In 1973, Rob Bottin did what any 14-year-old boy with dreams of monster-making would’ve done – he wrote a letter to his idol, special effects (SFX) artist Rick Baker, lauding him as a master of the craft and modestly requesting an autograph. Young Bottin also included his own sketches of schematics for horror special effects, just to show his passion for the craft. Baker didn’t just respond with a mere autograph, as many would have. He was so stunned by the potential he saw in Bottin’s illustrations that he offered the 14-year-old an apprenticeship on the spot, under his very own wing.
By this time, Baker had provided special effects make-up for The Thing with Two Heads (1972), the primary make-up for John Landis’ Schlock (1973), and, most notably at this point in his career, special effects make-up for The Exorcist (1973) under the direction of Dick Smith. Baker’s page in the proverbial book of special effects legends was just beginning, and over the next decade he would take the young Bottin along on this journey. During this period, the special effects world was intimate to say the least. It wasn’t until a little number called Star Wars (1977) that special effects artists began to get their due recognition. Oh, and you know a little something about that Star Wars movie? Bottin assisted Baker in creating special effects for the infamous cantina scene, with Baker doing the majority of his cantina creations in his parents garage in El Monte, California.
As the ’80s rolled around, Baker became a verifiable name in the special effects and the film industry, and Bottin was not far behind. Aside from assisting Baker, Bottin had landed SFX jobs on some big titles in horror – Piranha (1978) and John Carpenter’s The Fog (1980) – with a favorable reputation at the horror titan production company, New World Pictures (founded by Roger Corman).
A new moon rose in 1981, as Hollywood birthed two of the most influential werewolf movies in film history – John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London (1981) and Joe Dante’s The Howling (1981). Baker and Bottin had worked together on Joe Dante’s Piranha (1978) and Rock N’ Roll High School (1979), so when Dante approached Baker with the intention to adapt Gary Brandner’s The Howling, a book of the same name to the screen, he accepted and brought Bottin with him as assistant.
On-screen werewolves in the ’80s were largely inspired by The Wolf Man (1941), with special effects work done by the legendary Jack Pierce. Lon Cheney Jr. portrayed the titular character in the original and subsequent films, all which shaped the image and lore of werewolves in ensuing popular culture pieces. The transformation sequences in these films were achieved by using frame-by-frame shots – essentially stop-motion – as make-up was painstakingly added during each individual shot to convey a hyper-realistic transformation. These make-up applications took upward of five hours and required Cheney to remain completely still as the film crew took photos of each step. While groundbreaking in its time, nobody had since touched werewolf transformation on that scale in 40 years – and it was time for innovation.
One fateful day, after accepting the job on The Howling, John Landis called up Baker – the two were friends and collaborators, a bond created when Baker worked on Schlock – with an offer of a job on a movie that Landis and Baker had been discussing for eight long years. That movie was An American Werewolf in London. At the time, Landis was receiving notoriety for his directorial work on comedies such as Kentucky Fried Movie (1977), Animal House (1978), and Blues Brothers (1980). There was distance between him and his early horror-comedy, Schlock, leading Baker to doubt that the long-discussed werewolf movie would ever be funded or produced. Baker had taken his animatronic werewolf concepts to The Howling, something that Landis did not take on the chin. He fought for Baker, even going so far as to yell and name-call him during their phone call – and it worked. Baker left The Howling (though he remained on as a consultant, as he had already provided significant work) to work on American Werewolf, leaving 20-year-old assistant Bottin in charge.
Now, thrust into the driver’s seat, Bottin rose to the challenge and began working on groundbreaking special effects that would help change the course of werewolf movies forever.
“When we started the picture, the director and the producer and myself didn’t want to do the picture, unless we could do something new with it,” Bottin said in a press junket for The Howling. He praised the Universal Wolf Man movies, but expressed an important goal – to create a transformation of man-to-beast without the use of any camera “tricks”, leaving only practical SFX. No trick photography or time-lapse had been used, which was earth-shattering in the world of SFX. The transformation begins with Robert Picardo, the actor portraying the transforming man beast Eddie Quist, in make-up. Bottin installed artificial “air bladders” under latex on Quist’s face so the artificial skin would expand, akin to breathing, during the transformation sequence. At one point, the human nose SFX piece breaks and grows into a terrifying muzzle, which was all accomplished using mechanical appliances that stretch the foam make-up and latex. After an elaborate exhaustion of resources, the film had depleted its budget, forcing filmmakers to finish the transformation scene in Dante’s office, as they could not afford to be on set any longer. Bottin was widely celebrated for his SFX work, with The Howling winning the 1981 Saturn Award for Best Horror Film and Bottin receiving a nomination for his work.
