An insect?
An alien?
A puddle of blood at Ridley Scott's feet?
Hollywood's an amazing place — where else can a human be these things?
Keep watching for the craziest sci-fi makeup transformations of all time.
Released in 1968, Planet of the Apes is a fascinating example of how science fiction
films can be both entertaining and thought-provoking.
This time travel adventure is just as entertaining to watch today as it was 50 years ago, but
the film also raises interesting questions about evolution, societal roles, and the abuse
of animals.
Unsurprisingly, the runaway success of Planet of the Apes inspired a whole franchise.
After a false start attempt at a reboot by Tim Burton, the series was revitalized by
the modern reboot trilogy starring Andy Serkis.
The critical acclaim for the last three Apes movies — and Serkis' performance in particular
— even inspired 20th Century Fox to launch an awards campaign to recognize the work of
motion-capture performances.
However, Serkis' performance wouldn't have been possible if it wasn't for the stunning
makeup work in the original film.
For example, legendary makeup artist John Chambers used extensive prosthetics to transform
Roddy McDowall into the ape known as Cornelius.
McDowall could have looked ridiculous in the role, and Planet of the Apes would have sunk
as a result.
But Chambers pulled it off, and Cornelius immediately grounds himself as the heart of
the film.
Return of the Jedi marked the culmination of the original Star Wars trilogy and the
final confrontation between Luke Skywalker and his father, Darth Vader.
It was also the movie that properly introduced Emperor Palpatine, who had previously appeared
only fleetingly in The Empire Strikes Back.
Even then, it was clear that Palpatine is the one character that holds power over Vader.
Return of the Jedi had to deliver a villain even more terrifying than one of the most
iconic villains in film history — not exactly an easy task, but George Lucas pulled it off.
Instead of making Palpatine a ruthless warrior like his apprentice, Lucas chose to turn the
Dark Lord of the Sith into a sickly old man.
The prosthetics work on Ian McDiarmid's face implies an entire history that is never directly
spelled out to the viewers, but is no less terrifying for that fact.
Ian McDiarmid, a relatively young British stage actor at the time, is completely unrecognizable
in the movie.
The payoff is superb, too.
Palpatine's frail appearance throws Luke off guard, and after Luke refuses to kill Vader,
Palpatine shows that he is far fiercer than he looks.
His torture of Luke through Force lightning wouldn't have been half as impactful if Palpatine
hadn't initially seemed so weak.
John McTiernan's 1987 classic Predator, may be a science fiction film, but the lurking
horror of its jungle setting is more reminiscent of Vietnam war films.
McTiernan approached the concept of an extraterrestrial invader with a surprising sense of grittiness,
following a paramilitary rescue operation in the Central American rainforest.
And sure enough, Predator doesn't immediately announce that it is a sci-fi film.
It's only after the fearsome Predator starts picking off the commandos that Dutch realizes
they're not facing an ordinary enemy.
However, the film would have lost its intensity if the monster that these men were facing
was just some goofy special effect.
Moreover, having Kevin Peter Hall actually become the alien creature made the combat
sequences more exciting and allowed the cast to perform actual stunt choreography, rather
than acting against a totally digital creature.
"I've always wanted to play a heavy.
And this is an excellent heavy."
McTiernan enlisted the legendary makeup designer Stan Winston to design a prosthetic suit.
Having full-body makeup on didn't exactly make Hall's shooting experience very pleasant;
nevertheless, he more than did the role justice, and the results make for some of the most
intense action sequences ever created.
David Cronenberg's 1986 horror film The Fly is one of the greatest remakes of all time.
The original film from 1958 is a schlocky "creature feature" that focuses more on shocking
thrills than character development.
While the original is an enjoyable product of its era, however, Cronenberg reimagined
the story as a romantic tragedy.
The movie finds scientist Seth Brundle making a scientific breakthrough by inventing a viable
teleportation device.
Despite his eccentricities, Seth isn't some crazy "mad scientist."
He's genuinely excited about his research and seeks to woo journalist Ronnie Quaife
at the same time.
The delightful chemistry between Seth and Ronnie makes the tragic direction of the story
even more heartbreaking, though.
Hoping to impress her, Seth places himself in the teleportation device, not realizing
that a fly has also crept into the machine.
Seth's body soon begins to transform as he slowly adopts fly-like qualities.
The incredible makeup and prosthetics work from Chris Walas and Stephan Dupuis shows
the gradual decline of Seth's physicality in conjunction with his transformation.
None of the changes to his body happen overnight, but it soon becomes clear that things
are going very wrong indeed.
Unsurprisingly, Walas and Dupuis won an Academy Award for their incredible work on The Fly.
The Star Trek franchise has no shortage of iconic alien creatures, and perhaps the most
famous of all are the Klingons.
Released in 1991, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country completely changed the way that this
race was portrayed on screen.
Makeup artists Richard Snell, Michael Mills, and Ed French upgraded the Klingon prosthetics
to make them more expressive.
The Undiscovered Country delves deeper into Klingon culture than the franchise had ever
gone, and the movie features more Klingon characters than all five of the previous movies
combined.
Of all the Klingons in the film, Christopher Plummer's character, Chang, is the most memorable.
Chang is a remorseless military leader who stages a plot to frame Kirk for the assassination
of the Klingon Chancellor.
Plummer brought a certain elegance to the role, quoting Shakespeare and bragging to
Kirk about his knowledge of the arts.
This would have seemed completely ridiculous, of course, without some decent prosthetics
to back him up.
