6/10/14 (Part One): The Men Who Make the Nightmares

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behind-the-scenes, blood-button effect, Bob Kurtzman, Day of the Dead, Dick Smith, documentaries, documentary, Donna Davies, Elijah Wood, Frank Darabont, George Romero, golden age of special effects, Greg Nicotero, Gross Anatomy, Howard Berger, Jack Pierce, John Carpenter, John Landis, KNB Effects, Kurtzman, Lon Chaney, Nightmare Factory, practical effects, Quentin Tarantino, Ray Harryhausen, Rick Baker, Robert Kirkman, Robert Kurtzman, Robert Rodriguez, Sam Raimi, special effects, special effects pioneer, Tom Savini, visual effects, writer-director-producer

When one is discussing the most influential special effects/make-up/visual effects artists in the business, there are a few names that always seem to come up: Tom Savini…Rick Baker…Stan Winston…Ray Harryhausen (RIP). Look closely, however, and you’ll notice another trio of names that seem to pop up in every other end credit scroll for the past several decades: Greg Nicotero, Howard Berger and Bob Kurtzman. Although they have plenty of individual credits to their name, the three would go on to form KNB Effects, one of the most influential and omnipresent effects studios to emerge since Lucas’ groundbreaking Industrial Light and Magic. Donna Davies’ fun and informative documentary, Nightmare Factory, takes an up-close-and-personal look at KNB Effects, with particular emphasis on co-founder Greg Nicotero, sfx godfather Tom Savini’s protegé.

Kicking off with a “greatest-hits” highlight reel that amounts to a fan-pleasing gore clip show (complete with pounding metal soundtrack), Nightmare Factory makes one thing abundantly clear: this one is aimed right at the genre fans who geek out on fantastic monsters, severed limbs, spurting blood, explosions and puppetry. We go through the history of KNB, which begins with the history of its key players: Greg Nicotero, Howard Berger and Bob Kurtzman. While we don’t get a whole lot of Kurtzman, who left the company a decade into its existence, we do get a whole lot of Nicotero and quite a bit of Berger. Luckily, Nicotero is an absolutely fascinating person, a life-long film and genre fan who’s devoted his entire life to making the impossible real. Long before KNB Effects was a twinkle in anyone’s eye, Nicotero and his younger brother, Bryan, were making their own movies, perfecting stunts, devising effects and props and, in general, being pretty amazing. A chance encounter with George Romero (during a family vacation in Rome, no less) led the 16-year-old Greg to a tour of Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978) shopping mall set and an offer to work on his next film, Day of the Dead (1985). This, in turn, led to Nicotero meeting effects god Tom Savini and the rest, as they say, is history.

After meeting and becoming friends on the set of Day of the Dead, Nicotero and Berger ended up moving in with a friend of Berger’s named Robert Kurtzman. The three became fast friends on the set of Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead 2 (1987) which led to the realization that they might be able to make something bigger of this. KNB Effects was born and, within short order, became a powerhouse in the world of movie special effects, particularly in the effects-heavy era of the late-’80s and early-’90s. KNB Effects reach was so widespread, in fact, that it extended to decidedly non-genre offerings like Gross Anatomy (1989) and Oscar-winner Dances with Wolves (1990). In fact, you’d be pretty hard-pressed to find a film with any kind of practical effect within the past 30 years that didn’t bear the mark of either KNB Effects, Nicotero, Berger or Kurtzman: the guys were just that ubiquitous in the industry! Some of the best parts of the film involve the footage of KNB Effects heyday in the late ’80s, where the studio had a wild, rock ‘n roll, party-hard attitude: most of the effects artists were also in rock bands, hung out together constantly, partied the night away and made monsters during the daytime. For a guy like me, this looked like pretty much the best place to work in the entire world. Fuck crazy Wall Street firms: the shenanigans at KNB looked like a whole lot more fun!

Although KNB Effects is just about as important as effect studios get (they even created the “blood-button” effect that has allowed generations of indie filmmakers to create gunshots on the cheap), the times are always changing and we feel the effects of this within the doc. Studios now want effects as quickly and cheaply as possible: there’s no longer time to lovingly craft effects in the same way that the artisans did twenty years before. While computer-generated imagery is a valuable tool when used hand-in-hand with practical effects, the tendency these days is to heavily rely on CGI, which can be much quicker and cheaper to utilize than practical effects but tends to have a disarmingly glossy hyper-reality that is no patch on the oftentimes rougher practical effects of bygone eras. It’s certainly a devil’s dilemma: filmmakers are always in a desperate need to save money, which makes CGI the only feasible reality for many low-budget productions, yet cheap CGI makes any film look bad, regardless of the general quality of the production.

