Bad Moon (1996)

When adapating Wayne Smith's Thor into Bad Moon, Eric Red was adamant that unlike other werewolf movies that hid their monsters in shadows and quick cuts, his ferocious lycanthrope would be fully visible in almost all its scenes. Red told Fangoria;

'This creature's not shy. In most monster movies the beast isn't shown with absolute clarity, but in this one you see him in tight close-ups when he attacks the house at the end. He's surrounded by the home's interior lighting.'

Most effects houses balked at the prospect, but it was Steve Johnson who rised to the challenge. Red said, 'I hired (...) Johnson's XFX after a long search because I found them to be the most realistic in terms of (current makeup effects technology).'

The XFX team on Bad Moon were Bill Corso, Tamara Carlson-Woodard, Mark Boley, Bernie Eicholtz, Janet Evaschuk, Eric Fiedler, Joe Fordham, Deborah Galvez, Rob Hinderstein, Mark Killingsworth, James Kundig, Lennie MacDonald, Scott Patton and Dave Snyder. Charles E. Porlier was credited under 'key makeup prosthetics'.

XFX made several gore makeup appliances, for the torn throat and slashed face on Johanna Marlowe (remniscient of Griffin Dunne's makeups in An American Werewolf in London), a slashed throat and belly on Hrothgar Mathews, and slash wounds on Michael Pare.

Other gore effect gags supplied by XFX were a dummy head for a park ranger's head crushing, a dismembered ribcage found in a tree, a sliced apart dummy hand for Hrothgar Mathews' death scene, and a dummy werewolf head to gorily blow up.

The most elaborate of XFX' duties was Michael Pare's transformation into a werewolf. The first stage makeup was very simple as Johnson recalled; The very first stage of Michael's makeup in that transformation is just makeup! There's no appliances! He's got teeth, and he's got lenses (...) that are fairly subtle. The rest of it's paint, I actually applied it myself!

The second stage makeup was more elaborate, being a face appliance punched with grey hair to give Pare a shaggier appearance, with a mottled paintjob for a sicklier appearance. Fanged dentures and contacts completed the look. Pare remembered;

'It was a long scene, the transformation. Four nights! The makeup guys had a motor home, and I would sit in the chair, and for 8 hours they'd be gluing and pasting and painting (...) and all kinds of monster stuff. And then I'd go shoot for 12 hours, and they'd take it off. And I'd go to sleep and 4 hours later I'd be back in the chair. (...) I didn't flinch at the idea. Doing a real werewolf movie, the way it's supposed to be done. You have to be a fool not to agree to that!'

Pare in the second stage transformation makeup. 

 

Much more ambitious was the final stage transformation appliance that Johnson had sculpted for Pare to wear, as Uncle Ted's transformation intensifies. The lopsided, malformed makeup, an advanced remake of Johnson's makeup for Stephen Geoffries in Fright Night, was another attempt by Johnson to realize his vision of how a werewolf should transform;

'Ever since The Howling and American Werewolf in London I'd felt that, if a person was changing into a wolf, why would it happen evenly and symmetrically? Why wouldn't one side of the body boil up suddenly, followed by the other side?'

The transformation makeups were then enhanced (or, looking back, ruined) by digital technology. Johnson recalled about the process; 'It wasn't fully digital. The idea was we would make interim pieces and morph between them. So I still got to make several full-body prosthetic pieces, and if I recall some of them had a little bit of mechanical stuff in them, to help ease the difference between the dramatically different stages'.

At the time of filming, Johnson was hopeful on the process; 'This is the first werewolf movie made since digital technology has become so accessible so we have a really nicer marriage of animatronics, prosthetics and digital technology. We linger on the transformation in this film, and I think that for the first time we're going to have a genuinely gradual and asymmetrical transformation that pays off.'

Years later, Johnson's attitude was very different; 'It is probably one of the worst transformations EVER put on film, the result is 2D!'. It was so disliked that Eric Red removed the transformation sequence entirely in his director's cut.

The effects highlight of Bad Moon was its werewolf, which was required not just to walk around on-camera without cuts, but also grapple with attack dogs for fight scenes! Johnson found a way to get around the usual problem of werewolf suits, by doing away with wolf-like legs.

Johnson recounted on how he came up with the design, and its inspiration; 'The biggest inspiration for the wolf in Bad Moon was, well I was a huge fan as a kid of the Warren magazines, Creepy, Eerie, Vampirella. And there was a story with a depiction of a werewolf* that stuck in my mind since I was 12 years old. It was human in its lower body, from the waist down. The upper body was very wolf-like.'

