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.

In order to differentiate his werewolf from The Wolf Man (and possibly also The Howling), Landis was insistent that his werewolf would not walk upright. Baker remembered;

'I remember having arguments with John, because I wanted it to be a biped, a two-legged werewolf, cos I was thinking a werewolf's more like that, probably because of The Wolf Man. He kept saying he wanted it to be this demon hound from hell'.

One of the initial design maquettes.

Per Landis' 'hound from hell' description, the wolf head was sculpted with a snarling visage. As Baker explained in Landis' book Monsters in the Movies; 'It’s also sculpted in a very angular way. The brows are very angular and there are 45° angles all through it. There is something scary about 45° angles.'

There was more practical reasons for the Kessler Wolf's permanent snarl, in that it would be shown only in very quick shots as Baker remembered;

'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

When it came to how the Kessler Wolf's fur would look like, Baker found inspiration from none other than his pets;

'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.'

Three heads were constructed; a hero animatronic head (with cable controlled mechanisms to control its expressions and move the jaws), and two static stunt heads for attack sequences.

The attack scenes utilized the stunt heads (which could have either 'hard' or 'soft' teeth fitted in) being held like a glove puppet by Baker, who was concealed by a shaggy fur 'pelt'. The pelt was briefly fitted with squibs for a close-up shot when Kessler is killed by gunfire at the end.

Baker ran into more frustrations with actor Griffin Dunne (who as described in the 'Part 2' article, was displeased with being in makeup as the undead Jack Goodman) when shooting his character's death by werewolf attack. The stunt head was new and Baker had requested it not be manhandled during the take, but Dunne did not care;

'First take, he grabs hold of the 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.'

When it came to visualizing the Kessler Wolf's body, Baker had to compare human and canine anatomy, something that also proved useful when sculpting the 'change-o-parts' and prosthetics for the transformation sequence. Baker stated;

'The way I decided to approach the transformation was through comparative anatomy. I didn’t have a wolf skeleton in my collection, but I had a dog’s and that was close enough. Comparing it to a human, you find that many of the bones are similar; it’s just that the proportions are different. I made lists of the differences — what the major changes were, whether this got shorter or that got longer — then figured out how we could get a suit out of this, in the later stages, that made sense.'

There was still the matter of how the Kessler Would would be realized in motion, fully mobile in its fleeting glimpses. Baker remembered how he solved the problem;

'I thought of a wheelbarrow race. So I stretched out 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 sculpted head, hands and limbs on the 'wheelbarrow' rig.

The 'wheelbarrow' rig was devised by Doug Beswick, and was essentially a hybrid of a suit and puppet. The upper half of the werewolf was a suit with the performer inside, lying on their front, while the bottom half was a puppet. The head was cable-controlled, and the back legs were rod-puppeteered, while the front legs where the performer's in gloves.

Two people wore the 'wheelbarrow' rig's suit; Kevin Brennan, who was part of Baker's EFX team, and Brendan Hughes, a trained dancer. According to assistant director David Tringham, Hughes was a good choice;

'(Hughes) had this really strong torso so he could hold himself in there at this awkward angle and just be with his legs sticking out the end with nothing to support him really.'

Baker and his EFX team's work on American Werewolf was a game changer of special makeup effects, earning Baker his first Academy Award for the recently created Best Makeup and Hairstyling category.

The category had been created thanks to Christopher Tucker's work on The Elephant Man a year earlier. Tucker would attempt his own, much more gruesome spin on Baker's werewolf transformation effects in The Company of Wolves.

American Werewolf also cemented Baker's own reputation as a master of make-up effects, as well as launching careers for much of his EFX alumni, in particular Steve Johnson who would go on to be a major player in makeups effects.

Baker looked back on the experience years later; 'I cringe looking at some of the stuff in the transformation. It was thirty years ago and I was thirty years old and the average age of my crew was like nineteen. There were kids who had never worked on a film before. I do think it’s pretty amazing that people still hold it in pretty high regard, this thing that was done by a thirty year old and nineteen year olds who’d never done this stuff.'

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

An American Werewolf in London (1981) - Part 3: Kessler's Transformation

Continued from the Part 2 article on An American Werewolf in London which focused on the zombie makeups on Griffin Dunne.

Rick Baker remembered that even during their initial collaboration on Schlock in 1971, Landis was insistent to not redo the same methods as The Wolf Man;

'When I was doing Schlock (...) John had already written American Werewolf. He said it made no sense to him that if you were going to change into a wolf, that you would sit in a chair and be really still until you finished changing. He said it would be a painful experience for your body to be transforming, with the bones and muscles changing.'