There’s also the sad revelation, late in the film, that Nicotero doesn’t really think anyone will come around to replace them: no one has a burning desire to just make monsters these days, he says, at least not like in the days of Famous Monsters of Film Land, Ray Harryhausen and Tom Savini (at 68, Savini is now the elder statesman who used to be the infant terrible…he even has his own special effects training school). We do get to see a few members of the younger generation who were influenced by the ’70s-’80s pioneers, such as Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Robert Rodriguez, although we don’t really get to meet any of the new generation to whom Nicotero and the others will be passing their torch.

While Nicotero certainly has a history and perspective on the situation that I’ll never possess, I can’t help but feel that he’s dead wrong in that aspect: there will always be kids around who want to make monsters. As long as there are geeky outsiders who spend their childhoods reading monster magazines under the blankets, there will be special effects people. As long as there are kids who create backyard zombie epics featuring the contents of their fridge and an ocean of passion, there will be special effects people. We may very well come to a time when practical effects are no longer utilized in mainstream cinema, where CGI has become the all-encompassing cinematic creative force and where model-makers are as quaint as town criers. Hell, we may already be there. As long as there are still kids who grow up with the burning desire to make the magic themselves, however, to mold the clay and set the fuses and paint the models, to bring life to dead objects in the same way that Dr. Frankenstein once did…as long as these kids are still around, there will always be someone to carry on the flag. Nightmare Factory serves as a wonderful reminder of just what an important tradition this really is and a truly loving salute to those who continue to keep the tradition alive.

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5/30/14 (Part One): Beware the Melty Man

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'70s films, '70s-era, 1970's cinema, Alex Rebar, All Buy Mice Elf Film Festival, astronauts, B-movies, body horror, Burr DeBenning, cannibalism, cinema, drive-in fare, film reviews, films, horror, horror films, horror movie, Jonathan Demme, melting people, Movies, Myron Healey, Rick Baker, sci-fi, science-fiction, special effects, special-effects extravaganza, Steve West, Ted Nelson, The Incredible Melting Man, William Sachs, writer-director

While iconic villains are a vital component to horror films (particularly franchises), they’re also one of the most difficult aspects of a film to nail. Despite the exponential increase in the sheer number of horror films, we haven’t really added many “classic” villains to the roster since the ’80s: while characters like Laid to Rest’s (2009) ChromeSkull and Hatchet’s (2006) Victor Crowley have been in a few films, by this point, they’ve yet to achieve any sort of cultural resonance. One could argue that Leprechaun’s (1993) titular character counts, since he’s now been featured in seven different films (after all, Freddy only had a total of 9 films, including the recent reboot). As with ChromeSkull and Crowley, however, the Leprechaun never really made it to Buzz Bin status: he’s working-class but no hero. There have been many attempts to spawn a new horror icon, over the years, but very few ever end up taking off. One of the strangest of these attempts to craft a bit of zeitgeist came about in 1977 with The Incredible Melting Man, a B-movie with pretensions to immortality.

Despite some pretty impressive makeup effects by a young Rick Baker and a tagline that explicitly announced the filmmakers’ intentions (“The first new horror creature”), The Incredible Melting Man did not go on to spawn a franchise…or even a sequel, as it were. Whether audiences had a hard time associating with the gloopy titular monster or whether the (decidedly rough) production-quality put them off makes little difference. As it stands, The Incredible Melting Man is a complete failure at creating a lasting legacy but pretty successful as a goofy, gory popcorn film.

Astronaut Steve West (Alex Rebar) is part of an expedition to fly through the rings of Saturn when something goes wrong: his nose begins to bleed, things get fuzzy and he wakes up in a hospital. After removing his facial bandages, Steve notices something: he doesn’t look too hot. In fact, he seems to be rotting. This kinda ticks him off (wouldn’t it bother you?) and he pounds the table, apeman-style, before trashing the examination room. A nurse returns in time to get chased by Steve in a scene filmed with the kind of gauzy slo-mo that usually ended ’70s horror films, not began them. She crashes through a glass door (saved a second on opening it, I suppose), Steve’s right there and it’s “Good night, nurse!”

We now meet Dr. Ted Nelson (Burr DeBenning) and Dr. Loring (Lisle Wilson) as they examine the nurse’s body. Ted knows a little about this situation, since he was Steve’s friend and was involved with the Saturn mission. He’s also the most laid-back, unflappable, milquetoast “hero” of all time: the scene where he describes to Dr. Loring how his wife, Judy (Ann Sweeny), is pregnant with their third child, after two previous miscarriages, has all of the emotional impact of a colonoscopy. Any “clues” he turns up along the way will be greeted with the mild distaste that one might express when finding caterpillars on the cabbages: Ted Nelson may be the “hero” in The Incredible Melting Man but the guy would be a zero just about anywhere else.

