The X-Files (1993) - Season 6

Continued from The X-Files - Season 5

When production of The X-Files moved to Los Angeles, the series' makeups were overseen by Cheri Montesanto-Medcalf. X-Files was not Montesanto's first brush with horror, as she had previously did makeup work in 1982's Fear No Evil and 1988's The Lady in White.

Montesanto explained how she got the X-Files job in an interview with Classic-Horror.com.

'I had worked with one of the producers, (Bernadette) Caulfield before. I worked for her for fifteen years on and off. Bernie’s specialty was TV movies.

She introduced me to one of the executive producers of X-Files. Well, I was working on a television movie at that time, and I guess he was looking for people to do character makeups and prosthetics.

I flew to Utah to meet him and Rick Schroeder to do a makeup test. I guess they were a little surprised when they saw me, because as soon as I walked in the room I got the feeling that they thought, “She won’t be able to do this.”

I guess they thought that a man would do it. You know, I’m an ok-looking girl, and here I come in with my red lipstick on, and everything. Well, anyway I did the makeup test and they loved it.

After that, I just went on and did some other things. In fact, I was working on Forces of Nature at the time. Bernie called me and said that she was working on X-Files and that they really wanted me to do the series.

I was kind of like, “You know, I’m doing a movie right now, and I really don’t know if I want to do TV.” I had never really done a television series. I told them, “I’m sorry, I’m not available.” She said, “They really, really want you to do this. They saw some of your film reels and they really want you.”

I said, “I’m sorry, but I’m working right now. The only thing you could do is to have someone else start it and then I’ll come later.” She said, “No, you gotta start it.”

I talked to some of my friends in Los Angeles and they were saying, “You gotta do it. It’s huge. Everyone in Hollywood would love that job.”

I was like, “I’m working on a movie right now, though. I can’t just leave.” To make a long story short, I ended up getting heat exhaustion while I was in Georgia on the movie, and I had to leave anyway. So I had to take the job at X-Files. It was all meant to be I think.'

While Montesanto was head of the X-Files makeup department, her 'hands on' duties mostly were on 'straight makeups', such as the burn makeups in 'Two Fathers', the 'de-aging' makeup on William B. Davis in 'One Son', and the period-accurate 1940s makeups in 'Triangle'.

The special makeup effects - ie mutilated corpse props and creatures - were contracted to John Vulich's Optic Nerve Studios, whose previous television experience included Babylon 5 and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

However, the series' opening episode 'The Beginning' is a bit of a mess in terms of crediting the makeup effects, partly for its recycling of one of Amalgamated Dynamics' (ADI) 'long clawed alien' suits from the feature film X-Files: Fight the Future.

The alien costume that appears for most of 'The Beginning' was almost certainly loaned from ADI. It can be assumed that Optic Nerve was allowed to use the ADI suit's mold to cast a 'hollow' copy for the shot of it shedding its skin underwater.

The skin shedding shot would require closeups of the 'long clawed alien' hands and back flaking away as the Grey underneath is exposed, and to further complicate matters this shot would be done underwater.

Vulich explained; 'We have an alien with the skin of another alien on top of it, and have it dissolve underwater on cue. We got an actress, Wendy Cook, who I had worked with on Cocoon when I worked at Greg Cannom's. She was very waif-like, very skinny.

We just did makeups on her, very minimal makeups, just finger extensions and coloured and airbrushed her to look like the Grey alien. We had one of our guys who was scuba certified, I think Greg Solomon. He was in there with a squirt gun underwater, actually squirting the pieces of the (ADI aliens') skin off on cue, which worked surprisingly well'.

The final shot of the fully fledged Grey was realized as a puppet, shot underwater in a water tank. However, the episode credits Thomas R. Burman for the special makeup effects, and the below image was taken from an archive crawl of the Burman Studios website.

What makes matters more complicated is that the Grey alien's design was one that Optic Nerve used for later episodes with Greys as well. So who originally made it? I reached out to Rob Burman, who puppeteered the Grey alien on the shoot, and he had this to say;

'(Burman Studio) may have inherited the mold from Optic Nerve for the alien. They didn’t have the job long enough to have made it in shop if I remember correctly. So probably no sculptors at The Burman Studio (made the alien)'.

So, perhaps Burman Studio was called in to help out Optic Nerve given their considerable experience with puppetry? Or perhaps Burman Studio made the puppet from an Optic Nerve sculpt? The latter is more likely, as the design was echoed with the Grey masks made for 'One Son', 'The Unnatural' and 'Field Trip', but I can't be sure.

It can be assumed that the gore effects in 'The Beginning', such as the mutilated corpse of the long-clawed alien's host, or the shot of a translucent puppet hand, were Optic Nerve's work.

The Burman Studio also worked alongside Optic Nerve on the episode 'Dreamland', fabricating the puppet body meant to represent a couple fused together after exposure to alien technology. These photos were posted by Rob Burman on Instagram.

Optic Nerve made the Mulder and Scully corpses in 'How the Ghosts Stole Christmas'. Vulich explained how these corpse dummies were made;

'We had to do mummified corpses, one of Scully and one of Mulder. For this, we requested the lifecasts (of Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny) that Toby (Lindala) in Canada had originally made of them previously for some other makeups he'd done.

