Xtro (1982)

EDIT 27/09/2024: I recently interviewed Francis Coates about his work on Xtro, as well as touching on his work on other genre productions as a sculptor and modelmaker. You can read it here!

'To do the most disgusting things that we could possibly get away with' was director Harry Bromley-Davenport's imperative for Xtro. To this end Davenport hired newer actors from theatre and television rather than star actors, to let the budget mainly go to effects.

Francis Coates, a sculptor who had worked for the BBC and White Horse Toy Company, was credited under 'Creature Effects'. Assisting Coates was Richard Gregory, who ran the freelance effects company Imagineering, and credited under 'special effects operator'.

Robin Grantham was credited as 'makeup supervisor', with John Webber credited as 'additional special makeup effects makeup'. It can be assumed that Grantham and Webber handled Philip Sayer's and Simon Nash's transformators towards the end of the film.

Tom Harris, who was credited under 'mechanical effects', was responsible for the pyrotechnics, the radio controlled toy tank, etc. Harris had NOTHING to do with the creature effects or makeups!

Coates and Grantham both worked from designs by Christopher Hobbs, credited under 'visual consultant'. Hobbs, a production designer, had also visualized (on paper) the gruesome effects sequences in Ken Russell's The Devils and Neil Jordan's The Company of Wolves.

Family man Sam Philips, abducted by a UFO, returns to Earth as a scuttling alien. It was Francis Coates who decided the alien should walk on all fours, as he was tired of all the monsters he'd made on Doctor Who that were performers walking upright in masks.

Preliminary sculpt of the monster suit by Francis Coates 

 

Inside the monster suit was mime artist Tim Dry, of the music duo Tik & Tok. Dry and his counterpart Sean Crawford were chosen for their skill in body movements, with Dry playing the monster and Crawford playing a giant Action Man.

Crawford got the better end of the deal as all he was required to do was wear a large static mask (fabricated by Coates & Gregory) and army fatigues, and walk around a set.

Meanwhile Dry was subjected to a life casting of his body in the crab walking position (a photo of which can be found on Coates' website) for the foam rubber suit to be sculpted around, and then for the actual filming had to crabwalk in a damp forest at night while wearing the suit!

Tim Dry in the suit being positioned to film a close-up shot. 

 

Coates' sculpture was used to at least make *one* recasting for an 'empty' latex skin, after the monster has impregnated an unlucky Susie Silvey.

A latex skin recasted from the original mould. Ew! 

 

Coates and Gregory handled the film's other transformation effects and assorted props; two sculpted dummy legs and a latex skin were made for the infamous birthing scene. I suspect that this involved Susie Silvey partly hidden underneath the set's floor to achieve the illusion.

For when Philip Sayer is rebirthed, a fake umbilical cord prop was also made, for him to bite apart. The 'umbilical cord' was actually wet spaghetti, while the blood was tomato soup! Not many behind the scenes images of this sequence!

More advanced latex prosthetics were made for Simon Nash's and Maryam D'Abo's alien infections. According to Coates, this was Richard Gregory's work, and he explained how the effect was achieved;

'We (made) a body with very thin latex channels inside them, pretty much invisible. (...) we made these ball bearings ('eggs') and pushed these ball bearings along these so-called veins to make them stand up. (...) The third stage, we just used a suction pump so that the tubes just disappeared from her body, but the 'eggs' stayed'.

(Richard Gregory also handled the brief throat slashing effect for when an unlucky cleaner is killed, realized as a prosthetic appliance and fake blood pump.)

The Simon Nash prosthetic; was this just a DIY air bladder effect? 

 

The infection appliance on D'Abo 

 

Coates and Gregory also handled D'Abo's full transformation into an egg-laying mutant; an ovipositor-like piece was sculpted, while latex appliances were placed over D'Abo to achieve a cocoon-like effect. D'Abo herself had to sit on a bicycle seat (obscured by part of the set, to achieve the illusion that she was stuck on the wall) for several hours!

Coates and Gregory also realized the film's alien bodypart props, such as the Tim Dry monster's appendage, as well as a set of eggs and a phallic organ for the film's reshot ending. I imagine some form of pump was used for the 'heartbeat' effects on the latter props.

While Coates and Gregory handled the film's 'creature effects' (and the film's stranger gore effects), the 'standard' gore and makeup effects went to Robin Grantham. Most of the work came for Philip Sayer's transformation at the film's end, as his skin starts to decay. The first stage makeup consisting of discoloured, scarred appliances on Sayer's cheek and back.

