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.

The werewolf was always going to be an important element of American Werewolf, and Landis was firm that he didn't just want another actor in a makeup imitating Jack Pierce's Wolf Man work. 'I always envisaged it to be four-legged. I wanted it to be a great big beast!'

This caused a minor disagreement between him and Baker, who had pushed for a more traditional two-legged werewolf. 'I wanted it to be a biped and I was actually hoping for something a little more on the 'man' side as well. I thought it would be interesting, that kind of combination of animal and person. But John said, four-legged hound from hell!'

Landis may have had an ulterior motive in avoiding a two-legged werewolf; to ward off further comparisons with The Howling. As a cocky Landis said to Fangoria, 'I know from stills I've seen that our wolf is certainly very different from (Howling's). Theirs looks like Wile E. Coyote; it's a two-legged thing. Ours is much more of a wolf, a hound, a beast, a four-legged animal. It's not a guy in a wolf suit, it's not a puppet, it's not a mechanical thing, it's not a human. It's not anything you've ever seen. It's a big four-legged beast from Hell and it's wonderful.'

The initial Kessler Wolf sculpture.

Baker sculpted the werewolf's head, giving it a fierce expression ad bared teeth. Landis said about the head, 'It has big scary teeth that are going to tear you up, but it's also sculpted in a very angular way. The brows are very angular, and there are 45-degree angles all through it. There is something scary about 45-degree angles.'

There was also practical reasons for the Kessler Wolf's permanent snarl; the monster itself would not be seen in the film much, so what footage was used would have to count.

'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

The EFX team built three Kessler Wolf heads; a hero animatronic head (with cable controlled mechanisms to control its expressions and move the jaws), and two static stunt heads.

The attack scenes used the stunt heads, which were fitted with either hard acrylic teeth, or soft rubber teeth for the actors safety. These stunt heads were held like a glove puppet by Baker, who was concealed by a shaggy fur 'pelt' as the scenes were shot.

One important scene for the stunt heads was when Griffin Dunne's character is mauled to death by an unknown werewolf on the moors. Dunne, who had already frustrated Baker with his sour reaction to the undead makeups, was about to anger him even more.

'First take, he grabs hold of the (stunt) 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.'

The hero wolf head's understructure.

Obviously, the Kessler Wolf had to be furred, especially around the neck which could hide the seams of the suit. Baker found inspiration in his pet keeshond Bosco.

'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.'

The main challenge of the Kessler Wolf was how it would be realized, as how could a four-legged animal be realized without being a static prop? The idea of using a dog in a costume was immediately shot down, as was the idea of a man in a costume walking in all fours.

Baker eventually found the answer, after several days and nights of brainstorming how to solve the problem. 'Late one night, I was sitting in my living room and it came to me. I thought of a wheelbarrow race. So I stretched out with 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 Kessler Wolf rig was sculpted and constructed in California, to be ready in time for the location filming in England. The wolf suit was built roughly the same time that Baker was also constructing the alien puppets for Steven Spielberg's unmade scifi film Night Skies.

American Werewolf may have played a role in ending Baker's time on Night Skies. Night Skies had originally started off as a horror film, but Spielberg suddenly now wanted it redone as a more light-hearted film, which meant Baker would now have to start from scratch.

Spielberg didn't take it well when Baker rebuked the idea. 'I told Spielberg that this was like starting all over again and it was going to affect my work on American Werewolf. He got mad and said that he was going to lock up (the workshop) and call Carlo Rambaldi. I was shocked.'

Spielberg's new vision for Night Skies would eventually become E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, with that film's alien indeed realized by Carlo Rambaldi. The sudden closure of the workshop meant the EFX crew had to quickly relocate, taking the partly completed werewolf rig with them.

Bill Sturgeon remembered how that fateful day went. 'We heard a commotion in Rick's room and then Rick came in with the sunglasses on, which was usually not a good sign, and said, "Pack everything up. We're going to my garage". We had the werewolf body started, but we threw everything into my truck. We drove away with the werewolf in the back.'

Tom Hester also remembered the sudden move. 'We just had to pick up and disappear. It was very strange. We had to make ourselves scarce. The shop was only a large couple rooms, but we had to move all that stuff out and just hightailed it over to Rick's house.'

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

The werewolf 'rig' was a combination of a puppet and costume. The 'body' of the wolf had a jointed waist that allowed it to bend from side to side, giving it a more natural movement. The performer inside wore the wolf's front legs on their arms as they lay down on the board.

The wolf's back legs were rod-puppeteered from the crewmember who also pushed the rig on wheels. The suit was worn by Kevin Brennan in the EFX shop, but for several of the scenes shot in England the werewolf was played by trained dancer Brendan Hughes.

An American Werewolf in London was released in August, 1981, to a mixed critical response. If there was one thing the critics all agreed on, it was praise for the effects, with even Roger Ebert's less than impressed review calling Rick Baker 'the offscreen star of the film'.

At the time that American Werewolf was released, makeup effects was drawing more attention as an artform. The previous year alone had seen the release of two important films in makeup effects history; Ken Russell's Altered States and David Lynch's The Elephant Man.

It was because of Elephant Man that the Academy established an award for 'Best Makeup and Hairstyling'; while the film was nominated for several Academy Awards, there was no category for makeup and so Christopher Tucker's impressive work went unacknowledged.

Rick Baker would earn the first Academy Award for Best Makeup thanks to his work on American Werewolf. He wasn't the only success story to come from the film; many EFX team members, such as Steve Johnson, would go on to be major players in makeup effects.

Baker himself knew that American Werewolf was going to be a game-changer, as he regularly told the EFX team during its making. 'I told them, You guys are so lucky that you're coming into your first job, and it's the biggest thing I've ever done. This may be the only time in your life that you can do these things. In a way, you're lucky, and in a way, you're not; you have nothing to look forward to, because your first job is the coolest thing you'll ever do.'

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
• Rick Baker: Metamorphosis - Volume 1: 1950 - 1989