An American Werewolf in London (1981) - Part 4: The Kessler Wolf

Continued from the Part 3 article on An American Werewolf in London which focused on the famous transformation sequence.

In order to differentiate his werewolf from The Wolf Man (and possibly also The Howling), Landis was insistent that his werewolf would not walk upright. Baker remembered;

'I remember having arguments with John, because I wanted it to be a biped, a two-legged werewolf, cos I was thinking a werewolf's more like that, probably because of The Wolf Man. He kept saying he wanted it to be this demon hound from hell'.

One of the initial design maquettes.

Per Landis' 'hound from hell' description, the wolf head was sculpted with a snarling visage. As Baker explained in Landis' book Monsters in the Movies; 'It’s also sculpted in a very angular way. The brows are very angular and there are 45° angles all through it. There is something scary about 45° angles.'

There was more practical reasons for the Kessler Wolf's permanent snarl, in that it would be shown only in very quick shots as Baker remembered;

'That’s one reason he’s sculpted with an extreme kind of expression to begin with. I was worried that if we rely totally on the mechanism to make the expression that they would use a part when it isn’t really making an expression — you know, we’d shoot something but they’d cut in before or after when it was (emoting) so I thought if it’s only going to be this long, let’s make it look scary. No matter, even if we’re not pulling any cables or doing anything.'

An early, unused sculpt by Craig Reardon.

Steve Johnson with a Kessler Wolf head

When it came to how the Kessler Wolf's fur would look like, Baker found inspiration from none other than his pets;

'I had (...) a Keeshond (...) which was this hairier dog and kind of almost wolf-like. A lot of times I’d look in the mirror and I’d make faces and kind of like be working on sculptures and it looks like me and my dog was there so I was like — okay. He’s kind of like a wolf, you know, he’s got four legs, he had this big mane of hair which the wolf kind of had. So yeah, (Kessler Wolf) was very much based on my dog Bosco.'

Three heads were constructed; a hero animatronic head (with cable controlled mechanisms to control its expressions and move the jaws), and two static stunt heads for attack sequences.

The attack scenes utilized the stunt heads (which could have either 'hard' or 'soft' teeth fitted in) being held like a glove puppet by Baker, who was concealed by a shaggy fur 'pelt'. The pelt was briefly fitted with squibs for a close-up shot when Kessler is killed by gunfire at the end.

Baker ran into more frustrations with actor Griffin Dunne (who as described in the 'Part 2' article, was displeased with being in makeup as the undead Jack Goodman) when shooting his character's death by werewolf attack. The stunt head was new and Baker had requested it not be manhandled during the take, but Dunne did not care;

'First take, he grabs hold of the wolf and rips the foam face right off the skull (...) I was none too pleased about it (...) I was thinking, ‘OK, if that’s how he’s going to play, let’s put the hard teeth in.’ I didn’t put the hard teeth in, but when John said ‘action’ I was just like beating the crap out of Griffin with this head. It was just like I took my anger out on Griffin and I was just hitting him with this damn thing. I think it made the scene that much better. I was like, ‘if you’re going to play rough, I’m going to play rough too.'

When it came to visualizing the Kessler Wolf's body, Baker had to compare human and canine anatomy, something that also proved useful when sculpting the 'change-o-parts' and prosthetics for the transformation sequence. Baker stated;

'The way I decided to approach the transformation was through comparative anatomy. I didn’t have a wolf skeleton in my collection, but I had a dog’s and that was close enough. Comparing it to a human, you find that many of the bones are similar; it’s just that the proportions are different. I made lists of the differences — what the major changes were, whether this got shorter or that got longer — then figured out how we could get a suit out of this, in the later stages, that made sense.'

There was still the matter of how the Kessler Would would be realized in motion, fully mobile in its fleeting glimpses. Baker remembered how he solved the problem;

'I thought of a wheelbarrow race. So I stretched out my legs over the edge of a chair and my arms out in front, testing the balance, seeing if I could shift around while still holding my weight. Then I thought, ‘what if we had a flat surface to support the weight — like a diving board with wheels — where we could move it around and vary the height?'

The sculpted head, hands and limbs on the 'wheelbarrow' rig.

The 'wheelbarrow' rig was devised by Doug Beswick, and was essentially a hybrid of a suit and puppet. The upper half of the werewolf was a suit with the performer inside, lying on their front, while the bottom half was a puppet. The head was cable-controlled, and the back legs were rod-puppeteered, while the front legs where the performer's in gloves.

Two people wore the 'wheelbarrow' rig's suit; Kevin Brennan, who was part of Baker's EFX team, and Brendan Hughes, a trained dancer. According to assistant director David Tringham, Hughes was a good choice;

'(Hughes) had this really strong torso so he could hold himself in there at this awkward angle and just be with his legs sticking out the end with nothing to support him really.'

Baker and his EFX team's work on American Werewolf was a game changer of special makeup effects, earning Baker his first Academy Award for the recently created Best Makeup and Hairstyling category.

The category had been created thanks to Christopher Tucker's work on The Elephant Man a year earlier. Tucker would attempt his own, much more gruesome spin on Baker's werewolf transformation effects in The Company of Wolves.

American Werewolf also cemented Baker's own reputation as a master of make-up effects, as well as launching careers for much of his EFX alumni, in particular Steve Johnson who would go on to be a major player in makeups effects.

Baker looked back on the experience years later; 'I cringe looking at some of the stuff in the transformation. It was thirty years ago and I was thirty years old and the average age of my crew was like nineteen. There were kids who had never worked on a film before. I do think it’s pretty amazing that people still hold it in pretty high regard, this thing that was done by a thirty year old and nineteen year olds who’d never done this stuff.'

Baker's EFX crew with their handiwork. 

 

Much of American Werewolf's masks, suits and puppets still survive today, including the main Kessler Wolf suit, which was renamed 'Oscar' for its role in earning Baker an Academy Award.

The Kessler Wolf suit was restored by Tom Spina and his team. You can read up about it on his website, as well as a lot more photos of the suits before and after!

Sources: 

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