Gothic (1986)

(I would like to thank Graham High for having sent so many images of his work on this film, as well as giving me valuable informatiom on how these effects were achieved!)

"I felt pretty positive about the story when it was sent to me. It was extremely visual, which attracted me, and the use of laudanum gave me a springboard for my ideas. It was extremely prevalent in 19th century English literature, of course; Wordsworth and Coleridge were heavy into it. In his journal, Wordsworth said, ‘I take it only for a headache.’ His wife’s journal noted: ‘Poor William had another headache today. He has them most days, poor dear.’"

Those were Ken Russell's feelings about Gothic, the Stephen Volk script he had been assigned to direct. Volk's script was a retelling of Mary Shelley's stay at the Villa Diodati in summer of 1816, where she wrote the first draft of Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus.

Shelley was not the only writer to stay at the villa during that summer, nor was Frankenstein the only work of Gothic literature to come out of that fateful visit; John Polidori was inspired to write The Vampyre, one of the earliest examples of modern vampire fiction.

Volk's script emphasized the psychological undercurrents of these novels, which together with the focus on laudanum provided fertile ground for surrealistic, grisly setpieces.

The special effects for Gothic were overseen by Christopher Hobbs, the film's production designer. Hobbs, a regular collaborator with director Derek Jarman, already had some experience with effects; he had designed the flesh-burning effects in Ken Russell's earlier The Devils, and also designed grisly transformation effects for the horror film Xtro.

Hobbs designed the effects on paper, assisted by a small effects team consisting of Graham High, Jeremy Hunt, Steve Onions and Ian Whittaker. High, Onions and Whittaker all had previously worked on Neil Jordan's The Company of Wolves.

High was especially important, according to Hobbs. 'We really needed a brilliant sculptor on that film so I stole him. I rang him up one day and told him I wanted to bribe him with lots of money. High is now the best in the business. One of the reasons I was able to do this film so cheaply was because he gave me good prices for being instrumental in this newfound career.'

One of the film's first 'shock' moments is when a phantom knight lifts his visor, revealing a rotting face covered in leeches. This effect proved to be a problem to film, according to Hobbs.

'The leeches were upset, so they wouldn't cling to his face and kept slipping off. This meant we had to rig the suit on its back six feet off the ground with a false wall on the floor behind it. I had to sew a mask made of fresh steaks to a skull, exposing the teeth in the process, and pin lugworms on it as a base. Just before the shot, our leech handler threw on the bloodsuckers and we slammed the visor down with me poised to raise it wearing a chainmail glove.'

Another briefly glimpsed phantom, that I sadly cannot find any behind the scenes images of, was of the hairy primate-like creature that steals a horse. I don't know any more information, though I would assume the shaggy suit was handled by the costume department.

Similarly, I haven't been able to find behind the scenes shots of the masks (and breastplate) made for the performers playing the clockwork automatons; one a piano player (seen above), the other a belly dancer. Were these also handled by the costume department?

Graham High made Polidori's anatomical sculpture, and explained to me via email how he made it. "As a person who arrived at the film industry via being a scientific model-maker at the Natural History Museum (and freelancing for other museums and teaching hospitals) I loved this aspect of the movie. As you see I acquired a real skeleton and used it as the 'armature'."

High elaborated to me in the same email, 'Here are more pics of the flayed man. Sculpted by me and Jeremy Hunt in my studio. It turned out that Ken Russell and I had a shared love of the La Specola museum in Florence, the oldest science museum in Europe featuring many wax anatomical models, some going back to the Renaissance. Russell wanted a kind of Classical pose with a Renaissance feel. He was delighted by the figure and I was told that he took it to his own house after the film was finished! Certainly I never saw it again.'

High also designed one of the film's most grim aspects, the baby corpses that the film's fictionalized Mary Shelley hallucinates, based on the real Mary Shelley's grieving for her infant son's death. High discussed with me how the baby props were made.

"All the baby props were sculpted and cast in various resins and waxes. The prettier baby was articulated. The more square-headed one was a kind of jokey request from Ken Russell, that one of the babies should look a bit like Boris Karloff, as Mary Shelley 'gave birth' to Frankenstein. I took him up on it. Very much an in-joke."

