Editorials
[It Came From the ‘80s] The Awesome Creature Effect We Almost Got in ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors’
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.
If you’re a regular reader of this column, then you have at least some idea of the blood, sweat, and tears put into the special makeup and creature effects that gave us enduring movie monsters. The insane hours put into engineering, molding, casting, and application while under the pressure of time and money constraints. Sometimes the effects that take the longest to create only end up on screen for mere seconds. For other effects, they don’t even make the film at all. Such is the case with the nightmare girl on a tricycle in the opening scene of A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors.
After the opening credits that introduces us to new final girl Kristen (Patricia Arquette), who is falling asleep while crafting Freddy Krueger’s dilapidated house, her mom comes in and ushers her off to bed. Cue the dream sequence, which sees Kristen trying to save a little girl in a yellow dress from the enclosing claws of Krueger. Kristen runs through the house holding the girl in her arms until she reaches a room full of bodies, the girl whines, “Put me down! You’re hurting me!” Kristen looks down and finds this:
It’s startling enough, the transition from cute human child to charred skeleton, but it’s not so impressive. Especially compared to the effects that were to come in the film. It turns out, though, that the nightmare girl in the film wasn’t the original plan. The original plan was to have a mechanical puppet that would move and clutch at Kristen. So, what happened?
Special makeup effects artist Mark Shostrom (Evil Dead II, Phantasm II, From Beyond) explains, “I made this mechanical corpse of this little girl that could move and open its eyes and grab at her shirt and everything. [Director] Chuck Russell‘s instructions were ‘Think Auschwitz.’ I went to the Simon Wiesenthal museum and I got research and I made this corpse. The ribcage looked very emaciated and it was a little heart wrenching, this poor little girl puppet.”
The emaciated little girl looked so effective and authentic that it spooked Russell, who was already overwhelmed with shooting three units and under a time crunch to wrap up filming by Christmas. “He looked and said ‘Oh my God, everybody who’s Jewish in the audience is going to look at this and hate me. We can’t film this.’ I spent ten weeks making it, we need to film it. And Rachel Talalay, the production line producer, said ‘we need to film this.’” But Russell didn’t budge, and someone in props instead threw together the charred skeleton that we see in the final film within minutes.
It understandably baffled Shostrom, who spent 10 weeks creating what Russell asked for. “I’ve never in my life experienced anything like that because at the very least take an hour, put it on film and decide later when you’re not frazzled by shooting three units and the day before Christmas. But they didn’t even film it,” Shostrom says of his lost creation. And it is indeed lost. When asked if the puppet still exists in a warehouse or shop somewhere, he answers, “No, it eventually just rotted away.” All that’s left of the emaciated nightmare puppet are photos and memories.
Granted, Kristen’s nightmare girl only plays a small bit in her journey, and what was used on screen doesn’t hinder the final film. But it would’ve been really cool to see this far scarier, mechanical puppet terrorize Kristen. We often celebrate the effects that appear on screen, but sometimes the effects that don’t make it to screen deserve just as much praise and attention.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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