God bless Stan Winston

The Terminator was one of the first 'adult' films I ever saw - maybe that's why it's still one of my favorite films of all. Prior to that it had been all Disney, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Richie Rich comics. I think the closest I'd come previously was the beans scene in Blazing Saddles. I remember my friends going to see A Nightmare On Elm Street and The Terminator at the cinema in '84 and I couldn't bring myself to see them - not into horror films at the time (my first horror film at the cinema was Elm Street 2 and involved a mad crush to get into the cinema and then people proceeded to throw the chair cushions around the Hoyts Midcity cinema. Never before and never again have I witnessed that).

So The Terminator was the first adult film I saw, on rental Very Hard to See tape in '85 on a Radio Rentals VCR (from memory!). The film must have caused certain brian cells to implode and others to open to the delights of sex and violence which would cause me for the next 5+ years to become obsessive about film, special effects, specifically makeup special effects.

No not obsessive enough to join the industry (although I did once do a convincing knife stab to scare my sister and a very impressive Darth Maul makeup) but obsessive enough to have exercise books (just not obsessive enough to be any kind of John Doe, Se7en character). You see, I kept seeing the same effects people's names over and over on all of the delightful treasures that I treated like 'the precious' from the local 'Mom and Pop' video stores (God, I miss them!). Titles like Friday The 13th, The Fury, American Werewolf In London, The Thing. Names like Rick Baker, Dick Smith, Rob Bottin, Tom Savini, Stan Winston. So what I would do is catalog all of these people and their films and years (kinda like my own early primative IMDB). So for example Rob Bottin worked on The Thing (1982) (and I'm so glad I've since found other people who were doing similar things when they were young).

Since The Terminator in all its glory hit me like a semi, Stan Winston was one of those people that I kept my eyes on over the next few years. You can see below that the effects work does not compare to modern special effects but you've got to understand that this stuff was fairly cutting edge at the time, plus Terminator had a paltry budget compared to other films of the time ($6.5m cf with Return Of The Jedi's $30m+).


That's a puppet head above in that memorable scene where Arnie performs some surgery on himself, tidying up a wound on his arm and pulling his eyeball out! Ouch! I would watch this scene over and over and over the years, studying it, looking at when James Cameron would cut back and forth between Arnie and the puppet. With DVD (and especially Blu-Ray) you can now clearly see which is which and even see the fine lines where prosthetics makeup has been applied. But that doesn't not make it cool.

Stan Winston started his career on television, specialising in old age makeups for Gargoyles (1972; which he won an Emmy), The Autobiograpy Of Miss Pittman (1974; for which he won an Emmy with Rick Baker) and Roots (1977). Part of my workflow when I was cataloging these effects artists was to tape late night movies on television. Channel Nine was probably the best at the time (you barely get any late night movies on free to air now) and I managed to catch classics such as Gargoyles and one of Rob Bottin's early efforts, Humanoids From The Deep.

Winston's first big budget Hollywood film was the failed Diana Ross vechile The Wiz (1978) which he possibly did because he had a previous relationship with Ross, working on her makeup on a television special the year before (which won him another Emmy). For the hardcore fans, he also contributed the wookie family costumes for the legendary Star Wars Christmas Special in 1978. He then had a brief period where he worked on some ultra-violent, low budget horrors such as The Exterminator, The Hand, Dead & Buried and Parasite. He also produced some quality character work in the underrated Heartbeeps (1981; see below, can we have a special edition DVD of this please Blue Underground?) and this film, surprisingly, would be an early example of Winston's ability to create characters and not just special effects. Heartbeeps also earned Stan Winston his first Oscar nomination. Around the same time he also contributed an mechanical alien dog effect for The Thing when Rob Bottin had pretty much collapsed from exhaustion.



In addition to The Terminator, 1984 also saw Winston team with the godfather of Special Makeup, Dick Smith and Rick Baker to produce the sequence in John Carpenter's Starman (1984) where the alien grows from a baby into Jeff Bridges. It would be his working relationship with James Cameron on The Terminator, however, that would rise his star in that niche industry in Hollywood. They would next work together on Aliens (1986) and although the alien design had already been done by H.R. Giger in the late seventies, Winston would add to that with the frighteningly credible puppeteering of the Queen Alien. Aliens culminates with that great scene where the Queen Alien literally rips the android Bishop in two (see below) and would earn Winston his first Oscar (for Special Effects).