From that we made clay replicas of them, and just carved away at their faces. We wanted to retain a subtle amount of their features. Initially in a meeting with Chris (Carter) he wanted them to be initially recognizable as them. Then he wanted them to be kind of a 50/50 thing where when you first saw them you didn't quite recognize them.

Then, you kinda see 'Oh! That is them!', so we had that dramatic beat. Which worked well from a dramatic standpoint, but from a design standpoint made it difficult for us to find that balance.'

A demon suit was required for 'Terms of Endearment', realized as a fully sculpted foam rubber suit and prosthetic facial appliance. This demon is only seen more clearly thanks to being used on the cover of Fangoria #186, where many images in this article originate from.

And on the note of Fangoria, it is the origin of this image stated as being from 'Two Fathers'. The same photo is hosted on the website of Optic Nerve Studios' successor, Alchemy FX Studios. Yet I don't remember this in the episode, and it isn't from either Babylon 5 or Buffy.

Apparently, much footage shot for the episode was left on the cutting room floor, partly for the production team feeling that Montesanto's 'de-aging' makeups were not that convincing.

So perhaps this mystery alien - possibly meant to be Optic Nerve's update of the alien hybrid makeups seen in '731' - was a casualty of these cuts?

Optic Nerve also got the chance to update another Lindala-Schminken makeup design, in this case the faceless 'alien rebel' appliances.

Optic Nerve also handled the shots of the faceless aliens having the faces ripped off in the follow-up 'One Son'. The effect of the faces ripping off was achieved by creating a specialized appliance,that was two masks on top of each other, separated by a layer of gelatin.

The Grey aliens that appear in 'One Son' were achieved in a similar manner to those seen back in the second season's 'Duane Barry'; children wearing masks, finger extensions and painted onesies. Director Rob Bowman recalled;

'It was freezing cold outside. The hangar doors didn't open very quickly, so they waited in their coats and sweaters with their mommies and daddies. When we yelled 'action' they peeled off all their outer layers, handed them to their parents, and ran inside'.

The Ubermenscher monster suit that Optic Nerve made for 'Arcadia' was, much like the bug monster that Lindala-Schminken had made in the previous season, instantly derided by cast and crew, and was heavily altered digitally in post-production.

David Duchovny himself recounted on Reddit how embarrassing the shooting experience was; 'We had a bit of a crowd watching, just because we weren't locked up in a McMansion, and I hadn't seen the monster. I shot my reactions of being terrified first and girding myself to battle it, and then the poor guy came out in the monster suit.

Michael Watkins had the best line because I said "That's not a scary looking monster" and he said "He looks like the guy who fucked Mrs. Butterworth." Mrs. Butterworth is a maple syrup bottle. That was embarrassing for me to react in front of spectators at nothing as if I was terrified. '

The Ubermenscher suit had many other unflattering nicknames from the crew, such as 'Gumby on steroids', 'Mr Butterworth', 'Fecal Fred', and 'The Shit Monster'

Assistant director Bruce Carter gave this thoughts as to why the Ubermenscher suit was unsuccessful; 'The problem was that although the basic concept was good, no one could really envision what this strange bast - a psychologically manifested compilation of garbage - should look like. Should it be a conventional monster, a creature that has somehow grown muscle and sinew through the force of Gene Gogolak's personality? Or should it really be made of garbage, covered with banana peels and coffee grounds and old bedsprings?'

Vulich explained how the suit was made, 'It was basically a foam rubber suit. We poured urethane foam on it to give it a sort of bubbly appearance, then glued on some shredded rubber and coated it with gunk. Roger Morrissey wore the suit.'

The altered 'bubbly' suit head behind John Vulich.

Several charred and dismembered body parts were made by Optic Nerve for the episode 'Trevor', the most memorable (and horrific) being the dummy head with its face burnt off.

Optic Nerve was responsible for all the 'complex' gore gags in the season, such as the scar wounds and severed hand in 'Alpha'.

I am not sure if the wolf puppet used for attack sequences was made by Optic Nerve, or from another makeup effects or prop company. I'm tentatively including it here just in case, however.

Optic Nerve also supplied the severed hearts in 'Milagro', which were rubber props.

Optic Nerve made a Grey mask with animatronic mechanisms for 'The Unnatural', said mechanisms controlling the masks mouth and eye movements. Walter Phelan wore the Grey mask, with neck appliances and finger extensions, blended in with grey makeup.

I'm not sure if the similarly mechanized Grey mask worn by young Cody Weselis in 'Field Trip' was a reuse of the masks made for 'The Unnatural', or a new mask made from the same mold.

Optic Nerve also made a dissected torso appliance for the autopsy sequence in 'Three of a Kind'

A severed dummy head in Michael Chinyamurindi's likeness was made for the season finale 'Biogenesis'.

Sources:

• The End and the Beginning: The Official Guide to The X-Files Volume 5 (Andy Meisler, 2000)
  
• Assorted 'Behind the Truth' featurettes.
  
• Classic-Horror.com 'Cheri Montesanto-Medcalf Interview'
  

Continued in The X-Files - Season 7