hyperactive kid who wanted to make this $30,000, Trog-inspired film with a cheap gorilla suit. So they told him there was this kid who made these gorillas and they gave him one of my “Rick Baker Monster Maker” cards and he called me up. At this point I had already made the Octaman and he’d already written AMERICAN WEREWOLF and we pretty much shot the script that he wrote. John said he wanted to do a transformation because he loved the Jekyll and Hyde stuff like I did. But it didn’t make sense to him that if your body was going to go through this transformation you weren’t just going to sit in a chair and have it happen. He says, “I really think a transformation should be a painful event.” He wanted to see the whole body change, not just the head or the hands. My first thought was, “How the hell am I gonna do this?” I wanted to try it in one shot. But John wanted to focus on the individual body parts in different shots. So I thought, “why can’t I do this with a fake head? Start with a real actor and do some makeups on them and then move to a fake head that we could put a mechanism in and change stuff.” The thing that was pretty amazing was that this was something that was done by kids. At the time I did this I was only 30, I think. This was the first film where I had a crew. Early on I had Rob Bottin, but he went off to do his own things. I knew it was beyond what I could do with myself. So I got fans. I was getting fan mail from the FAMOUS MONSTERS article, the kids who sent me the best looking stuff I contacted and asked if they wanted to come to California. So we had a short training period where we went over the transformation and then had this testing period where John figured out how to shoot it. It still amazes me that it was kids who had never worked on a film before making this transformation that’s held up for 30 years.
Making the Impossible Look Easy
Never fear, for plenty more palavering with the Monster Maker is near. Keep your eyes peeled for future issues when this devious dialogue will uncover the diabolical details inside the mind of the this real-life Dr. Frankenstein!
Right: Who better than to do your Halloween make-up than your own father? Rebecca Baker not only sported her dad’s work for the holiday, but wore it the entire day at school. Like father like daughter.
FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND • SEP/OCT 2011 29
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