The gag was not lost on Christopher Hobbs, who used the 'Baby Karloff' for the film's closing shot. "(The script) said 'A sinister shape moves under the water'. Ken thought in terms of a sea monster for this, then we realized that one of the three dead babies Graham High had sculpted for Mary's nightmare bore a striking resemblance to the Karloff Frankenstein monster in miniature. So the shape that now rises to the surface of a swimming pool is this model. Not only did it signify her own stillborn baby but her literary child rising in her imaginaton as well."

Another creature barely seen in the film is the 'id monster' conjured up via a seance. Hobbs explained, "In the original script you never see it and you aren't sure if it is just in their imaginations. Ken was worried about this, as audience expectations were raised with nothing to show for it. So I insisted on designing a monster all of my own. What I came up with was a 7-foot high bouncing penis with a dead baby sticking out of the top. As a shock moment, it certainly fitted the bill and was as over the top as Ken could have wished for."

Another complicated effect that was seen all too briefly in the film was the dummy prop made in Timothy Spall's likeness for when spiders crawl out of Polidor's mouth. Hobbs recalled how at first, they were just going to do the shot in a cheaper, but also much grosser fashion.

"One scene called for spiders to crawl out of Polidori's mouth. As we were near the end of my budget and couldn't afford a dummy head of the actor, I asked Tim if he would consider a plastic bag filled with the creatures inside his mouth sealed around his lips so they couldn't actually get down his throat. He would have reluctantly said yes, I know, but happily the money was found after all for a dummy head. In the end we didn't use spiders. All they did was crawl into a corner and fall asleep. We used cockroaches instead."

Graham High explained to me how the Timothy Spall dummy was made, as well as how it was operated and how the shot itself was done.

"For a quick gag it required quite a lot of work. Firstly life casting Timothy Spall. He was very laid back about it. All work took place in my studio in my own home as it was an entirely location picture and so no film studio workshops were hired. I offered to give Timothy a cast of himself. He responded 'Oh God, no. I hate looking at myself'.

The head has a chamber with two doors. The front, cable activated, door allowed the spiders out into the mouth. The back door was then opened and a hot hairdryer wooshed the spiders out. The facsimile dummy is made in wax to facilitate the putting in of cropped head hair, chest hair, etc. How easy it would be to do a CGI version of it today!"

Perhaps the film's most infamous image was the shot of the breasts with eyes, which was indeed based on a nightmare the real Percy Bysshe Shelley (played in the film by Julian Sands) had at the Villa Diodati. High recalled via email how the effect was done.

"Originally the eye-nipple gag was prepared with Cassie Stewart as the Claire Clairmont character. Cassie had quite full breasts and flat nipples so it was relatively easy to achieve a really good effect. Cassie left the film and Myriam Cyr replaced her in the role. Myriam was less well endowed and had quite protuberant nipples so our job was made harder and we struggled a bit to make the effect look seamless. There was also the matter of eye colour. We had eyes to match Cassie, but as far as I remember we just carried on with those eyes even though Myriam had (I think) brown eyes. Film schedules and all that.

No puppet chest was made. The plaster version of the alginate life cast was just to work on. The prosthetics (with mechanisms) were applied to the real actress. The whole process was a bit embarrassing for Myriam as she was quite new to the film industry, and Steve and I had to be quite intimate with her over repeated shots.

Inside the foam latex prosthetics were very tiny spring-return cable-controlled blinking mechanisms made by Steve Onions, who is brilliant at such things, The control cable was of course also under the chest prosthetic too. Thin spring-steel wires in the lids guided the lids open or shut. All very delicate to apply and to make the edges invisible."

The hard work that Hobbs, High and co. did on Gothic was appreciated by Ken Russell, who would work again with Hobbs on his next film, Salome's Last Dance. High told me a personal anecdote about Russell's feelings on his work, though a slightly bittersweet one.

"Ken Russell was apparently very pleased with what we had produced on Gothic and he gave me a first option on the effects for his next film, Lair of the White Worm. Sadly it seemed that my quote was too expensive for him (the days of Ken Russell commanding big budgets were long gone). Bob Keen and his Image Animation crew did it in the end."

Sources:

• 'Where Russell Directs, Controversy Follows' Los Angeles Times, 1987
  
• Cinefantastique Vol. 17 No. 2 (March 1987)