Across the pond, John Landis and Baker set out to break their own ground on An American Werewolf in London. Landis was still slightly offended by Baker’s decision to take on The Howling, despite his ultimate decision to follow Landis. The two had met in the early ’70s, both barely 20 years old, through Don Post Studios – one of the earliest companies to produce latex masks, with Don Post often famously heralded as the Godfather of Halloween. John Landis was green and looking for a cheap gorilla suit for his campy horror-comedy, Schlock, and turned to Don Post for assistance. They weren’t interested, but referred Landis to a kid who often came to them for cheap mask-making supplies – none other than Baker, who Landis visited at Baker’s parents’ house where he was living. During this time in 1973, Landis already had the full script of American Werewolf written and talked about it passionately with Baker, whose work inspired him. Baker was no stranger to the lap-dissolve SFX method of the early Wolf Man movies, and the gears in his head began whirring as Landis spoke his dreams of creating a werewolf transformation sequence that hadn’t been seen on film before – a painful, realistic, active transformation from human man to four-legged rabid beast. Schlock was not a commercial hit, almost the contrary, and eight years passed without the visions of American Werewolf coming to pass.
“I had a really long time to think about it,” Baker said in an interview with the Archive of American Television. “That’s when I started thinking, ‘Well you know what,’ […] at one point, we should probably switch to a fake head that we can actually do something with.” This bud of a blossoming idea started with the notion of a fully rubberized head that hair could effectively grow from, evolving into a rubber and latex head with mechanical appliances inside that would expand, contract and change. Baker affectionately denotes his creation as a “change-o head,” along with “change-o arms,” “change-o back,” and “change-o legs.” Just like his protégé, Baker wanted to pull off a transformation that didn’t involve “camera trickery” – just homegrown practical effects. With no word from Landis on a production date, Baker took the job with Dante on The Howling, who had similar aspirations of a beastly transformation. During the design process, Baker received that call and made the switch.
Baker had already discussed his ideas with Bottin, but extoled him as “very creative and clever” and credited him for coming up with his own ideas on the transformations for The Howling. As Baker developed his ideas for American Werewolf, he cites his dog Bosco (a Keeshond) as being the main inspiration for the look of the wolf. One of the top requirements Baker insisted upon was that the transformation sequence be shot in a fully lit room. No shadows, no darkness, no possible way to hide any make-up, prosthetic flaws or shoddy mechanical appliances – everything needed to be top notch for an undertaking such as this. It was a bold decision, but one that paid off greatly – the Academy introduced the very first category for make-up & special effects, and Baker won the Oscar for his work on American Werewolf in London.
Both Baker and Bottin emerged from the ashes of 1981 as highly-decorated masters of their craft and would blaze more trails in the name of practical effects.
Bottin’s post-Howling credits include The Thing, a practical effects masterpiece, with the young master giving breadth to John Carpenter’s original idea. It was Bottin who suggested that the alien be ever-changing, taking on whatever form it pleased. At 21 years old, during his work on The Thing, Bottin was hospitalized for double-pneumonia, a bleeding ulcer, and exhaustion. He took time for R&R and recovered, eventually to head SFX for films such as Legend (1985), RoboCop (1987), Total Recall (1990), and more before disappearing from the scene completely in the early 2000s. In his first credit since Mr. Deeds (2002), Bottin was called in by Game of Thrones director, Alex Graves, to provide special effects for the Purple Wedding episode in 2014, namely (spoiler alert!) Joffrey’s death scene (spoiler alert!).
Baker retired in 2015 after a career studded with credits such as Cronenberg’s Videodrome (1983), Ed Wood (1994), Batman Forever (1995), Escape from L.A. (1996), Men in Black (1997) and its subsequent sequels, Dr. Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas (2000), Planet of the Apes (2001), The Ring (2002), Hellboy (2004), Tron: Legacy (2010), and countless more.
The world of cinema werewolves hasn’t seen such innovative strides in practical effects since Baker and Bottin in the decades since, nor has any movie attempted to rival the stunning practical work on either film. 2021 will mark 40 years since these two behemoths shook the SFX world. Doesn’t it make you salivate to think – who will be next?
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