When making The Howling, Joe Dante had also wished to break with Wolf Man-style lap dissolve transformations and during Baker's brief stint on Howling, some of his concepts made their way into the final film, in the form of the 'change o heads'.

Howling was several months released before American Werewolf, giving Baker the chance to see the choices that his protege Rob Bottin had made with the 'change o part' puppets. Baker opted out of using air bladder makeups like Bottin did on Howling.

Landis, possibly to avoid comparisons with Howling, wished for the effects sequences to be shot in harsh light rather than shadow (as in Howling), and as Baker recalled had his own ideas on how the sequence would be cut;

'I was pushing to have it all in one shot. I thought that would be really spectacular. But John pointed out that he didn't think it would be as dramatic. It would be better filmmaking to do it in cuts, to show different (body parts) in close-up. And as it turns out, that was the only way we really could do it!'

The first stage of the transformation was a 'change o hand', itself the first of the many 'change o parts' utilized in the sequence. Baker described the change-o-parts internal mechanisms;

'Basically if you have a syringe, with the plunger out, connected to a plastic tube going into another syringe with the plunger in, you push the plunger in on this syringe, the other plunger goes out. A basic pneumatic ram! It's basically a plastic piece with four syringes in it, and you push the plunger, the hand would stretch out'.

At least two 'change o hands' were made, both made from lifecasts of David Naughton's arm; the second change-o-hand was sculpted to have a slightly more lupine appearance, to represent how quickly Kessler's body was changing.

Rick Baker with the first change-o-hand. 

 

David Naughton filming with the wolf-like second change-o-hand. 

 

The next shot has Kessler's hands fully transformed; this was achieved as prosthetic hand appliances worn by David Naughton. According to Steve Johnson, in a mini-interview for his Rubberhead autobiography, Landis was displeased with the hand appliances;

'John Landis was actually mean to Rick Baker on-set, he was abusive to him. (...) John was like, 'Rick, this is an outrage! This is ridiculous! I can't put these on-screen, these look like Popeye, get them off my set!' '

David Naughton was not a hairy person, so hair had to be stuck on his body. Baker remembered the trick his team used to free up the shooting schedule;

'We actually did the hairy chest first, shot that stuff, and then trimmed the hair off and shot an earlier stage, and then pulled off some more hair, so we could have more makeups in one day.'

More 'change-o-parts' were needed, namely a pair of 'change-o-legs', and a 'change-o-back'. The change-o-legs utilized the same techniques as the change-o-hand, but the change-o-back was more complex. Underneath the urethane 'skin' (which we will get to in a bit) was a series of sculpted bone and shoulder shapes, all controlled by rudimentary pneumatic rams.

A prosthetic makeup was applied on Naughton's face after thsis tage, giving him a slightly more lupine look, as well as to seam in the later stages of the transformation.

The shot straight after Kessler's back changes required a fake rubber torso to be worn by Naughton, along with the face and hand prosthetics. The torso was sculpted to have a more pronounced ribcage, giving Naughton a top heavy appearance. Baker recalled;

That was the goofiest-looking stage which fortunately went by pretty quickly. The face was still relatively human, but it had this thick, dark mane from the neck on back. It sort of reminded me of the ‘goons’ in the old Popeye cartoons. (...) David had the big rib cage and back on, hand appliances that only left him some use of his thumbs, the fur mane, the face and teeth — and that’s how he went to lunch. I have this hysterical memory of him trying to eat fish and chips all through all that and having a hard time of it.'

(Surprisingly haven't been able to find behind the scenes shot of the prosthetic torso!)

The next shot has Kessler rolling over on his back, showing that his entire body has taken on a wolf-like shape. The effect was achieved by having Naughton, his face and arms in makeup, sit in an alcove hidden by the set's floor, and 'wearing' a rubber torso placed just under his neck.

The torso was sculpted by Tom Hester as one piece. Hester recalled; 'My father was an orthppedic surgeon so I've always been interested in anatomy and really enjoyed figuring out how the veins on the surface show up on one spot, and dive down below the surface. Not super monsterish style, but make it realistic in a way'.

Tom Hester with the sculpted torso. 

 

Hester sculpting the torso. 

 

The torso required minimal puppeteering from underneath the set, which Baker remembered as frustrating;

'It had a couple of rods sticking out the ankles, that we could move the feet with. I was never really happy with how they were looking. And I remember after we decided we had it, and got David out the whole. I remember looking at the body, without a head or arms, convulsing exactly the way I wanted it to do! 'You're puppeteering exactly the way I wanted!' 'We're just trying to pull the fucking rods out!' '

According to Baker, 'Purposedly, John wanted the head to change last. He didn’t want the head to change very much because he wanted the transformation to basically almost climax with the head change'.

