If you're a fan of science fiction, horror and fantasy films, chances are you know who Stan Winston was. In fact, his name is as recognizable - and important - to you as Steven Spielberg or James Cameron (who are two of Winston's closest longtime collaborators). That's because Winston was not only the best special effects creator of his time, he may well be the greatest in the history of film.
Winston passed at away earlier this month at age 62 after a lengthy bout with cancer. A four-time Academy Award winner, Winston studied sculpting and painting in college before deciding to move to Hollywood to pursue a career in acting. When that didn't work out, he became a makeup apprentice at Disney. After just a few short years at Disney, Winston opened up his own makeup and visual effects business called Stan Winston Studio (SWS). For much of the 1970s, Winston worked in television and won an Emmy for the 1972 TV movie "Gargoyles" and was nominated for several others. A turning point in Winston's career came in 1981 when SWS created the makeup and robot effects for the 1981 Andy Kaufman comedy "Heartbeeps," which earned Winston his first Academy Award nomination. A short time later, Winston met a then-unknown James Cameron and was hired to work on an obscure project called "The Terminator." The rest, as the say, is history.
Stan Winston works on the Terminator endoskeleton, the creation that would vault him into stardom.
"I don't do special effects," Winston once said. "I do characters. I do creatures." Whether he was doing make-up like Danny DeVito's Penguin in "Batman Returns" and the undead in "Interview with a Vampire" or making horrific monsters in movies like "Leviathan" and "The Relic," Winston always seemed to bring his A-plus game to the set. He became one of the most important and distinguished names in the visual effects business, frequently collaborating with Cameron, Spielberg, Tim Burton and many others.
The job of a special effects creator is to make illusions through makeup, models and robotics. The job of a great effects creator is to make to these inventions look as real and life-life as possible. But a true effects wizard goes far beyond that, and that's what Winston did. He imagined the unimaginable and made it real, and he sparked the imaginations of audiences everywhere. Winston, sadly, is gone. But he has left us a great many treasures that won't soon be forgotten. As a tribute to Winston's creativity and artistry, we highlight his 10 most memorable creations.
10. Monster Squad (1987)
This isn't one of the many blockbusters Winston is remembered for, but designing the creatures for this film earned him major geek cachet. Written by Shane Black ("Lethal Weapon"), and co-written and directed by Fred Dekker ("Tales from the Crypt," "Night of the Creeps"), "The Monster Squad" is a throwback to the Universal "monster rally" films of 1940's that brought Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolfman together. Winston was the man who was charged with re-imagining these iconic monsters and updating them for modern audiences.
"The Monster Squad" is basically an old-fashioned family film like the Rankin and Bass-animated "Mad Monster Party," and it enjoys a strong cult following today. All the classic creatures are here, including the Wolfman, Dracula, Frankenstein's monster (who's a good guy in this one), the Mummy, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. They're out to conquer the world, and it's up to a group of kids calling themselves "the Monster Squad" to stop them. The original Universal monsters created by Jack Pierce were state of the art for their time, they're still an inspiration to make-up men today, and one can only imagine what fun Winston must have had creating his versions of the classic monsters (after all, who can forget the exploding Wolfman who quickly reassembles, proving that only a silver bullet can kill werewolves?). Winston's make-up and visual effects mastery is a big reason "The Monster Squad" is a beloved film more than 20 years later.
9. A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001)
Yet another collaboration with director Steven Spielberg produced another Academy Award nomination for Best Visual Effects for Winston, who was challenged with bringing the late Stanley Kubrick's futuristic vision to the silver screen. And Winston would go on to say that "A.I." was one of the most ambitious projects ever for him personally as well as the Stan Winston Studio (SWS).
While "A.I." is certainly a flawed opus, the movie was chock full of eye candy for science fiction fans. First and foremost, Winston and his team built Teddy, the highly intelligent animatronic teddy Bear who serves as loyal companion of David (Haley Joel Osment). Teddy was brought to life via 50 different internal servo motors, with 24 motors for the head alone. In fact, SWS created six different versions of Teddy for the film in an effort to make the toy bear into a real character. "The combination of the amount of screen time, the range of performance needed, his importance to the story and the time crunch we were under made Teddy one of the most difficult challenges we've ever faced," Winston said in the movie's production notes.
And while Teddy was one of the more memorable characters of "A.I.," Winston's work on the film didn't end there. The SWS team also designed and constructed the different mechas featured throughout the movie, including the bizarre creations displayed during the "flesh fair" sequence where anti-mecha humans round up and destroy all manner of androids. Winston and his team used amputees to play the different flesh fair mechas, who has been neglected and junked like scrap metal, which produces the most haunting - and humanistic - scenes of the film.
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