Luckily, we got that in spades: the makeup team even received an Academy Award nomination
for their work on the movie.
The 1997 science fiction film Men in Black has a simple yet brilliant premise: what if
aliens were living among us?
Based on the comic book series of the same name, Men in Black imagines a world where
aliens disguise themselves on Earth.
The mysterious government agency known as the Men in Black monitors these extraterrestrial
visitors, and wipes the memories of any human who happens to see them.
"I make this look good."
Men in Black created a vast world, featuring many different alien creatures.
Makeup artists Rick Baker and David LeRoy Anderson were tasked with populating background
environments that featured countless different species.
While many of these characters are comedic in nature, the "Bug" character was completely
terrifying.
This creature inhabits the body of the farmer Edgar, played by Vincent D'Onofrio.
In the Blu-Ray release of the film, Baker cited the film as the most challenging shoot
of his career.
He did a great job, though, which was compounded by D'Onofrio's brilliantly offbeat performance
as a creature that is trying, but failing, to seem human.
The original 2000 X-Men film forever changed the course of comic book movie history.
Instead of treating its characters like cartoons, this movie took a more serious tone, tackling
the horrors of mutant discrimination by human beings.
Fittingly enough considering that theme, one of the movie's villains is able to transform
herself and mimic other characters.
In a way, Mystique is hugely uncomfortable in her own skin.
Unfortunately, the process was just as uncomfortable for Rebecca Romijn.
She went through a grueling nine-hour process to have Mystique's skin applied to her own.
Despite the challenges, Romijn later said,
"Every single time they finished, and I would look in the mirror, I would just look at it
like it was a masterpiece."
She wasn't wrong, either, as the end result was arguably the definitive cinematic version
of Mystique.
There aren't a lot of modern filmmakers who know how to seamlessly combine makeup and
visual effects, but Guillermo del Toro is one of them.
All of Del Toro's films feature outstanding creature designs that embellish his stories
with a real sense of personality.
So Del Toro was the ideal choice to bring Mike Mignola's character Hellboy to the big
screen.
The Hellboy comics incorporate elements of horror, fantasy, and romance — all genres
that Del Toro is more than familiar with.
Del Toro cast one of his favorite collaborators, Ron Perlman, in the title role as the demon
antihero.
In the director's commentary for the 2019 Blu-Ray release, Del Toro said that he cast
Perlman because of his familiarity with prosthetics work.
Perlman made Hellboy both scary and sympathetic, and he set a high bar for future adaptations.
Notably, the critically-mocked 2019 remake starring David Harbour failed to live up to
the high bar that Perlman and Del Toro set.
Outer space horror movies were not a new concept before the release of Alien in 1979, but Ridley
Scott understood that true horror was about more than just blood and gore.
The Xenomorph alien has since become an icon of pop culture, of course, but for most of
the first film it lurks in the shadows.
Indeed, it's what Scott doesn't show that makes Alien so terrifying.
The crew of the Nostromo doesn't understand what the mysterious creature is capable of
until it's too late.
Early in the film, a face-hugger attaches itself to the face of Executive Officer Kane,
played by John Hurt.
Although the face-hugger soon dies off, the stakes are immediately raised when the Xenomorph
bursts through Kane's chest, killing him.
This moment of true body horror is one of the most terrifying sequences in the entire
Alien franchise, thanks in part to some impressively gory practical effects.
Kane's death is crucial to the tone of the film, too, as it shows that the heroes of
Alien are simply working-class people who have no experience dealing with extraterrestrial
monsters.
To that end, Scott famously provoked genuine reactions from his cast by not revealing the
full chestburster effect until the scene was shot.
Remembering the reaction of actor Veronica Cartwright, H.R.
Giger later said:
"She was hysteric, she cried so much.
I think it was real."
2015's Mad Max: Fury Road was not the first time that Hugh Keays-Byrne had appeared in
George Miller's post-apocalyptic action franchise: he co-starred as the villain Toecutter in
the original Mad Max in 1979.
This time around, Keays-Byrne returned to play the fearsome warlord Immortan Joe, who
controls the water supply in the film's deserted wasteland.
The makeup team designed Immortan Joe's signature look to hint at a violent history, one that
is never completely spelled out to the audience.
While we don't know much about Joe's backstory, it's clear enough that he's earned a reputation
for his brutality through many years of conquest.
"He's got his guns, he's trying to be — you know — a man with his codpiece."
But Mad Max: Fury Road's villain also plays into the movie's themes of gender roles and
female empowerment.
In a sense, Immortan Joe is the ultimate personification of toxic masculinity, and his grotesque design
helps support that role.
While David Lynch's 1984 adaptation of Dune had its merits, makeup design was not one
of them.
The design of the Harkonnen characters in Lynch's version was laughable at best and
certainly not at all menacing.
Denis Villeneuve seriously upgraded the design of the villains for his 2021 adaptation of
Frank Herbert's novel, however.
In his movie, Stellan Skarsgard's is completely unrecognizable as the ruthless Baron Harkonnen.
Skarsgård spent over 80 hours in makeup to prepare for the part.
He and Villeneuve wanted the Baron to be a frightening presence even when he wasn't speaking.
And although some actors may have been hesitant about spending so much time in makeup, Skarsgård
was enthusiastic about the process.
Dune's makeup artist, Donald Mowat, later said that Skarsgård also "begged" to have
more scenes in which the Baron was totally naked, as he felt that the character would
be even more terrifying when he was unclothed.