The X-Files (1993) - Season 3

Continued from The X-Files - Season 1 & 2

The success of the previous season now allowed Lindala to hire more assistants, as his workload was increasing yet again. By this point, Lindala had moved into a new workshop to handle the show's assorted makeup effects, and no longer using his basement!

Lindala had at least seven assistants at this point of the series, with one of them being Mike Fields who sculpted preliminary maquettes, masks and dummy props.

However, Los Angeles effects shops such as KNB EFX were still making props that had to be transported up to Vancouver, for anything too complex for Lindala's fledgling effects shop.

'The Blessing Way / Paper Clip'

New Grey alien masks were made, yet again to be only briefly glimpsed in the episodes. The Greys were played by child actors in masks and prosthetics.

Unlike the Grey masks seen in the previous season's 'Duane Barry', these were given a more paler skin coloured paintjob. The masks were reused for extras playing the hybrids in '731'.

'Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose'

Much of the season's makeup effects again went to gore, with this episode requiring a heavy workload on that front! The script detailed a sequence of Peter Boyle, as the titular Bruckman, slowly decaying in a vision of his own death.

Lindala was tasked with realizing the stages of Bruckman's decomposition, including several shots of the flesh falling apart. Lindala said in a 'Behind the Truth' featurette;

'That was a really fun gag. We first made a dummy of Peter Boyle, painting in some marbleing and veining. That was then composited to the copper tubing duplicate of a ribcage that sat underneath a gelatin torso. And then we had six heat guns (aimed at it). It's a great look, as skin first starts to fall around the ribs, and then break away and peek back.'

To achieve the effect of Bruckman's body seemlessly rotting in one shot, the various shots of Boyle lying down, and the various prop bodies, had to be blended digitally in post-production. Visual effects designer Matt Beck explained how the shot was prepared for the digital editing;

'Because we shot it in different stages, we had to line up each stage with the preceding one (...) Because the idea is, even though we're shooting it in a lot of seperate pieces digitally we're gonna combine it, so it looks like it all happens at the same time..

The first stage Clyde Bruckman corpse dummy

The final stage wax corpse dummy.

'The List'

A set of grisly corpse props were made for this episode, including a decapitated head, a headless dummy body, and a rotting dummy head and arms propped up in a chair.

'2shy'

More corpse props were made for this episode, with one of the killer's dessicated victims only briefly seen behind a misted up car window. The prop was seen more clearly when included as a Topps trading card.

'Nisei' / '731'

A Grey alien corpse dummy was fabricated for the two-parter, sculpted with a dissected torso and innards.

Several burn makeup appliances were made for the extras playing disfigured prisoners. The most elaborate one was worn by Colin Cunningham as Escalante, due to his character having several speaking scenes.

Both episodes also required makeups for the extras playing human-alien hybrids. As the alien extras would only be seen at a distance or wearing hazmat suits, the hybrids were realized as pull-over latex masks, with some gored chest appliances.

Alongside the aforementioned 'Blessing Way' / 'Paper Clip' masks, the masks from the previous season's 'Duane Barry' were reused for the extras to wear as the hybrid prisoners.

'War of the Coprophages'

Several fake cockroach props, as well as a fake grasshopper, were made for this tongue-in-cheek episode; I'm not sure if the fake bugs were made by Lindala-Schminken, KNB EFX, or another company. These props are owned by The Creature Feature Museum on Instagram.

'Grotesque'

For this episode Lindala's team was also tasked with the propwork; namely the clay sculptures made by the episode's crazed killer. However, at least two of these sculptures were specially designed so that a dummy corpse head was inside.

At least one of these sculptures was designed to represent the 'real' gargoyle possessing the killer. Technically this would fall under propwork, but it's such a nicely made sculpture, and ostensibly the episode's monster, so I'm including it.

A pullover latex gargoyle mask and fanged gloves was made for when Kurtwood Smith's crazed cop transforms into a gargoyle. Sadly, the latter is so briefly seen, in quick motion and at a distance, rendering screenshotting impossible.

A promotional shot that shows off the fully transformed gargoyle mask and gloves.

'Apocrypha'

The episode required at least two sequences of the 'black oil' pouring out of actor Nicholas Lea's face. This was achieved as a prosthetic fitted with tubes that were hidden under this hair and clothes. The tubes sprayed the fluid in a way that looked like it poring out his orifices.

Chris Waddell, a member of Lindala's makeup effects team, remembered how the effect was done, as well as how uncomfortable it was for Lea, and his less than mature reaction;

'(Nicholas) read the script, and while production said to him, 'This is going to be extremely uncomfortable, we recommend that somebody else do this', Nick said 'No, I wanna do it'.

When Nick got to (Lindala's) shop, before doing his face cast we said 'Nick, this is gonna suck. This is going to be really, really not fun', and he said 'Nope, I wanna do it!'

Basically Nick's appliance was elaborate, but also not elaborate. It was a foam appliance (likeness) of his face, and it had all kinds of tubes that ran up to his eyes, nose and mouth, and it came up through his hair and the tubes came back into a bundle of tubes that all ran to a pressure cooker. And the pressure cooker was what we used to control the ooze going up the tubes and out his mouth.

