An American Werewolf in London (1981) - Part 3: Kessler's Transformation

Continued from the Part 2 article on An American Werewolf in London which focused on the zombie makeups on Griffin Dunne.

Rick Baker remembered that even during their initial collaboration on Schlock in 1971, Landis was insistent to not redo the same methods as The Wolf Man;

'When I was doing Schlock (...) John had already written American Werewolf. He said it made no sense to him that if you were going to change into a wolf, that you would sit in a chair and be really still until you finished changing. He said it would be a painful experience for your body to be transforming, with the bones and muscles changing.'

When making The Howling, Joe Dante had also wished to break with Wolf Man-style lap dissolve transformations and during Baker's brief stint on Howling, some of his concepts made their way into the final film, in the form of the 'change o heads'.

Howling was several months released before American Werewolf, giving Baker the chance to see the choices that his protege Rob Bottin had made with the 'change o part' puppets. Baker opted out of using air bladder makeups like Bottin did on Howling.

Landis, possibly to avoid comparisons with Howling, wished for the effects sequences to be shot in harsh light rather than shadow (as in Howling), and as Baker recalled had his own ideas on how the sequence would be cut;

'I was pushing to have it all in one shot. I thought that would be really spectacular. But John pointed out that he didn't think it would be as dramatic. It would be better filmmaking to do it in cuts, to show different (body parts) in close-up. And as it turns out, that was the only way we really could do it!'

The first stage of the transformation was a 'change o hand', itself the first of the many 'change o parts' utilized in the sequence. Baker described the change-o-parts internal mechanisms;

'Basically if you have a syringe, with the plunger out, connected to a plastic tube going into another syringe with the plunger in, you push the plunger in on this syringe, the other plunger goes out. A basic pneumatic ram! It's basically a plastic piece with four syringes in it, and you push the plunger, the hand would stretch out'.

At least two 'change o hands' were made, both made from lifecasts of David Naughton's arm; the second change-o-hand was sculpted to have a slightly more lupine appearance, to represent how quickly Kessler's body was changing.

Rick Baker with the first change-o-hand. 

 

David Naughton filming with the wolf-like second change-o-hand. 

 

The next shot has Kessler's hands fully transformed; this was achieved as prosthetic hand appliances worn by David Naughton. According to Steve Johnson, in a mini-interview for his Rubberhead autobiography, Landis was displeased with the hand appliances;

'John Landis was actually mean to Rick Baker on-set, he was abusive to him. (...) John was like, 'Rick, this is an outrage! This is ridiculous! I can't put these on-screen, these look like Popeye, get them off my set!' '

David Naughton was not a hairy person, so hair had to be stuck on his body. Baker remembered the trick his team used to free up the shooting schedule;

'We actually did the hairy chest first, shot that stuff, and then trimmed the hair off and shot an earlier stage, and then pulled off some more hair, so we could have more makeups in one day.'

More 'change-o-parts' were needed, namely a pair of 'change-o-legs', and a 'change-o-back'. The change-o-legs utilized the same techniques as the change-o-hand, but the change-o-back was more complex. Underneath the urethane 'skin' (which we will get to in a bit) was a series of sculpted bone and shoulder shapes, all controlled by rudimentary pneumatic rams.

A prosthetic makeup was applied on Naughton's face after thsis tage, giving him a slightly more lupine look, as well as to seam in the later stages of the transformation.

The shot straight after Kessler's back changes required a fake rubber torso to be worn by Naughton, along with the face and hand prosthetics. The torso was sculpted to have a more pronounced ribcage, giving Naughton a top heavy appearance. Baker recalled;

That was the goofiest-looking stage which fortunately went by pretty quickly. The face was still relatively human, but it had this thick, dark mane from the neck on back. It sort of reminded me of the ‘goons’ in the old Popeye cartoons. (...) David had the big rib cage and back on, hand appliances that only left him some use of his thumbs, the fur mane, the face and teeth — and that’s how he went to lunch. I have this hysterical memory of him trying to eat fish and chips all through all that and having a hard time of it.'

(Surprisingly haven't been able to find behind the scenes shot of the prosthetic torso!)

The next shot has Kessler rolling over on his back, showing that his entire body has taken on a wolf-like shape. The effect was achieved by having Naughton, his face and arms in makeup, sit in an alcove hidden by the set's floor, and 'wearing' a rubber torso placed just under his neck.

The torso was sculpted by Tom Hester as one piece. Hester recalled; 'My father was an orthppedic surgeon so I've always been interested in anatomy and really enjoyed figuring out how the veins on the surface show up on one spot, and dive down below the surface. Not super monsterish style, but make it realistic in a way'.

Tom Hester with the sculpted torso. 

 

Hester sculpting the torso. 

