When The X-Files was commissioned, series creator Chris Carter had originally planned for filming to be done in his home city of Los Angeles. Most television productions at the time were filmed in LA, and Carter was already familiar with this due to his earlier TV work for Disney.
What cut this short was Carter's insistence on realism; he had wished for an alien abduction premise set in the Pacific Northwest (also the setting of
Twin Peaks, which Carter named as an inspiration), and nowhere in California was able to pass as the region.
Carter opted to move all filming to Vancouver, both for British Columbia's landscape and to save on the budget. This raised a new problem as, in 1993, Vancouver did not yet have any established makeup effects studios the same way California did.
The makeup effects of
X-Files were handled by Toby Lindala, who was brought on the show by makeup artist Fern Levin. At this point Lindala was a novice, as he said to Fangoria;
'I started out on a pretty low-budget scifi/horror show called Xtro II, creating a bunch of effects gags of a creature mutilating people. I also did a lot of straight make-up which gives you more of a connection with real skin tones and facial features rather than going way over the top in sculpture and painting. It helps when you study the actual anatomy of people and things'.
'Pilot'
Lindala's duties mostly went to straight makeups, with his first ever being a nosebleed gag in the pilot episode. The pilot episode also revolved around the discovery of a mysterious 'mammalian corpse', establishing the show's penchant for gruesome imagery.
I don't know if Lindala himself made the corpse prop, or it was made by a freelance propmaker; and if it was a freelancer, was it one based in Vancouver or Los Angeles?
The mammalian corpse prop in the Pilot episode.
'Young at Heart'
Lindala started tackling more complex makeup effects jobs as the season progressed, such as burn wound makeups in 'Miracle Man' or shots of worms crawling under peoples skins in 'Ice'. No doubt the salamander hand prosthetic in 'Young at Heart' was Lindala's handiwork.
However, complex monster suits were out of the question; the werewolf in 'Shapes' was cobbled up from parts lended by Greg Cannom. The werewolf's suit had been made for the 1987 TV series
Werewolf, and the facial prosthetic has originally been made for
The Howling!
The Howling mask being redressed by Prouty and Lindala for 'Shapes'
In The Howling, this mask was briefly seen in the barn fire sequence.
'The Erlenmeyer Flask'
However, it was Lindala who provided the alien fetus prop for the season's finale. Lindala used medical books for inspiration, and made three different designs. He said in Cinefantastique;
'We wanted it big enough that we could have some detail in it, have it definitely discernible and have it at the stage where it was beyond embryonic. The first one was a wet glaze sculpture to give us our basic dimensions.
The second sculpture looked a lot like Gazoo from The Flintstones (...) Since it was an alien you don’t really have to follow any particular physiology, so I made a rendition where we had a body just bordering the embryo stage. Chris Carter was really happy about it.'
Even this fairly simple effect caused problems for Lindala, as the sculpture would have to be pulled out of liquid nitrogen on camera. Lindala recalled in Fangoria;
'When you pull something out of (liquid nitrogen), it's still quite wet and frosts over, then steam comes off of it because of the vast temperature change. We ended up making the embryos out of a clear-casting resin. Thank god we had several, because there are a few scenes you won't see in the show.
Gillian pulled out one of the alien fetuses, and it cracked and the back of the head went flying off, all because of the temperature change and the studio lights. Thankfully, we had a couple of back-ups, and I was standing on the side, frantically gluing pieces back on. It was a drastic effect, but it was worth it.'
'The Host'
The first season's success led to Lindala having a team of assistants on the second, though still using his basement as a workshop! Lindala's crew included Adam Behr, Bill Terezakis, Doug Morrow, Roy MacGregor, Robert Moon, Charlie Grant and Brad Proctor.
'The Host' was the second season's first 'monster of the week' episode, with the infamous 'Flukeman' being perhaps the first proper monster suit made for the series at that point.
The Flukeman suit was built in just ten days, under 'insane hours' as Lindala described it; Darin Morgan, who wore the suit, recalled that it actually took 12 hours to fully apply the prosthetics and put on the suit. Lindala explained how the Flukeman costume was fabricated;
'
We made a suit that came down to the elbows and the knees, to allow it a little bit more of that baggy sort of worm-like look. His feet cast actually (came out) in a straight-out position, but it's a neat look when you see him crawling around, and he's got these sort of slipper sort of look to his feet. And a facial prosthetic, contact lenses and teeth that came out of the prosthetic as well as the distended lips.'
As usual for rubber monster suits, wearing it was not a pleasant experience, and the water filming sequences added more to Lindala's workload as Morgan recalled;
'Each day that I wore the suit, I would have to be in water, and the water would destroy the whole thing. And so Toby had to rebuild everything from scratch each day, so it was just an ordeal. And I wore two pairs of contact lenses, one on top of the other. One of them was for the color, the other to create a kind of milky film over that. The contacts were the only things that didn't hurt. I barely knew they were in there. And the good thing too was that they were prescription. I could actually see in them.
The rest of the stuff was actually quite painful. The mask and the rubber smelled of sulphur and the whole thing was unpleasant. I had no air through the nose, so I didn't eat, because you had to eat and breathe at the same time. It was just impossible. Reading the script, I thought, I was going to do more things, and then once I was in the suit, I couldn't really act in it. I just tried to survive. You could barely move like that. Being underwater was actually pleasant, because it cooled everything down. It was very hot in there as well.'
Lindala and his small team were proud of the Flukeman suit (especially as it became one of the series most iconic monsters), but after filming Lindala still had one question about Darin Morgan's performance; 'How does he go to the restroom?'
