The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) & Quatermass II (1957)

The BBC's original production of The Quatermass Experiment was, even by the standards of 1950s filmmaking, a very cheap affair. The BBC did not have a department for special effects in 1953, nor did it have the money to hire a freelance effects company.

Nigel Kneale, the serial's scriptwriter, remembered the BBC's blunt reaction to the ambitious sequence of a giant clump of alien algae inside Westminster Abbey. 'When (the BBC) realized there was a special effects sequence showing a monster in the sixth episode, they said to me, "Well we're not gonna do it! You wrote it, you do it!" '

Kneale and his future wife Judith Kerr made the monster themselves with some very DIY methods. They coated a pair of gloves in plants and other detritus, putting the gloves on and placing their hands in a hole cut in a blow-up photo of Westminster Abbey's interior.

The camera would be facing the blow-up photo, and Kneale would wriggle his fingers while wearing the gloves, to simulate that the creature's tendrils were moving.

Judith Kerr wearing the 'monster' glove decades later.

The cheap effects aside, Quatermass Experiment received large viewerships and critical praise, and various film companies attempted to buy the rights from the BBC to make a film adaptation. What drove all these companies away was that, if the serial was to be adapted faithfully - alien-induced warts and all - the resulting film would get an 'X' rating.

The one studio that did not balk at the prospective 'X' rating was Hammer Film Productions. Anthony Hinds, Hammer's owner, was so impressed with the serial that he had written to the BBC asking for the Quatermass rights before the serial's last episode was broadcast!

Hammer was a fairly unknown studio that produced low-budget 'quota quickies' and Hinds realized that the 'X' rating (which a more prestigious studio would avoid) could be used as a marketing gimmick, hence the film adaptation's title of The Quatermass Xperiment

Hammer's commitment to the original serial's grisly tone (and that 'X' rating!) meant that the film would not shy away from body horror or graphic death. The transformation of Richard Wordsworth as the mutated astronaut Carroon was handled by makeup artist Phil Leakey.

Leakey had previously only worked in 'straight makeup' duties; Quatermass Xperiment was his first foray into 'monster' makeups. Decades later, Leakey explained how he did the makeup. 'Richard remained in the hands of the makeup departmet for as long as he maintained humanoid form. (...) I had some discussions for the producer and director Val Guest, and we concluded that Richard should not look ugly - at least, not to start out with! Instead, he should look sad, ill...perhaps rather pitiful. After we all agreed on that, the rest was left up to me.

(The mutated arm makeup) was invented using simple items - corn flakes, rich, cotton wool, rubber and latex. We had no laboratory in the studio at that time, so I had to make everything at my home! The cactus-arm was a wrarparound piece made from rubber, cast from a plaster mold, which was attached to a lady's stocking so Richard could slip it on and off easily. Likewise, the handpiece was built onto a cotton glove.'

Leakey also made the corpse props of Carroon's victims, making a dessicated head prop and shrivelled hand props.

The 'inhuman' monster scenes, along with the matte paintings and miniature shots, were handled by Les Bowie's fledgling effects company. I've not yet found any information as to how they achieved the shot where a 'remnant' of Carroon's mutated body slithers across the floor.

Was it rubber mixed with cloth, or perhaps, like the main monster, tripe?

Quatermass Xperiment's finale utilized effects that while still primitive by today's standards, were still more sophisticated than the original serial's very DIY methods! Val Guest, the film's director, remembered how Carroon's final form was achieved.

'There were quite a few attempts to construct the monster that appeared in the climax, and eventually it ended up being made mostly out of pieces of tripe, as well as rubber solution. That was all the work of Les Bowie, the special effects man. It was all shot in the special effects department'.

Producer Anthony Hinds recalled how miniatures and camera trickery were also used for the finale. 'We had no money in the budget for special effects. We built a little model of the roof with this scaffolding there—the Abbey was supposed to be being redecorated, and this monster was in the scaffolding. And we got some tripe, which we wound round this thing on an elastic band, and when we undid it and ran the camera backwards - or rather printed the film backwards - it coiled its tentacles.'

The shots were the creature burns were done, according to Les Bowie himself, via 'some sparks and fireworks in the thing, and we made it react because we were using little wires and strings'. Sadly, in yet another example of old-school filmmaking's disregard for animal welfare, some close-up shots replaced the model with a real octopus that was set on fire.

Les Bowie's Carroon monster puppet.

Quatermass Xperiment was a commercial success, leading Hammer to immediately produce X the Unknown. X the Unknown was written as a Quatermass sequel proper, but was quickly retooled into an original film after Kneale vetoed Hammer's proposal.

X the Unknown once again had Phil Leakey and Les Bowie returning to do the makeups and special effects respectively. Leakey handled the grisly effect where a doctor is melted alive from exposure to radiation. Leakey explained the effect in Fangoria;

'For that effect I built a spong rubber hand, and into the hand were set thin plastic tubes with perforations along their length. These tubes entered the forearm through the wrist to each finger, and all the ends were attached to a specially-adapted pump. At the director's signal, a special chemical mixture was pumped into the flaccid handpiece, which immediately began to swell up and discolor. It was quite a good effect.'

The shot of the hand swelling was accompanied by a melting wax head built up over an anatomy skull, with camera trickery used to make the melting appear quicker; at least thirty or so years before Raiders of the Lost Ark!

An earlier version of Leakey's malformed hand.

The melting wax head.