 

The torso required minimal puppeteering from underneath the set, which Baker remembered as frustrating;

'It had a couple of rods sticking out the ankles, that we could move the feet with. I was never really happy with how they were looking. And I remember after we decided we had it, and got David out the whole. I remember looking at the body, without a head or arms, convulsing exactly the way I wanted it to do! 'You're puppeteering exactly the way I wanted!' 'We're just trying to pull the fucking rods out!' '

According to Baker, 'Purposedly, John wanted the head to change last. He didn’t want the head to change very much because he wanted the transformation to basically almost climax with the head change'.

For this stage, Baker made 'change-o-heads', which utilized similar techniques to the previous change-o-parts, as well as to his protege Rob Bottin's own change-o-heads on The Howling.

The change-o-heads, along with all the other change-o-parts in American Werewolf, were coated in a rubber skin made of a urethane compound, Smooth-on #724. The urethane had a plasticizer component that could make it more elastic, which suited Baker's needs greatly.

The only problem was that the plasticizer, in addition to continuing to act on the urethan until it liquified (meaning there was limited time to film the the change-o-parts), would also act on any plastic it came in contact with.

This meant that the undersides of the change-o-parts, in particular the change-o-heads, were made out of a water-extended resin, with a fibreglass inner structure. Bill Sturgeon elaborated on how the change-o-heads were made;

'We took a life cast of David Naughton, and Rick did the sculpture from there. Rick did the mould, and once we did the mould, we core it out to a certain thickness, and end up with the (change-o-head) core that the skin goes over.

At that point, we just cut all the pieces out, and put all the mechanics on and keep working it until it's in exactly the right place to give the effect we were looking for'.

The change-o-head was more complex than the other change-o-parts, and so used cable mechanisms to operated the extending jaw. The below images show the construction better, with holes cut into the resin underskull out of which levels would push out.

The first (and second) change-o-head required a life cast of David Naughton pulling a pained expression with his eyes closed. The reason for this was partly as Baker felt having the eyes open would give away that it was a puppet;

'I was worried about making eyes that look real enough and getting the eye mechanism to work in this head that was gonna be stretching and moving. We purposedly closed the eyes in the Change-O-Head — the eyes were squinting up in pain because I just knew it was gonna be a problem to make the eyes look right.

And we took a life cast of David Naughton doing a pained expression (...) and then sculpted it to look like it was changing enough, so it wasn't just human David'.

To bridge between the first and second change-o-heads, a prosthetic appliance, based on Baker's sculpt for the second change-o-head, was fabricated and worn by David Naughton with specially-made contact lenses. Naughton spent an extraordinary amount of time in prosthetics and life-casts for the sequence, as he told Fangoria;

'After eight to ten hours in makeup we would finally get out on the set and shoot for 45 minutes. That would be it. One day, I was in makeup for 16 hours. It was the longest day of my life. We shot for three or four hours, different angles, all kinds of moves, so that they would have anything they needed in editing. I was a complete vegetable by the end of that day.'

The second change-o-head was sculpted to have a more wolf-like appearance. Baker designed the second change-o-head to have a subtle asymmetrical appearance, but this was not apparent in the final cut;

'One side is more human, one side is more wolf-like, and my thinking was you could start shooting on the human side, it would turn and then you’d get more out of the Change-o-Head.

But we found out as we were shooting it, when we turned the head faster — the more movement there was, (the more) you actually didn’t see the stretching-out of the face, which was the kind of big payoff in this whole piece; so we ended up not using it that way with the turning.

We ended up with just a straight profile (shot) with it kind of stretching and shaking as it grows out.'

At least two other change-o-heads were made; a partial head for the close-up shot of Kessler's ears elongating into wolf-like ones, and a full head for a close-up shot of Kessler's fangs sprouting from his gums, that was ultimately never used in the film.

The sequence ends with a brief shot of the fully-fledged werewolf, but with less fur than the final suit. The 'man-beast', as the crew called it, was mostly the work of Tom Hester;

'We had an additional casting of the (transformation) body (...), so we used that, folded it up into a crouched position and then just fabricated some foam arms and shoulders, and I think there was a head, (which) was another casting from the original wolf mould. I took that and carved it down, shrunk it down a little bit.

It wasn’t meant to be as big as the final werewolf. So it was all just sort of cut and paste polyfoam and then I put latex over the surface of it and laid hair on the body. And that was set up as a rod puppet that we worked from underneath (the set's floor)'.

Despite the months of preparation, the transformation scenes were all filmed in a week. Baker recalled how funny it was that so much work amounted to very little screentime;

'The transformation didn't really take all that long to shoot the physical things. John would say 'Action', and the (change o head) would stretch out, and then he'd go 'Cut! We got that!' And it's like, we got that? I spent months working on this thing, and it took you ten seconds to shoot it! (...) But then I went with my crew to see the movie with a real audience, and when that ten seconds happened of the face stretching out, people stood up and cheered!'

Baker's EFX crew with the assorted 'change-o-parts' (and more!). 

 

Sources: 

• 'Beware the Moon: Remembering An American Werewolf in London' (2009)
• Fangoria #129
• Cinefex #16

Read more on An American Werewolf in London's special effects in the 'Part 4' article, covering the werewolf itself.