Editorials
[It Came From the ’80s] The Legendary Dick Smith’s Faceless Nightmare in ‘Ghost Story’
With horror industry heavy hitters already in place from the 1970s, the 1980s built upon that with the rise of brilliant minds in makeup and effects artists, as well as advances in technology. Artists like Rick Baker, Rob Bottin, Alec Gillis, Tom Woodruff Jr., Tom Savini, Stan Winston, and countless other artists that delivered groundbreaking, mind-blowing practical effects that ushered in the pre-CGI Golden Age of Cinema. Which meant a glorious glut of creatures in horror. More than just a technical marvel, the creatures on display in ‘80s horror meant tangible texture that still holds up decades later. Grotesque slimy skin to brutal transformation sequences, there wasn’t anything the artists couldn’t create. It Came From the ‘80s is a series that will pay homage to the monstrous, deadly, and often slimy creatures that made the ‘80s such a fantastic decade in horror.
Adapted from Peter Straub’s novel of the same name just two years after the book’s release, Ghost Story opened to mixed reviews. In the decades that followed, it’s mostly fallen into obscurity. It’s easy to understand why; its horror unfolds slowly in a murder mystery, set in a quaint New England town in the middle of snowy winter. With four elderly friends at the heart of the mystery, Ghost Story often feels more like a Victorian mood piece than a modern horror film (at the time). For the novel purists, there’s a lot that’s cut out in favor of brevity and peripheral characters never quite get explained. But the vengeful ghost at the core of the film is captivating, both thanks to actress Alice Krige’s performance and the fantastic special makeup effects by Academy Award-winning artist Dick Smith and his protégé Rick Baker.
Nicknamed the Godfather of Makeup, Smith was the first makeup artist to receive an honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement, in 2011. He was 89 at the time. He also won an Academy Award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling for his work on Amadeus in 1985. All of this to say that the makeup effects alone for Ghost Story makes it worth the watch. Though Smith might have earned accolades (rightfully so) for his stellar work in aging makeup outside of the horror genre, his work in horror was equally masterful.
Alice Krige plays Eva and Alma, two women that haunt the two generations of men in the story in different ways. For the elder generation, Eva is seeking revenge for a wrong they caused her in their youth. In the present, Eva’s jarring, ghastly appearances usually result in the death of those that see her in her decayed state. Smith and his team created multiple head and shoulder, life-sized puppets of Eva, each with a vastly different stage of decay reflective of her death. There’s one apparition of Eva they created that wasn’t used in the film, however, and it’s the scariest one of them all, with its gaping mouth and eyeless visage.
Left: Dick Smith’s Unused Apparition in Ghost Story (1981), Right: House on Haunted Hill (1999)
The unused apparition of Eva was so effective, though, that it did eventually make its way into a horror film decades later with Smith’s permission; 1999’s House on Haunted Hill. During the surreal underwater sequence, while Stephen Price (Geoffrey Rush) is locked in the saturation chamber, he encounters a ghostly woman that turns into a terrifying faceless apparition. Credited as the “eyeless apparition” designed by Dick Smith, the monster was based on his unused design from 1981. Seeing it in the context of House on Haunted Hill makes it easy to see why it didn’t make the cut for Ghost Story.
Smith passed away in 2014, leaving an impressive legacy in horror and cinema. His horror credits include The Exorcist, Burnt Offerings, The Sentinel, Altered States, Scanners, and The Hunger, but it is Ghost Story that often gets most overlooked. Krige’s chilling performance and the makeup effects compensate for the more glaring plot and pacing issues, but even if you don’t want to seek this one out then at least rewatch House on Haunted Hill for Smith’s gruesome, faceless specter.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Daniel Kraus took the literary world by storm back in 2023 with the release of his hit novel Whalefall. A terrifying yet intimate survival thriller with mythological undertones, the book was almost immediately bombarded with offers from movie studios wanting to adapt its claustrophobic imagery to the big screen.
