Behind the Effects: An American Werewolf Transformation

Halloween time is creeping upon us like so many starving legless zombies, and I think it’s about time I looked Behind the Effects of one of cinemas creepier more demented cousins.  After all; some of the greatest special effect pioneers have been horror films, It’s only fair that I give credit were credit is due.

An American Werewolf in London is one of my personal favorite horror movies, and has some seriously messed up (in a good way) effect shots.  Rick Baker, the same guy who designed the Star Wars cantina aliens, won an Oscar for his work on this film, and it’s no wonder.  The famous werewolf transformation scene that he orchestrated (below) speaks for itself.

Warning: Do not watch the following video if you are squeamish or don’t want to see David Naughton’s bare butt.

There are a couple bits in this scene that might jump out at the viewer, the first of which being the magical extending hands of mystery.  How did they get actor David Naughton’s hand to do that?

The effect you saw was actually created using a series of rubber limbs with simple animatronics built in.  Any time you see the hand actually stretching you may notice that Naughton’s elbow is not in shot; that was done deliberately so that the special effects team could hold up the animatronic arm in such a way that, said arm, would appear to be simply an extension of Naughton’s own appendage.

The first stretching hand scene used an animatronics simply designed to go from a state of looking like a normal hand to being slightly stretched.  Then for the second shot, a whole other hand-amatronic had to be brought in, starting out as stretched as the first one was and stretching into the position the third, and final, animatronic hand would have to start.  In other words: hand number one went from point A to point B, but other animatronics were required in order to stretch the hand all the way to point D.

Animatronic #1

Animatronic 2

Animatronic 3

 Another effect that seems to get peoples attention is the brief tidbit where you actually see the werewolf hair growing out of Naughton’s skin, which was much actually one of the simpler aspects to create.  The effects team simply glued a bunch of long dark hairs onto a board and then threaded the other end through tiny holes in a skin colored bit of rubber.  All that was filmed was the hair being pulled out of the holes, but in post the film was switched backwards to make it appear as if the hair was coming out of the skin.

The part, near the end, where Naughton’s face finally expands into that of a lupine monstrosity, was one of the most difficult and affective portions of the sequence.  The process of building the rig was started almost a year before shooting actually began, and required Naughton’s head to be enveloped in a casting agent so that a proper replicant of his head could be constructed and manipulated.  You can see some images of the process below.

When you see the face expand the actor isn’t actually in the costume, what you see is an elaborate replica of his face made out of stretchy rubber.  Under the rubber “mask” is not a face, but an animatronic head, dubbed the Change-O-Head (I would have called it the Change-O-Saurus,) a demonstration of which can be seen below.

The full effect took a week or so to shoot, and the various animatronic and puppet parts of the critter required about thirty technicians to operate. 

Pretty cool stuff huh?  The transformation sequence from “American Werewolf” isn’t the only impressive effect from the film, but it seems to be the one that people remember the most.  I would definitely recommend looking more into the history behind the films of effects artist Rick Baker.

Thanks for reading! you'd better follow Atchley-O-Saurus Movies on Twitter and Facebook or you will change into a horrifying creature during the full moon.  You can also email me at atchleyosaurus@gmail.com if you don't want to be haunted by the memory of your dead friend.  (Yay!)