So getting Nick into this, with all these tubes, was not fun. I wasn't on set when I did this gag, but I know very much about everything that happened. To get Nick on set, they put this on him. And when you're filming, things take time. We know very well that 'you're gonna be next' means 'No, you're bumped' (back in schedule). They kept on bumping Nick. He was very uncomfortable (wearing the appliance) and started to get agitated about it.

They were like, 'Okay you're next Nick!', half an hour later, 'We're breaking for lunch'. And Nick lost it! He was kicking and throwing a tantrum on set. And while he's doing this, the appliance was still on his face with all these tubes, and Charlie (Grant) was still carrying the pressure cooker behind him as Nick was freaking out!'

The prosthetic appliance worn by Nicholas Lea.

'Teso Dos Bichos'

Lindala had to do last-minute work for a scene where Scully would be attacked by a crazed, possessed cat. The trouble was that Gillian Anderson was allergic to cats.

To get around this, Lindala fabricated a cat puppet with articulated arms and mouth. The scenes of Gillian fighting the puppet cat were a source of great hilarity to the crew.

'Jose Chung's From Outer Space'

This was a very 'monster' heavy episode. Several 'fake Grey' masks were sculpted, similar in design to the ones made for 'Blessing Way'. The masks were made of foam latex, and the 'hero' masks had animatronics inside to make the eyes blink.

The 'hero' alien costumes were cheap; past the mask, finger extensions and foam latex gloves, the only other components were spandex bicycle shorts and winter boot insulation over the feet. The clothing, prosthetics and exposed skin were all airbrushed the same colouration.

This photo was provided to me by Charlie Grant.

The three main alien performers were Mike Fields, Chris Waddell and Doug Morrow. Waddell described the experience in an interview with the Fandom X Archive Podcast;

'This took an hour and a half to get us into the costumes, which isn't that bad in terms of how long some people have to sit in a makeup chair for! We couldn't see anything, for as soon as we put the heads on, the eyes would fog up. I could see out a little pinhole through the mask's nose, and we couldn't really open our mouthes to eat anything (in the mask), so crewmembers would feed us crackers and cheese and little bits of food that could fit in our little alien mouths.'

The costumes were hard to wear, which led to many awkward incidents on set. Waddell described one of the worst in the same podcast episode;

'One of the worst things that happened to me during filming 'Jose Chung', and it was a very difficult position to be in, especially when you have an idea of how much money everything is costing. I had my alien head on. I rarely if ever get headaches, but I started to get a headache.

It was building to the point that I was feeling sick. I didn't want to complain, but it got to the point where I had to. I said to Charlie Grant, 'I'm sorry but something is really wrong with my head!'. When they took the head off, the battery pack for the servos operating the eyes had slid forwards, and had been pressing into my skull. I had a square indentation in my forehead where the battery pack had been pressing in!'

Also in 'Jose Chung's From Outer Space' was the ogre-like Lord Kinbote. According to visual effects designer Mat Beck, 'He was kind of a homage to these stopmotion Ray Harryhausen monsters. We didn't have time to do a real stopmotion puppet so we put a guy in a suit.'.

Prelimary maquette of Lord Kinbote.

Inside the Kinbote suit was stunt coordinator Tony Morelli, was was asked by Lindala to wear the suit thanks to his tall size. The suit was hard for Morelli to wear, being heavy, hot and hard to breathe in, and yet Morelli had to spend ten hours inside it!

The Kinbote suit's head had servo mechanisms to control the eye, which could blink on camera. To make the suit taller, the legs were stilts, with Morelli's actual feet being inside the suit's knees. Walking with the stilts attached meant Morelli more or less walked on tip-toes.

It was Mat Beck who achieved the effect of Kinbote's movement, which resembled stopmotion animation via camera trickery; 'By varying the camera speed and playing with the shutter, we were able to make it look like it was a badly-done puppet.'

'Quagmire'

'Quagmire' had a fakeout ending where it turned out the 'Big Blue' monster was actually a crocodile, which is dead by the time Mulder and Scully find it. The static crocodile prop was actually fabricated in Los Angeles by KNB EFX, according to both Henrik Van Ryzin and Brad Proctor, who at the time worked for KNB and Lindala respectively.

The plesiosaur Big Blue was originally a practical effects shot, before being replaced digitally. Matt Beck recalled the reason why; 'The hope was to get something that looked like a sea monster. The result was more like a large dryer hose being towed behind a boat. On two days notice, we had to throw together Big Blue, the world's fastest put together sea monster!'

It seems that the sculpted plesiosaur head still exists in the X-Files Preservation Collection, located in Saratoga Springs. The Big Blue head was made by Toby Lindala's team.

Sources:

• 'F/X EFFECTS LINDALA'S SPECIALTY', Vancouver Sun, October 1997
  
• Trust No One: The Official Third Season Guide to The X-Files (Brian Lowry, 1996)
  
• Assorted 'Behind the Truth' featurettes.
  
• Fandom X Archive Podcast interview with Chris Waddell
  

Continued in The X-Files - Season 4