The second stage of Sayer's transformation makeup consisting of laters of latex giving him a discoloured appearance, with appliances to show that his skin was starting to split open.

The third and final stage makeup had Sayer completely transformed into a bestial appearance, with the latex applied in a way to make it appear that the skin around his face was cracking apart. Dentures completed the animalistic look.

Grantham and Webber also were tasked with transforming Simon Nash to have a decayed visage as well; it seems that a latex face mask was made for Nash to wear. Interestingly, the original ending had several child actors in eerie face masks, to imply they were clones of Nash's character; I wonder if these were taken from the same cast used for Nash?

The ending has Sam completely transformed into a skeletal alien being; the distance shots of him standing with Simon Nash were achieved with a posable puppet sculpted by Coates.

The closeup shots of the alien were achieved with a more detailed puppet, possibly a radio-controlled one according to Coates. The close-up puppet was more detailed, with a posable head and a throbbing, 'beating' heart.

The shot of Sam's face melting as he transforms into the skeletal creature was achieved by making a wax mask placed over the skeletal alien puppet's head.

Interestingly, Coates said that this was *not* reused from the same mold as the Action Man mask, despite the similarity with the eyebrows and ears.

The melting Sam face mask, over the skeletal alien puppet 

 

The giant Action Man mask. 

 

Sources:

• 'Xtro Xposed' interview with Harry Bromley-Davenport
  
• Fangoria issues #19 and #24
  
• Famous Monsters of Filmland issue #191
  
• Rod Serling's Twilight Zone Magazine, December 1982
  
• Francis Coates' official website: http://www.scopedesign-uk.com/
  

Waxwork II: Lost in Time (1992)

The sequel to Waxwork again had its special effects supervised by Bob Keen, who also did some second unit directing. Among Keen's team was Paul Jones and Stephen Norrington. Keen's duties alternated between the various pastiche monsters and the copious gore effects.

Keen recounted about why he took the sequels gig so soon after having worked on Clive Barker's Nightbreed; 'The attraction of doing a Waxwork film is the range of things you get to do as an effects person. You get everything from aliens to Godzilla to Jekyll and Hyde. Usually, you never get all that in one movie.'

The original Waxwork was notorious for a gruesome effect where a man's leg had been gnawed to the bone, which Keen matched in the sequel with Bruce Campbell's torn open chest; 'His chest is peeled back for the entire sequence and hawks are pecking out the flesh - it's very impressive. Then there's this other guy who gets his jaw knocked off by a falling beam and has to spend the rest of the scene with it hanging there. Oh, and Baron Frankenstein gets his head squeexed so much, his eyes, teeth and brain pop out.'

The ribcage prosthetic was applied on Campbell by Paul Jones, who reacted in horror when he realized he had accidentally scalded Campbell's chest, but was relieved when it turned out that it was just a temporary burn that healed the next day.

The various pastiche monsters were mostly Gothic horror homages, keeping in line with the first Waxwork. The Frankenstein's Monster did not take any cues from either the Universal or Hammer depictions, instead following more from the original Mary Shelley novel and realized as a prosthetic makeup with a heavy jawline and brows.

One sequence required a maiden being transformed into a 'panther woman'; the transformation's first stage makeup utilized air bladder prosthetics, while the second stage utilized a rubber mask only seen in motion.

The fully transformed panther woman was achieved as a mask fitted with animatronic mechanisms allowing the mouth and eyes to open.

The most elaborate of Waxwork II's pastiche segments was the spaceship segment sending up both Ridley Scott's Alien and James Cameron's Aliens; naturally a facehugger parody was required, and realized as a squid-like animatronic puppet with mechanisms allowing the eyes to blink. A soft rubber puppet head was fabricated for when the alien bursts out of its mouth, evoking moreso The Stuff than the original Alien!

The sequence's parody xenomorph was realized as a man in a sculpted rubber suit, with a head fitted with mechanisms to allow the mouth to shoot in and out. Bob Keen explained the alien's design process; 'The alien wears protective armor; it's a bit like a crustacean. It has adopted the shape of some creature and what it looks like inside is completely different.'

The Godzilla parody appeared to be realized as a puppet, and was only briefly seen - and it's intentional shoddiness reflected the style of suits in many cheaper Japanese TV productions!

The gargoyle briefly seen in the time portal segment appears to be a reuse of the gargoyle stopmotion miniatures seen in Hickox's earlier Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat and will be discussed further when that film is covered here. Sources:

• Fangoria #108 'Waxwork II: Time for Terror' by Anthony C. Ferrante
  
• Assorted behind the scenes featurettes.