Makeup Effects Archive: The X-Files (1993)

Continued from The X-Files - Season 6

Optic Nerve designed the makeup appliances worn by Chad Donella for his turn as the brain-eating mutant Rob Roberts in 'Hungry'. The makeup consisted of a bald cap with specially sculpted ears, a forehead appliance and nose appliance.

The look was completed with shark-like dentures and contact lenses. A pair of false ears were also made for the shots of Roberts removing his disguise. Vulich explained the aim of the makeup's design.

'The character had to be passable as a human being and the disguise had to look slapped together. The makeup was complicated in its level of subtlety. We had to get something that was a dynamic monster, but at the same time, we had to do a little tweaking so that he would look like a human being.'

In another interview, Vulich elaborated, 'The hardest part about (the makeup) was hiding his ears. We had to hide his ears underneath a bald cap, and still put (false) ears on top of that, without making his ears look giant. There's a lot of little tricks, every illusion we could pull to make it not look like huge giant ears, we did.'

(A gross detail; the shot of the brains on the cooker did not use rubber props, but actual cow brains! No wonder they were frying so well...)

The zombie makeups in 'Millennium' echoed older films like Plague of the Zombies. The look was achieved with layers of painted latex and milky contact lenses.

A grisly smashed corpse head prop was made for 'Rush' to represent the aftermath of a high-speed collision.

The episode 'Orison' was a sequel to the second season's 'Irresistible', featuring the return of demonic serial killer Donnie Pfaster. Optic Nerve had to recreate Toby Lindala's makeup design for Pfaster's demon shape. Bryan Blair wore the makeup.

To recreate Lindala's design, Vulich requested Lindala send him photographs. Before receiving the photos, Vulich also searched the internet for photos of the demon's appearance, often finding them hosted on X-Files fansites!

A set of prop hands with severed fingers were also made for 'Orison'.

Optic Nerve were tasked with the severed head effect in 'The Amazing Maleeni'. Vulich explained in a behind the scenes interview; 'We had to do a head cast of Ricky Jay, we had very little time to do this effect, maybe four or five days tops, which really isn't an adequate amount of time to do a fake head like that. Especially with the level of detail.

We had to do this on cue, so we did it with electromagnets. You can't see it but there's this metal plate hidden by all this gruesome stuff. And on the other stump is a very strong electromagnet, that would really hold while you shaked it. We just hit a switch (that turned the magnet off) that allowed (the head) to fall on cue, which worked surprisingly well!'

Optic Nerve also made a grody venom blistering appliance for Michael Childers to wear in 'Signs and Wonders'. The appliance was fitted with tubes underneath that would squirt out goo, to show the venom being expelled from the sores.

A charred burn makeup was applied on a performer in 'Theef', and an anatomy skeleton had foam rubber applied to appear as a heavily rotted corpse.

The episode 'Chimera' once again had its monster makeup barely visible. The makeup feels similar to the zombie makeups in the 'Millennium' episode. However, the behind the scenes photos of performer Bullet Valmont for the episode show a slightly different makeup design.

The test makeup on Valmont was credited to Greg Funk, one of the Optic Nerve team. As of now I am unsure if there was two separate makeups or not!