Johnson described the suit's design; 'When you look at a wolf or a coyote, their shoulders are sloped and the neck is much longer. So what I wanted to do was replicate this old Warren cover. In order to get that longer (canine) neck, we built our animatronic head out (in front of the performer's head). It allowed us to fill it full of motors, but it also allowed the neck muscles to slope up and be real long, so it had this huanch like a real wolf.'

Johnson elaborated; 'I also wanted genuine wolf colouration, which was rarely been done, so we had the fur tipped and multicoloured like it is on real wolves and coyotes. And this time, we decided against a bald muzzle. In my opinion, this one's an improvement on the designs for Howling and American Werewolf'.

*Was it Frank Frazetta's cover for Creepy #4 that was the main inspiration for Johnson's werewolf?

A stunt head in gruesome action. 

The stunt head, attached to the suit in an attack scene.. 

Red wished for the werewolf's head to be the focal point of the design; 'I was very insistent on the amount of movement and detail that the head would have, because (...) by the end of the movie, the creature had to be seen in full-light and intense camera scrutiny'.

The werewolf head was sculpted by Bill Corso who had the added issue that the head would be covered in fur. Johnson remembered; 'It's kinda tough when you do a character that you know is going to be covered in fur (because) it thickens the sculpture, and buries the sculptural detail. So you've really got to have experience and know what you're doing, so you don't lose everything by the time you put fur on it, or do it too exagerrated and it looks ridiculous when you put fur on it. Bill did a really good job on it'.

Several heads were made; an animatronic 'hero' head and stunt heads for the suit, as well as the aforementioned dummy head to blow up in the rainforest sequence.

Inside the rubber suit was Ken Kurtzinger, who was made to endure the usual trials and tribulations of a creature suit performer, with added hardships. In Kurtzinger's own words;

'It was one of the hardest jobs I ever did. I made four trips to Los Angeles to have a full-body cast made of myself so that they could mold the werewolf suit to me. They had to make the suit two sizes smaller than that would normally fit me, and make it out of a really dense rubber because during the movie I was gonna be fighting actual (German Shepard) attack dogs.

The challenge with working with the dogs was that the werewolf suit looked so much like a dog, it actually intimidated most of the attack dogs! They weren't really willing to attack me! There was this one dog, a female dog, and she was the smaller of the shepards, but she was the most aggressive and wouldnt hesitate (to attack). It helped that she was smaller, as it made me look bigger (in the shot).'

As usual with monster suits, vision was limited for Kurtzinger; 'The hard part was you're looking out the mouth of the werewolf, It's got a piece of black mesh, a tongue that movies, and saliva that drools (out a pump). The drawback was you couldn't see what was attacking you! The suit was very limiting, just getting air was (hard!).

Eric Red viewed the experience in a humorous light, recalling to Fangoria;

'There are some scenes with Ken wearing a full-body werewolf suit, and there wasn't much room in the thing for air. It was made with six layers of latex to prevent the German shepherd from biting through, and Ken was also wearing this animatronic werewolf head as the costume's crowning touch.

After a while, he began to complain about the heat in this getup, but it was tough to look serious, supportive and sympathetic with these gripes popping out of a werewolf's mouth. Here was this huge, formidable beast moaning and groaning about itchiness and sweat. I couldn't help but tease him about it.'

Red had another amusing anecdote about Kurtzinger's ordeal; My fondest memory was (...) between takes, Ken had to keep the head on, and his body language was like this mopey werewolf. It was a very funny thing to see!

A 'weredog' puppet was also designed and constructed by XFX for the jumpscare dream sequence of lovable dog Thor having been contaminated by lycanthropy - sadly haven't been able to find any usable behind the scenes photos of the weredog puppet yet, but Eric Red did post some tiny resoluation images on his twitter account.

(I really, really wish these photographs were scanned in better quality, because it's such a tease! These sculpting and animatronic test images!)

Johnson was proud of his work on Bad Moon, to the point that he had a posable dummy made of Uncle Ted for display at XFX's shop. The dummy was made from a new casting of the original Uncle Ted sculpt, and was fabricated by the same people, but was otherwise a copy made for display and promotional photos. The fur is the biggest difference between the dummy Uncle Ted and the original Uncle Ted suit, as the dummy has a less grey-ish colouration.

Sources: 

• Fangoria #158 and #159 
• Assorted bluray featurettes