of the film's most grim aspects, the baby corpses that feature in hallucinations suffered by the film's fictionalized Mary Shelley. These scenes were based on the real Mary Shelley's grieving for her infant son's death. High explained;

"All the baby props were sculpted and cast in various resins and waxes. The prettier baby was articulated. The more square-headed one was a kind of jokey request from Ken Russell, that one of the babies should look a bit like Boris Karloff, as Mary Shelley 'gave birth' to Frankenstein. I took him up on it. Very much an in-joke."

The gag was not lost on Christopher Hobbs, who used the 'Karloff baby' for the film's closing shot. "(The script) said 'A sinister shape moves under the water'. Ken thought in terms of a sea monster for this, then we realized that one of the three dead babies Graham High had sculpted for Mary's nightmare bore a striking resemblance to the Karloff Frankenstein monster in miniature. So the shape that now rises to the surface of a swimming pool is this model. Not only did it signify her own stillborn baby but her literary child rising in her imaginaton as well."

Another creature barely seen in the film is the 'id monster' conjured up via a seance. Hobbs explained, "In the original script you never see it and you aren't sure if it is just in their imaginations. Ken was worried about this, as audience expectations were raised with nothing to show for it. So I insisted on designing a monster all of my own. What I came up with was a 7-foot high bouncing penis with a dead baby sticking out of the top. As a shock moment, it certainly fitted the bill and was as over the top as Ken could have wished for."

Peter Ettedgui, who worked as Christopher Hobbs' assistant, was actually inside the phallic monster. 'I had to climb into it and wobble about during the Fuseli Nightmare set-up. I believe the shadow can just about be discerned in the background.'

Ettedgui also had this to say to me about his work on Gothic. 'I do remember that there were a number of different artists working on the automatons, monsters and action props including Graham. I was working as assistant to the late designer Chris Hobbs on the film, and remember driving him all over London visiting various studios.

Alas I don’t have records of all these folk or who exactly made what. For my own part I took special pride in making massive cobwebs out of rolls of a very thin gauzy hessian, and making buckets of spectral ectoplasm, mixing silver paint into KY jelly. I remember a slightly shocked sales assistant at Boots in Barnet when I innocently asked her for every tube of KY they had in stock…'

Another complicated effect that was seen all too briefly in the film was the dummy prop made in Timothy Spall's likeness for when spiders crawl out of Polidor's mouth. Hobbs recalled how at first, they were just going to do the shot in a cheaper, but also much grosser fashion.

"One scene called for spiders to crawl out of Polidori's mouth. As we were near the end of my budget and couldn't afford a dummy head of the actor, I asked Tim if he would consider a plastic bag filled with the creatures inside his mouth sealed around his lips so they couldn't actually get down his throat. He would have reluctantly said yes, I know, but happily the money was found after all for a dummy head. In the end we didn't use spiders. All they did was crawl into a corner and fall asleep. We used cockroaches instead."

Graham High explained to me how the Timothy Spall dummy was made, as well as how it was operated and how the shot itself was done.

"For a quick gag it required quite a lot of work. Firstly life casting Timothy Spall. He was very laid back about it. All work took place in my studio in my own home as it was an entirely location picture and so no film studio workshops were hired. I offered to give Timothy a cast of himself. He responded 'Oh God, no. I hate looking at myself'.

The head has a chamber with two doors. The front, cable activated, door allowed the spiders out into the mouth. The back door was then opened and a hot hairdryer wooshed the spiders out. The facsimile dummy is made in wax to facilitate the putting in of cropped head hair, chest hair, etc. How easy it would be to do a CGI version of it today!"

The film's most infamous image, where a woman's breasts are revealed to have blinking eyes, was achieved with small, mechanized prosthetics. Graham High told me how it was done.

"Originally the eye-nipple gag was prepared with Cassie Stewart as the Claire Clairmont character. Cassie had quite full breasts and flat nipples so it was relatively easy to achieve a really good effect. Cassie left the film and Myriam Cyr replaced her in the role. Myriam was less well endowed and had quite protuberant nipples so our job was made harder and we struggled a bit to make the effect look seamless. There was also the matter of eye colour. We had eyes to match Cassie, but as far as I remember we just carried on with those eyes even though Myriam had (I think) brown eyes. Film schedules and all that.

No puppet chest was made. The plaster version of the alginate life cast was just to work on. The prosthetics (with mechanisms) were applied to the real actress. The whole process was a bit embarrassing for Myriam as she was quite new to the film industry, and Steve and I had to be quite intimate with her over repeated shots.

Inside the foam latex prosthetics were very tiny spring-return cable-controlled blinking mechanisms made by Steve Onions, who is brilliant at such things, The control cable was of course also under the chest prosthetic too. Thin spring-steel wires in the lids guided the lids open or shut. All very delicate to apply and to make the edges invisible."

The hard work that Hobbs, High and co. did on Gothic was appreciated by Ken Russell, who would work again with Hobbs on his next film, Salome's Last Dance. High told me a personal anecdote about Russell's feelings on his work, though a slightly bittersweet one.

"Ken Russell was apparently very pleased with what we had produced on Gothic and he gave me a first option on the effects for his next film, Lair of the White Worm. Sadly it seemed that my quote was too expensive for him, as the days of Ken Russell commanding big budgets were long gone. Bob Keen and his Image Animation crew did it in the end."

Sources:

• 'Where Russell Directs, Controversy Follows' Los Angeles Times, 1987
  
• Cinefantastique Vol. 17 No. 2 (March 1987)