Winston also did the clever headless effects in Robert Zemeckis' episode of Amazing Stories, Go To The Head Of The Class where Chritopher Lloyd spends much of the running time carrying his head around! By now, Winston was starting to gain a reputation for creating these frightening monsters, these characters that through their design, manufacture and puppeteering, seemed truly alive. In 1987, Winston created another of his memorable monsters, the Predator. Unlike many of his previous creations, this would be a man in a suit, Kevin Peter Hall (who also played Harry in Harry & The Hendersons, see below).

Winston also gained a dream job around this time working on The Monster Squad (1987) which gave him the opportunity to breath new life into the classic Universal monsters, Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolfman, the Creature (From The Black Lagoon) and the Mummy. Winston turned to directing around this time, making the atmospheric horror film Pumpkinhead (1988). Beloved by the hardcore fans, it contains a great scary looking monster and some great cinematography.



In 1990, Winston contributed to the inevitable Predator sequel as well as directing his second film, the little seen A Gnome Called Gnorm (also known as Underworld). Winston forged his second important artist-director relationship that year also, creating the titular character of Edward Scissorhands for Tim Burton. Employing much more subtle makeup and character design, it was a true collaborative process between Burton, Winston and actor Johnny Depp.

Winston would push his studio to the limits and also contribute to paving the way for the future of motion picture special effects with his next. Returning to work with James Cameron once again, Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) would feature not only Arnold Schwarzenegger returning as the unstoppable killer cyborg (and which meant for Stan Winston Studios more Arnie makeups and puppets, see below) but a new character, a liquid metal killer called the T-1000. For this character, Winston would work in conjunction with Industrial Light and Magic to create scenes where prosthetics and on-set mechanical puppets would integrate and cut seamlessly with computer graphics. As a result, Winston won two Oscars, for both Makeup and Visual Effects.

Winston's third, and possibly most important relationship with a director was forged in 1993 when he was tagged to create the live action dinosaurs for Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park, again working with ILM and sealing the fate of the special effects industry to an ongoing obsession with computer graphics special effects. Luckily, Winston would roll with this and survive (much like the T-Rex from Jurassic Park below), rather than lay over and die like the real dinosaurs.

Winston, along with James Cameron and former ILM boss Scott Ross formed Digital Domain, a digital special effects company in 1993 and there maiden voyage was the Tom Cruise vechile Interview With A Vampire (1994). As previously, Winston's work seamlessly integrated with computer graphics as Cruise falls over and dies morphing into a vampire corpse (see below).



Winston would spend the next fifteen years continuing to work with Burton, on Batman Returns (1992) and also Big Fish (2003), with Cameron on T2 3D (1996), Spielberg on The Lost World (1997), AI (2001, see below) and Jurassic Park III. He continued to work on monster movies, such as The Relic (1997) and Lake Placid (1999) as well as character work on films such as Small Soldiers (1998) and even returning to makeup gigs on Pearl Harbor (2001), Constantine (2005) and Tideland (2005). In recent years, Stan Winston Studios had branched out into direct to video productions, comic books and toys and Winston also helped bring Wrong Turn (2003) to the screen.



Winston was gearing up for the new Terminator film after having worked on one of the biggest successes so far this year, Iron Man (see below) when he passed away this past weekend of multiple myeloma cancer. Along with effects artists such as Rick Baker and Rob Bottin, Winston shepherded a new era of special makeup effects moving away from the traditional old age makeup and character makeup of Dick Smith, combining traditional prosthetic makeups with puppeteering and mechanical creations and then working alongside computer graphics companies to ensure that the disparate effects work matched up, creating magical wonders the likes of which we may never see again. I salute you Stan Winston and all of your remarkable achievements!

PS. Go to this link to see the calibre of people who have been paying respect to Mr. Winston