As poor Steve stomps around the countryside, leaving gloopy handprints here, a bit of his ear there (“Oh God…it’s his ear,” exclaims Ted, in a way that practically screams “Could I possibly have a refill on my glass of water, please, if it’s not too much of a bother?”) and dead bodies everywhere, Ted is forced to get General Perry (Myron Healey) involved. Together, Ted and the General set out to stop Steve’s killing spree, albeit for different reasons: the General wants all traces of this disaster dead and gone, while Ted only wants to help out his soupy buddy. It all comes to a head at some kind of a factory, where Ted’s friendship will be stretched to the limit and Steve will have to try, if only for a moment, to regain his basic humanity.

When The Incredible Melting Man is rough, it’s really rough. The acting is rudimentary, at best, with some performances being so howlingly terrible that they achieve a kind of gonzo spectacle. Alex Rebar, in particular, is awful: were he to stay “normal” throughout the film, the movie would actually be unwatchable, although getting buried in the melting man makeup restricts his performance to strictly physical, which works wonders. While Burr DeBenning is nowhere near as terrible, he manages to possess as much energy and life as a department-store mannequin (and not the ’80s kind, either). In the world of the over-actors, the under-actor is king and DeBenning rules his roost from a godly height. The musical score is also pretty ludicrous: the final pursuit in the factory is scored by some of the cheesiest wah-wah guitar possible, along with a pathetic rip-off of John Williams Jaws theme.

Among the shoddier filmmaking aspects are some genuinely “so-bad-it’s-great” moments. My personal favorite has to be the one where Steve steps on the fisherman’s sandwich. It’s the oddest, most awkward and just plain confounding scene in the entire film (which is saying a lot): for some reason, we get a close-up of a plastic “monster” foot (think Gwar) stomping awkwardly on a sandwich, as if the “actor” accidentally tripped and was immortalized on film. Another forehead-slapper would have to be Judy’s ridiculously horny mother and step-father, who stop for a little hanky-panky and orange picking in the middle of the night and get a nasty Steve-sized surprise: not only are the actors terrible (bested only by their avatar, Alex Rebar) but the situation makes no sense whatsoever.

Far from being a complete waste of film and time, however, The Incredible Melting Man is actually quite charming, believe it or not. It will never be accused of being a good film, mind you, but it’s a pretty great B-movie. The movie is definitely cheesy (and very, very soupy) but it’s also got a surprising amount of pathos wrapped up within the idiocy. Steve West, when he’s not talking, is a tremendously sympathetic creature and not so far removed from Frankenstein’s Monster or The Wolf Man. He’s a normal man, with normal friends and a normal life, who is completely destroyed by forces outside his command. He’s turned into a monster, hunted by the very government who facilitated his transformation and has his waning sense of humanity constantly appealed to by his former best friend. Steve West is no sadistic Freddy or Wishmaster: rather, he’s a pitiable creature who seems to take no joy in his mayhem. There’s one moment that perfectly illustrates the two halves of this character: after he’s turned into a completely horrifying, shambling mess, Steve looks down into a water-filled barrel, right at his reflection. As he stares, a drop of pus, like a tear, falls into the water, rippling the image. Say what you want but it’s a powerful, subtle moment that manages to perfectly blend pathos and ick factor: in other words, it’s a picture-perfect horror movie moment.

Too much can’t be said about Rick Baker’s phenomenal special effects, which really give the film a sense of identity. While the makeup starts off a tad bit rough, we’re in glorious hardcore mode once Steve really gets to rottin’. At first, I was wondering whether the version of the film I recently watched was censored: an early shot of the dead nurse seems surprisingly tame and cut-off and there’s some weird editing going on. Once we get to the shot of the fisherman’s body, however, complete with ripped-open ribcage and a severed head, it’s pretty clear that not much hit the cutting room floor. Truth be told, The Incredible Melting Man, as befits its moniker, gets severely goopy, so much so that it begins to resemble one of those extended Family Guy vomiting scenes. If your stomach isn’t fairly cast-iron, chances are that Steve’s melted-wax look is really going to rumble your guts: make it through enough of the film, however, and it kind of fades into the background, sort of like all the nudity in Showgirls (1995). For my part, some of the most stomach-churning stuff came from scenes like the one where an unsuspecting young girl puts her hand into a nice, sticky bit of Steve slop: the thought, alone, is undeniably gross but the practical effects make it even worse. Ditto for the final melting scene, which would be echoed a decade later in the gross-out classic Street Trash (1987). While Street Trash would plumb it for laughs, The Incredible Melting Man goes straight for the heart-strings, reminding us that the disgusting pile of wet, red something on the ground used to be a pretty average (if terribly hammy) dude.

While The Incredible Melting Man may not have succeeded in adding another indelible villain to the collective conscience, it ended up being a more than worthy B-movie. It’s not hard to imagine couples going to see this at the drive-in, covering their eyes whenever Steve shambles up into the camera-eye. For folks who grew up on this kind of sensational, B-movie fare, The Incredible Melting Man should more than fit the bill for a night of nostalgia. Just be sure to keep this one away from the dinner hour: for once, this is all about truth in advertising.