The Miniature Effects of Species (1995)

(This article is a spin-off from the main article covering the makeup and creature effects of Species, so please read that one if you want to read up on how they realized Sil!)

Even before he worked on Species, trains had been a recurring image in much of H.R. Giger's artwork, much of it for unrealized projects. Giger recalled in Species Design; "My fascination with trains dates back to my childhood and I always hoped for the oppurtunity to use these ideas in a film. Years ago, I had worked on my train concepts for three-quarters of a year with Ridley Scott on a project called 'The Train', then subsequently I worked out a tunneling concept beneath Switzerland in order to manage all of the nation's transportaton needs."

Giger mentioned the failed Ridley Scott project to Cinefantastique when discussing the Ghost Train. "That was entirely my idea. The script had nothing about the train or a 'Ghost Train' nightmare. Years ago, I worked on several train concepts with Ridley Scott. When I saw in the script of Species that the little Sil escapes on the train and has strange nightmares, I had the idea I could work my Ghost Train into her dreams. They had not planned money for it in the budget, but they promised to consider it. I was so fascinated that I started with train ideas right away. (Frank) Mancuso said, 'Be careful', but I told him I will do this train anyway."

Giger immediately got to work on the Ghost Train model, as he was worried that constructing it too late in the schedule would mean it would never be filmed. Giger's very first model of the Ghost Train was was just some anatomy skulls mounted on model train motors!

The very first (and scrapped) Ghost Train.

Giger knew his first model was not convincing, and so made a new model. He explained to Cinefantastique, "The first version of the train, which we made out of normal skulls, was not so good. Then Cony de Fries visited me and saw in the garden one of my older sculptures, a biomechanoid head without eyes, one I made about twenty years ago. He suggested that we use this head but with bigger teeth. I could see this could work much better."

In the same interview, Giger elaborated, "Cony and I started on the locomotive skull together, and it was completed by Andy Schedler of Atelier Formart, who built with me the other cars. The wheels and motors were made by Ball und Sohn, Modellbau, of Stein am Rhein, the finest model train manufacturer in the world. They make trains in all sizes."

The revised Ghost Train model.

In Species Design, Giger went into how taxing it was to visit so many freelance modelmakers. "The Ghost Train made stops at a number of Swiss workshops because none of us working on it were professional model train builders, so every piece had to be made two or three times. But from this I learned a lot about how things can go wrong.

If the train became a problem for a particular shop, it was quickly trucked off to another. These length round trips to all my craftsmen made it very expensive. But Cony and Andy often contributed very good suggestions and that is something I would not have gotten the benefit of if I had given it to professional fabricators.

Initially the train was at Andy Schedler's atelier, then at Zollinger, then De Fries, and then back to Schedler. The next top was at the K. Wolfensberger shop and this was followed by a stay at Stahl und Traum, where we built a train station I designed and later, fully detailed with assistance of Tania Tkatchuk. Two more cars were added at this time."

Giger himself sank roughly $80'000 into constructing the Ghost Train model and its surrounding diorama. In addition to the model train's own motors, it also was fitted with mechanized mouthes, tongues and hoses that all functioned to give the idea that the Ghost Train was a monster; in short it was a creature effect as much as a model shot.

In the original draft of the Ghost Train, the train was fitted with massive vacuums that hoovered up hapless passengers, all of which were lookalikes to the young Sil's human guise, and these passengers were then mulched in the jaw's of the train's 'face'.

The nightmare sequence was to end with Sil sucked into the train's vacuums and devoured just before waking up; a personification of the young Sil's latent fear of sexually aggressive men, as in Giger's words the train was a 'genetic memory' of her home planet.

All the while, Giger had been sending Frank Mancuso and the Species production team videotape footage of their progress every few weeks. Frank Mancuso eventually approved the sequence and had all of the miniatures shipped for filming in Los Angeles.

The Ghost Train's LA filming was overseen by Richard Edlund's Boss Film Studios, who were handled the rest of Species' visual effects. Richard Edlund in particular was very impressed with the Ghost Train model!

As with much of his ideas for Species, Giger was about to be very disappointed. It was decided that the Ghost Train sequence, as Giger had originally planned it, was too elaborate and expensive for the studio. As Giger explained in Species Design;

"MGM, which found itself in the midst of post-production, had to curtail expenses and was only offering me half of my costs on making the train. They were also balking at using the kind of expensive effects I had hoped to see utilized for the best realization of the sequence. I was therefore forced to grant consent to a simplified version of my idea, in order that at least the train might be included in the film and that all of my work and costs would not go for naught.

A designer who insists on determining how his creation should appear in a film is quite a nuisance on an American film, crewed by specialists in an almost military hierarchy. The train station, which had taken considerable effort to construct, was left entirely out of the shot. The vacuum arms were amputated to eliminate the expensive composite effects the dream would have required."

This new sequence was very brief, and just showed the Ghost Train roaring towards Sil, with her waking up just before it hit her. Gone was the queasy imagery of flesh-eating vehicles or sexual subtext, which was pretty ironic for a film ostensibly about base instincts!

As disappointed as he was with how little screentime it had in the final picture, Giger was still proud of having made the Ghost Train, and all in Switzerland.

"I'm very happy with the train we did. If there was more time, we could have also made the vacuum cleaners function perfectly. I thought Boss Films could fix it easy in L.A. With only the help of the companies here in Zurich, a terrific Ghost Train was built, proving that we can make not only cuckoo clocks in Switzerland. It cost me a lot of my own money, but many of the rights still belong to me after the film."

Sources:

• Cinefantastique Vol. 27 #7 (March 1996)
• Species Design (H.R. Giger, 1995)