Brandon Wainerdi, writing at ILM.com, takes a look at some of the scariest moments in ILM’s cinematic history just in time for Halloween.
How do you bring a nightmare to life? For 50 years, ILM has wrestled with that very question: whether horrific moments in decidedly non-horror movies (like the face-melting in 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark or Donavon’s demise in 1989’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade), modern flicks like Renfield (2023), or more family-friendly fare like Haunted Mansion (2023). No matter the genre, it is vital that Industrial Light & Magic’s technology and artistry perfectly mix with a very human fear.
Here are some of the scariest moments in ILM’s history… so far.
1. Poltergeist (1982)
“They’re here.” One of the scariest moments in ILM history is also one of the earliest. In the final 15 minutes of the Tobe Hooper film, it seems like all is calm. The family is spending one of their last nights in Cuesta Verde, most of their possessions already packed up. But “The Beast” won’t let them leave, causing mayhem throughout the house.
The closet once again opens up, ready to engulf little Robbie and Carol Anne, and the resulting haunted house montage culminates with an undulating door sucking everything up with its tendrils. Producer Steven Spielberg expressly wanted a “full-size esophagus” to engulf the childhood bedroom. The demonic throat was actually a half-scale ILM miniature filmed separately and combined through optical compositing. It is just one of several moments in the movie that combines terror with technology, elevating Poltergeist to classic status, winning the BAFTA Award for Best Special Visual Effects and an Academy Award nomination (losing to another ILM project, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial).
2. Fire in the Sky (1983)
“Based on a true story,” Fire in the Sky’s scariest scene is the 12-minute alien probe near the end of the film, which involves a nonstop nightmarish volley of various extraterrestrial tortures.
When logger Travis Walton (D.B. Sweeney) finally flashes back to his time on the UFO, it is revealed to be even more traumatic than previously imagined. As he pushes through a strange membrane, Travis awakens in a zero-gravity alien chamber, eventually stripped down and bolted to an examination table. Alien goop (not maple syrup) is poured into his throat and eyes, and mechanical tools are shoved into his body. Even today, the aliens doing the dirty work remain terrifying, and the mix of compelling editing with ILM’s effects makes the whole sequence incredibly realistic. It is a masterful exercise in horror, and one this author will not be revisiting for a while.
3. Jurassic Park (1993)
For a movie chock full of memorable moments, there is maybe no better scene than the Tyrannosaurus rex breaking free from her enclosure and terrorizing the stranded Ford Explorers. From small, quiet moments (the oft-mimicked ripples in the water glass) to comedic moments (“When you gotta go, you gotta go.”), the horror ramps up as the full menace of the T. rex is revealed through the rain.
The sequence is a masterclass in incredible early ILM CG effects, mixed with the beautiful, lifelike animatronic head and torso from Stan Winston Studio. With initial plans to use stop motion techniques with Phil Tippett’s team, the “DID” (Dinosaur Input Device) allowed anything the team animated with a traditional stop-motion armature to be fed into the computer for further enhancement and rendering. “We literally didn’t know we could do this,” later remembered visual effects supervisor Dennis Muren.
4. The Mummy (1999)
The reveal of the eponymous Mummy had to work. When the resurrected high priest Imhotep makes his first appearance an hour into the film, it needed to be scary, menacing, and believable. After all, he had been waiting 3,000 years for this moment.
Having removed the eyes and tongue of poor Mr. Burns (now crawling blindly in the background of the shot), the sinewy and rotting resurrected corpse roars and threatens our heroes. It was important for the ILM team to work on their “grossness threshold.” Imhotep needed to be dry and dusty and rotted, not gory and bloody. Michael Bauer, a CG supervisor on the film, took model shop maquettes of the Mummy and then built a realistic digital frame, saying of 1999 audiences: “We know what a human looks like, we know how a human moves.” ILM had to build the mechanics of basic human movement, from a skeleton to a musculature and then stripped it back down to the living corpse you see on screen.
5. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
Much has been said about ILM’s award-winning work on the Pirates movies, including the first sequel, which provided some of the most memorable digital creations in cinematic history. But perhaps nothing can match the moment in the first film when Geoffrey Rush’s menacing Captain Barbossa steps into the moonlight, revealing his true form for the first time. His hands are the first to turn skeletal, and then it’s a full transformation on his face as he chugs a bottle of dripping wine: “You best start believin’ in ghost stories, Ms. Turner. You’re in one.”
All of the on-looking ghastly pirate actors shot their scenes separately, wearing mo-cap suits for ILM artist reference. It was quite a bit of detail, a complex process that turned an important sequence into an instant classic. (And don’t get us started on the creepy skeletal monkey!)
Read more at ILM.com.
Images: ILM