Fast forward to June of 2026, and we finally got our first glimpse at Brian Duffield’s long-awaited adaptation of Whalefall, starring Austin Abrams as our unfortunate lead who gets swallowed alive by a sperm whale. While this two-and-a-half-minute teaser only covers the beginning of the story, it’s already been making waves online (and in-person at select 4DX promotional screenings) as one of the most stressful cinematic experiences of the year.
In fact, my own wife had to cover her eyes and exclaim, “You’re definitely not dragging me to watch this one” when we saw the whale’s jaws begin to close in on Abrams, with this incident alone already leaving me convinced that this will likely be one of the biggest genre hits of the year. With that in mind, I’d like to invite you to take a closer look at the teaser in order to break down interesting details and get a better idea of what’s in store for genre fans when the movie finally comes out this October.
Of course, as usual, don’t forget to comment below if you noticed something we didn’t!
Now, without further ado, here are five things we learned from the Whalefall trailer!
5. Austin Abrams Performed Many of His Own Stunts
Much like in his previous film, No One Will Save You, Duffield insisted that this visceral experience should be grounded by our main character’s believable reactions, regardless of the plot’s effects-heavy setup. That’s why the camera always makes sure to linger on Abrams through his diving mask, so we know that it’s really him going through this ordeal alongside the audience.
While plenty of CGI was used in order to bring this larger-than-life story to the big screen without killing our leading man, Abrams apparently insisted on performing many of his underwater stunts himself (several of which are visible in the trailer) – much to the chagrin of a worried Duffield and the flick’s stunt coordinator, Shauna Duggins.
4. The Film Seamlessly Transitions Between the California Coast and Underwater Sets
Duffield obviously wasn’t about to drag his crew out to the middle of the ocean and shoot inside a real sperm whale, but it’s reassuring to see the filmmaker blend on-location footage with the underwater tank segments and the literal belly of the whale set.
There may be plenty of CGI stitching these elements together, but the trailer shows us that only the truly impossible shots are completely digital, meaning that the filmmakers didn’t take the easy way out when it came to adapting this unique story.
3. The Whale is Only Part of the Story
Book adaptations tend to leave out inner monologues and the occasional flashback in order to streamline the narrative (which is one reason why it’s so difficult to translate Stephen King novels to the big screen), but a claustrophobic parable like Kraus’ Whalefall would get a bit dull after a while if the whole thing was entirely set within the creature’s stomach.
That’s why it’s such a relief that the trailer hints at how Duffield will also be adapting many of the book’s introspective moments chronicling our protagonist’s harsh upbringing under his troubled father. Not only do these inclusions give the audience some much-appreciated breathing room, but they also give Josh Brolin a chance to shine as a truly complicated character.
2. The Movie is Keeping the Book’s Scientific Accuracy…
While Kraus’ novel was inspired by a viral video of kayakers nearly being swallowed by a humpback whale, the writer ended up consulting with marine biologists about exactly what kind of situation might lead to a whale actually eating a human being alive.
The answer was surprisingly specific, as cetaceans are almost universally known to be friendly towards humans. However, even a gentle giant can make mistakes, and as we see in the trailer, Abrams’ unpleasant fate is more of an accident than anything else – with the massive sperm whale only trapping the poor diver in the first (and thankfully acid-free) chamber of its stomach due to a mix-up involving a giant squid.
Fortunately for the film’s special effects artists, they can now reference the first-ever footage of a real-life sperm whale chowing down on one such squid, as this freaky recording was released late last year.
1. …With a Catch!
Duffield may be doing his best to recreate the grounded (or is it submerged?) thrills of Kraus’ novel, but there are limits to what can be depicted onscreen while still guaranteeing an entertaining movie. That’s why it’s no surprise that Whalefall will take advantage of certain cinematic parlor tricks as the director tests the limits of both physics and biology so we can actually watch his movie.
For starters, the innards of the whale itself have been greatly exaggerated so there’s enough space to make out the action, and in the spirit of movies like Neil Marshall’s The Descent, there also seems to be plenty of non-diegetic lighting meant to show us what’s going on even if Abram’s character wouldn’t necessarily be able to see anything.
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