Les Bowie's special effects were again a combination of matte paintings, miniatures and puppetry; I am not quite sure how the effect of the radioactive mud blob was achieved as of now; was it a rubber 'cloth' (also utilizing tripe?) with a light underneath?

Les Bowie's X the Unknown blob.

Interestingly, a year before X the Unknown, the BBC had allowed Jack Kine and Bernard Wilkie to establish the BBC's Visual Effects Department, and the Department's first major workload was, of course, the BBC's own sequel Quatermass II.

Among the assorted miniature effects and spacesuit costumes, Kine and Wilkie also had to depict the alien blob writhing in the refinery's reactor. This was achieved cheaply, but effectively, as 'an empty tin, a toy ladder, Kine's hands in latex (gloves) and some dry ice'.

Jack Kine and Bernard Wilkie's blob.

When Hammer greenlit their own adaptation of Quatermass II, Bowie Films Ltd would return to handle the special effects. Bill Warrington overseen the miniature and creature effects, assisted by Henry Harris and Frank George.

At the film's finale, a set of giant alien blobs burst out the reactors and go on the rampage. The blobs were realized similarly to the Carroon mutant in Quatermass Xperiment; they were made from a mixture of rubber and tripe from a butchers, and shot in a miniature set.

The extensive miniature filming under the studio lights caused the tripe to go off and stink, turning the shoot into a disgusting experience! Brian Johnson, part of the Bowie Films crew on Quatermass II, remembered that tripe was still being used for effects shots on Ridley Scott's Alien, but by then they cleaned it to prevent smelling!

Sources:

• Timeshift 'The Kneale Tapes' (2003)
• Fangoria #50 'Reluctant Monster Maker' by Randy Palmer
• Bernard Wilkie obituary on The Guardian, 2002
• Hammer – The Haunted House of Horror (Denis Meikle, 2024)
• 'Doubling Down - Discovering Quatermass 2' featurette

Species: The Awakening (2007)

The last of the Species films had its makeup effects handled by Joshua M. Logan's JML Film Corporation. Producer Frank Mancuso and director Nick Lyon opted to keep a similar tone to the original, which influenced the design of the film's aliens Miranda and Azura.

Logan explained in a featurette, 'The Miranda alien was very much inspired by HR Giger and Steve Johnson's Sil designs from the original film. The look we were going for was a very tall, very thin, extremely sexy, very streamlined alien. Nick's original input was that he wanted her to look like a runway model on heroin, and so that was our departure point.'

Another factor that influenced the Miranda alien's creation was the short deadline! ''We had a total of seven weeks from start to finish to build everything for the film before we began shooting. The timeline was extremely tight, and because of this schedule we actually began sculpting the alien bodysuit before we had a performer to go inside it! '

The sculpture had to double for both female aliens. It took about one week from start to finish to sculpt the suit, almost singlehandedly by Doyle Trankina. He then sculpted a crown piece to overlap the suit, and a face which would overlap the crown as a one piece prosthetic.'

'Once the sculptures were finished, the moldmaking process could begin which in the case of the bodysuit was done as a two-piece fiberglass mold due to its size. I believe the mold took two days to finish.'

A subtle difference between the two suits was the facial prosthetics, according to Logan. 'We sculpted different faces for the Miranda and Azura aliens, with the Azura alien looking far more sinister and menacing, trying to match her character.'

The Miranda facial prosthetic.

The Azura facial prosthetic.

The sculpted cowl piece.

'It took our makeup team about an hour to apply the alien suits on top of our two performers, Natalya and Veronica. The suits were painted by Mark Jurinko. The colour schemes of the two aliens were different. Miranda was a fleshy pink, and Azura was kind of a cold blue'.

Logan touched on how tough it was for the suits to wear. 'Performing inside a creature suit really isn't easy, and our girls did a spectacular job. In particular the fight sequence (...) the girls spent something like 15 hours straight inside the suits. It was just a marathon!'

(The other alien suit, seen in the last of the images below, as far as I know never appears in the film and is not touched on in the behind the scenes featurette I used as reference. Was it a suit rejected for the film, or was it loaned from another production?)

Prosthetics were applied on Helena Mattsson and Marlene Favela for the shots of their alien roles transforming. Logan recalled, 'We designed a series of prosthetics for both Marlene and Helena that we would apply over almost their entire body. It was difficult, but thankfully both ladies were extremely patient and helpful with what was an arduous task.'

A grisly prosthetic was made for Marco Bacuzzi for his role as the mutant Rinaldo. Logan explained, 'We achieved that with a puppet mouth that would strap on to Marco like a reverse backpack. Then we would use a prosthetic appliance, that would go over that and cover half of Marco's face, to give the impression that his head was ripping open.'

JML also were tasked with the alien cocoons, which were a complex effect according to Logan. 'At the same time that the suits were being fabricated, we began sculpting the alien cocoon, which was the single biggest effect we had to create for the film. The idea with the cocoon was that we wanted to see an actor inside it. We wanted to fit an actual actor inside it. So we began the sculpture by using a bodyform, as our sculpting armature.

We had to make a heavy duty steel frame for the cocoon, which wouldn't only support the weight of the cocoon which weighed about 300 pounds, but also the actor inside it.

We ended up casting the cocoon's skin out of a water-clear urethane, so that the actresses could be seen from outside the cocoons. Tom Killeen painted the cocoon's skins in three days.'

Sources:

• Special Effects Makeup of SPECIES: THE AWAKENING