For this stage, Baker made 'change-o-heads', which utilized similar techniques to the previous change-o-parts, as well as to his protege Rob Bottin's own change-o-heads on The Howling.

The change-o-heads, along with all the other change-o-parts in American Werewolf, were coated in a rubber skin made of a urethane compound, Smooth-on #724. The urethane had a plasticizer component that could make it more elastic, which suited Baker's needs greatly.

The only problem was that the plasticizer, in addition to continuing to act on the urethan until it liquified (meaning there was limited time to film the the change-o-parts), would also act on any plastic it came in contact with.

This meant that the undersides of the change-o-parts, in particular the change-o-heads, were made out of a water-extended resin, with a fibreglass inner structure. Bill Sturgeon elaborated on how the change-o-heads were made;

'We took a life cast of David Naughton, and Rick did the sculpture from there. Rick did the mould, and once we did the mould, we core it out to a certain thickness, and end up with the (change-o-head) core that the skin goes over.

At that point, we just cut all the pieces out, and put all the mechanics on and keep working it until it's in exactly the right place to give the effect we were looking for'.

The change-o-head was more complex than the other change-o-parts, and so used cable mechanisms to operated the extending jaw. The below images show the construction better, with holes cut into the resin underskull out of which levels would push out.

The first (and second) change-o-head required a life cast of David Naughton pulling a pained expression with his eyes closed. The reason for this was partly as Baker felt having the eyes open would give away that it was a puppet;

'I was worried about making eyes that look real enough and getting the eye mechanism to work in this head that was gonna be stretching and moving. We purposedly closed the eyes in the Change-O-Head — the eyes were squinting up in pain because I just knew it was gonna be a problem to make the eyes look right.

And we took a life cast of David Naughton doing a pained expression (...) and then sculpted it to look like it was changing enough, so it wasn't just human David'.

To bridge between the first and second change-o-heads, a prosthetic appliance, based on Baker's sculpt for the second change-o-head, was fabricated and worn by David Naughton with specially-made contact lenses. Naughton spent an extraordinary amount of time in prosthetics and life-casts for the sequence, as he told Fangoria;

'After eight to ten hours in makeup we would finally get out on the set and shoot for 45 minutes. That would be it. One day, I was in makeup for 16 hours. It was the longest day of my life. We shot for three or four hours, different angles, all kinds of moves, so that they would have anything they needed in editing. I was a complete vegetable by the end of that day.'

The second change-o-head was sculpted to have a more wolf-like appearance. Baker designed the second change-o-head to have a subtle asymmetrical appearance, but this was not apparent in the final cut;

'One side is more human, one side is more wolf-like, and my thinking was you could start shooting on the human side, it would turn and then you’d get more out of the Change-o-Head.

But we found out as we were shooting it, when we turned the head faster — the more movement there was, (the more) you actually didn’t see the stretching-out of the face, which was the kind of big payoff in this whole piece; so we ended up not using it that way with the turning.

We ended up with just a straight profile (shot) with it kind of stretching and shaking as it grows out.'

At least two other change-o-heads were made; a partial head for the close-up shot of Kessler's ears elongating into wolf-like ones, and a full head for a close-up shot of Kessler's fangs sprouting from his gums, that was ultimately never used in the film.

The sequence ends with a brief shot of the fully-fledged werewolf, but with less fur than the final suit. The 'man-beast', as the crew called it, was mostly the work of Tom Hester;

'We had an additional casting of the (transformation) body (...), so we used that, folded it up into a crouched position and then just fabricated some foam arms and shoulders, and I think there was a head, (which) was another casting from the original wolf mould. I took that and carved it down, shrunk it down a little bit.

It wasn’t meant to be as big as the final werewolf. So it was all just sort of cut and paste polyfoam and then I put latex over the surface of it and laid hair on the body. And that was set up as a rod puppet that we worked from underneath (the set's floor)'.

Despite the months of preparation, the transformation scenes were all filmed in a week. Baker recalled how funny it was that so much work amounted to very little screentime;

'The transformation didn't really take all that long to shoot the physical things. John would say 'Action', and the (change o head) would stretch out, and then he'd go 'Cut! We got that!' And it's like, we got that? I spent months working on this thing, and it took you ten seconds to shoot it! (...) But then I went with my crew to see the movie with a real audience, and when that ten seconds happened of the face stretching out, people stood up and cheered!'

Baker's EFX crew with the assorted 'change-o-parts' (and more!). 

 

Sources: 

• 'Beware the Moon: Remembering An American Werewolf in London' (2009)
• Fangoria #129
• Cinefex #16

Read more on An American Werewolf in London's special effects in the 'Part 4' article, covering the werewolf itself.