In a 'Behind the Truth' featurette, Morgan revealed the disgusting truth; '
The thing was incredibly heavy. I couldn't talk. There was no hole for me to urinate. Sex was completely out of the question. I decided to relieve myself when in the water (filming with David Duchovny) cos I figured Duchovny would never find out. He's never gonna watch these things!''.
'Duane Barry'
The Grey aliens proved troublesome for Lindala's team, as the performers were children. To save fuss, only one child actor had their head cast as Lindala recalled, '
Try to cast the full head of an eight-year-old! She wasn‘t too impressed until we got her out of it.'
Adam Behr made the Grey masks' eyes, by heat-forming lexan over a pool ball to give it a round shape, and tinted with inks for the glossy black colour. The 'bodies' were onesies and gloves provided by the wardrobe department, and painted over by Lindala's team.
Lindala also made finger extensions for the gloves, a tedious task for him; '
That was a bit of a chore because working on these tiny little fingers and getting the molds was such a long process. We glued them on to the end of the gloves and just extended the forefingers'.
Lindala elaborated; 'The aliens were all made off of one mold. There were a couple who had a little more character. We just wrinkled them up a bit & they became these wise old aliens. All were individual paint jobs, but from the same sculpture. (...) With the paint jobs & all of the different body sizes and proportions, it looked like a bunch of different beings from the same race.'
Filming was also awkward, as the children had to act next to Steve Railsback giving an intense performance as an alien abductee. One boy especially did not enjoy it as Lindala recalled; 'We put him in front of the bed, and Railsback is screaming bloody murder, and the camera comes back and the little guy just pulls his mask off and goes, ‘Where's my mom?“'. Poor kid!
'Irresistible'
Lindala's team made the episode's demon; 'The writers came up with an episode where a killer appears to transform into this gargoyle figure which is the embodiment of evil. The entire creature was all glued-on prosthetics; it took close to four hours to do it on the first day.
Once we got the colour scheme all worked out on him, it only took about three hours. With our schedule, we don't have a lot of prep time to take care of these things.
It consisted of a large piece with the humplike, bony shoulders, a two-piece head prosthetic that blended on the top and around just behind the ears, plus separate ear tip pieces and full back-of-the-hand prosthetics. Rather than use gloves, we wanted to keep his hands long and spindly. The gentleman who wore the makeup, Terry Abrams, really worked them well.'
The Donnie demon appliances being sculpted
Like much of Lindala's work, the demon makeup was only briefly seen; 'We wanted to hit the gargoyle with all of the detail we coul. There are a couple of shots, where it catches a little light, and you can see a bit of detail. The producers had the option to shoot it any way they wanted.
I would like to have seen a little bit more of it in the show, but I also like the fact that things like that aren't taken too far. They were not in the forefront, which seems to be a common fault of a lot of film and television productions today. When it's right there in front of you and you're dealing with it, some of the fear is gone.'
'Fresh Bones'
Lindala designed a gruesome facial appliance for Kevin Conway for a shot where his character hallucinates that he's rotting alive. This is only briefly glimpsed in the episode itself.
'Død Kalm'
Lindala also had to create several aging makeups for this episode. The early stages for Duchovny and Anderson's aging were done via more simple makeup techniques, with the more advanced stages realized as latex facial appliances.
Lindala's sculpts of David Duchovny's aged makeup appliances in 'Død Kalm'
'Humbug'
Another episode heavy on the makeup effects, thanks to being set in a carnival freakshow. One of Lindala's makeups was the disfigured face of the freakshow museum's curator, a half-face and hand appliance on Alex Diakun.
Director Kim Manners was impressed with Lindala's handiwork; 'This was just one scene, and l didn't want to do too intricate a makeup job. l was hoping that if we didn't see it that clearly, it wouldn't have to be that detailed. But as it turns out, Toby did a very detailed job, so we did end up showing a little bit more of it than I originally thought we would'.
A more elaborate makeup contributed by Lindala was the 'Alligator Man', which was actor John Payne in a foam rubber suit and facial appliance to appear scaly and cracked.
A more complicated makeup appliance was the bulging tumor on Vincent Schiavelli's abdomen as conjoined twin Lanny. Another prosthetic was made for Schiavelli, to depict the orifice when Lanny has 'left' his brother's body. I'm unsure if these were either by Lindala or KNB EFX.
The episode's 'monster' was Lanny's conjoined twin Leonard, capable of splitting off from his body. Only briefly glimpsed in the episode, Leonard was realized as a puppet.
Leonard was another of KNB EFX's contributions, being sculpted by Jeff Edwards.
'Anasazi'
A mummified alien corpse prop was made for the season's finale episode, with several other burnt alien corpse dummies also being made. Again, I don't know if these were made by Lindala's team or by KNB EFX!
The mummified alien corpse in 'Anasazi'. Note that the first image is a rotated screenshot.
Lindala's grisly work led to a bit of a reputation, as he recalled to Fangoria; '(Duchovny and Anderson) think I'm sick. And I think they're right. They and the producers are constantly coming up to me and saying, 'Lindala, that's really disgusting - but good.''
Sources:
- Cinefantastique Vol 26 No. 6 / Vol 27 No. 1 (October 1995)
- 'F/X EFFECTS LINDALA'S SPECIALTY', Vancouver Sun, October 1997
- 'The FX Files', Fangoria #142
- Assorted 'Behind the Truth' featurettes.
