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!

EDIT 26/08/2025: I would like to thank Francis Coates once again for being so kind, and sending me several never before seen behind-the-scenes photos of the Xtro monsters being sculpted and filmed.

'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. I've seen Harris get miscredited for quite a few of Xtro's effects, but generally Harris had very little 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!

According to Coates, there was not enough money to fabricate a puppet body for any close-up shots. To get around this, the empty suit was propped up like a mannequin, with special props operated from behind the empty suit.

This method was used for the shot where the creature flicks its tongue to kill a man in the forest, as well as the shots of it extending its phallic chest tentacle to impregnate Susie Silvey's otherwise unnamed 'woman in cottage'.

The suit positioned to film the impregnation scene. 

 

The suit positioned to film the forest killing scene. 

 

Coates' sculpture was used to make *one* recasting for a 'dead' latex skin, for the monster's corpse after the impregnation scene.

A latex skin recasted from the original mould. Ew! 

 

Coates and Gregory also handled the film's infamous birthing scenes, sculpting a pair of legs and a foam latex belly. The effect was achieved via Susie Silvey sitting in an alcove underneath the set's floor, so that her real body's lower half was obscured.

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; the first stage was achieved via an air bladder appliance coated in fake webs, with D'Abo's head peeking out from a hole in the set's wall.

For the second stage of D'Abo's transformation, an ovipositor-like piece was sculpted 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 made the alien bodypart props. These included the scuttling monster's tongue and phallic tentacle and a set of eggs.

(I could easily imagine that the 'eggs' were water balloons or even condoms, but how did they achieve the 'beating' effect when Bernice Stegers holds one in the reshot ending?)

The tentacle prop was reused for the film's reshot ending, with plastic bubbles attached to the bottom of the prop,to make it seem like a beating organ.

The tentacle prop reused in the film's reshot ending... 

 

...attached to some plastic bags attached to an air tube! 

 

Stegers holding the beating 'egg' prop. 

 

While Coates and Gregory handled the film's creature effects and transformations, the 'standard' makeup effects work went to Robin Grantham and John Webber. Grantham handled Philip Sayer's transformation at the film's end, as his skin starts to decay. The first stage makeup consisted of discoloured, scarred appliances on Sayer's cheek and back.

The second stage of Sayer's transformation makeup was achieved via laters of latex to give him a discoloured appearance, as well as make it appear that his skin was starting split open.

The third and final stage makeup had Sayer completely transformed into a bestial humanoid, 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?

Coates and Gregory were tasked with handling the alien father's final form; a bipedal, skeletal being realized as a puppet. Coates first made a clay sculpture on which the puppet was sculpted from.

I am actually still unsure as to if there were multiple puppets (doubtful, given the film's low budget) or, more likely, the puppet underwent alterations during the course of filming. The puppet had movable arms, head and jaws, which could be operated by a puppeteer.

For the close-up shot panning across the alien's body, showing its innards beating like a heart, I imagine the puppet had an air bladder appliance placed around it's empty torso.

The shot of Sam's face melting as he transforms into the skeletal creature was achieved with a mask placed over the skeletal alien puppet's head. Presumably the mask must have been made of gelatin or wax, and melted with a heat gun on camera.

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/