#monster fx

Werewolf in a Women's Prison (2006). Effects by Monster FX, Ron Karkoska.

RE-INTERPRETING THE GILLMAN FOR THE 1980s, AND WHAT A MONSTROUSLY AWESOME REDESIGN IT WAS.

PIC(S) INFO: Spotlight on the Gillman from American horror/comedy/cult classic "The Monster Squad" (1987), directed by Frank Dekker. Monster suit designed by Stan Winston and sculpted by Steve Wang & Matt Rose.

REDESIGN OVERVIEW: "The challenge was to suggest those classic creatures, without really copying them, because we didn’t have permission or the license to use those specific images. So we could do a ‘Gillman’, for example, but it couldn’t look too much like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. It was frustrating for us at first, because, of course, we wanted to do the original designs! But we couldn’t. We could only suggest those designs. So the Frankenstein monster looks a bit like the Karloff creature; but instead of bolts in the neck, he has bolts in the forehead. There was a certain percentage of changes we had to make to get away from any legal copyright infringement.

Stan Winston designed each of the characters for "The Monster Squad," drawing sketches that were evocative of the original monsters, but within the legal restrictions."

-- STAN WINSTON SCHOOL (blog) on redesigning the classic horror monsters for 1987's "The Monster Squad"