The X-Files (1993) - Season 3

Continued from The X-Files - Season 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 workship 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.

One of the first tasks for Lindala's team was to make yet another design of Grey alien, for the brief glimpses of aliens running in the season's opening episodes 'The Blessing Way' and 'Paper Clip'. Yet again the Greys were played by child actors in masks and prosthetics.

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

Much of the season's makeup effects again went to the gore, with 'Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose' requiring a heavy workload on that front! The episode required 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.

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

More briefly seen were the disfigured corpse dummies in '2shy', with one of the killer's dessicated victims only being briefly seen behind a misted up car window. The prop was seen more clearly when included as a Topps trading card.

Another corpse dummy was made to represent the same victim's body in an advanced stage of decay, and given a reddish, bloodier paintjob.

In 'The Walk', Lindala was tasked with turning actor Ian Tracey into an amputee. This was achieved with a pair of prosthetic stubs attached to Tracey's shoulders, with his real arms hidden under the bed. Lindala said, 'We cast him lying down on a weight bench, and it all glued on to him so nicely, that he got a little of subtle movement.'

John Shiban, the episode's writer, recalled how convincing the makeup was, 'It's just amazing that people would tell me they thought we had hired a real amputee for the role. We did things with mirrors to hide his legs, and (...) a special wheelchair built.'

Lindala also provided an elaborate burn wound makeup on actor Don Thompson, only seen clearly in the episode's last few scenes.

For 'Nisei', Lindala's team fabricated a Grey alien corpse dummy, sculpted with a dissected torso and innards.

For the episode '731', Lindala's team first had to create several burn makeup appliances 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.

'731' and 'Nisei' 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.

A set of dummy arms were made for 'War of the Coprophages' that were specially designed so that a cockroach could crawl into holes cut into the dummy arm. These arms were alos designed so that objects could be pulled inside the dummy to appear as if something was squirming inside. Lindala had done a similar trick on the first season's episode 'Ice'.

For the episode 'Grotesque', 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.

Much harder to catch is the prosthetics used to depict Kurtwood Smith's crazed cop transforming into the gargoyle when under its influence.

This was achieved as prosthetics applied on Smith as he is transforming, and a pullover latex gargoyle mask and fanged gloves when transformed. Sadly, the latter is so briefly seen, in quick motion and at a distance, rendering screenshotting impossible.

Kurtwood Smith in the gargoyle transformation makeup.

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

The episode 'Apocrypha' required at least two sequences of the 'black oil' pouring out of someone's face. The first shot was achieved as a dummy head with six hoses fitted inside. These hoses were specially placed around the dummy head's orifices.

The effectiveness of the dummy was partly thanks to some special effects set design, as Matt Beck explained, 'The first time (...) it was shot with some magnetic fluid that was pulled along with a magnet. It didn't look convincing and it didn't look menacing. It looked a little bit comic, and this was not a show where comedy was called for.

So we actually built a platform that had the floor of the submarine, and we mounted the camera, and the lights, and (the dummy) to it. Then we put the goop on, and we rocked the entire floor every which way, to make the goop flow where we wanted it to. But it doesn't look like the floor is rocking, because the lights and the camera are all mounted to it!'

The second 'black oil' shot was achieved with a prosthetic mask worn by actor Nicholas Lea, which was fitted with tubes that were hidden under this hair and clothes. These tubes would spray the fluid in a manner that made it seem it was poring out his orifices. Chris Waddell, one of the members of Lindala's makeup effects team, remembered the details of 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!'

Lindala also had to do some last-minute work on 'Teso Dos Bichos', 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.

Lindala's team yet again would make corpse dummies for the episode 'Hell Money', including a decapitated head, a burnt dummy body, and a hollow autopsy dummy torso which could be opened up for a frog to be forced out.

'Jose Chung's from Outer Space' 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.'

More gore effects were required for the episode 'Quagmire', to represent the victims of the plesiosaur Big Blue, including a severed waist and a decapitated head. (I am sure that the dead alligator was merely a taxidermy prop, but I could be wrong!)

Big Blue was originally a practical effects shot, before being replaced digitally. The reason for the replacement as Matt Beck recalled, '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 Lindala's crew must have helped with the Big Blue prop, as a sculpted plesiosaur head still exists in the X-Files Preservation Collection, located in Saratoga Springs.

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