Zombie Babies Infect Spirit Halloween Product Lines

Being a horror fan, I naturally consider myself to be an aficionado of the Halloween holiday season. Nevertheless, my recent visit to a Spirit Halloween store revealed to me how far I am behind the times in recognizing Halloween awesomeness, an awesomeness that's so awesomely awesome that it's criminal for it to be limited to just one season. The awesomeness that I'm talking about is Spirit Halloween's line of "Zombie Baby" props and costumes.

Watch your back, Anne Geddes--they're coming to get you!

Sure, the fusion of horrific imagery and themes with children and things aimed at children has long been a staple of horror art, merchandising and storytelling. What Spirit Halloween has done is take this to a new level by providing a wide selection of props and costumes (some motorized, some not) that make little bundles of joy look like newborn nightmares. When I say "wide selection", I mean just that--it felt like all that was missing from Spirit Halloween's insane zombie infant inventory were replicas of the Crawler and Lurker Necromorphs from the Dead Space video game series. Click below to see a selection of Spirit Halloween Zombie Baby items that will add an extra layer of delirium to your Halloween festivities.

I suppose I could provide descriptions of each of these products, but I think that the products' pictures and names speak quite well for themselves. Obviously, Spirit Halloween put a lot of thought and effort into these, so much so that I'm surprised that they aren't being released as some kind of monster baby collectible figure line. They're like the spiritual successors to the Garbage Pail Kids card series from Topps, only gorier; you can even get "adoption certificates" for them. Here's a selection of the props:

 Snack Time Zombie Baby

Baby Fat Zombie Baby 

Stabby Zombie Baby (with battery-powered stabbing action)

Jugular Jimmy Zombie Baby

Evil Rag Doll (with bloody needle-gnawing action)

Hugh R. Tasty Zombie Baby

Thumb Sucker Zombie Baby (extra thumbs not included)

Brain Eata Zombie Baby

Isabella Zombie Baby

Agony Ann Shoulder Baby

For those of you who would prefer to get more interactive with the terrifying tykes, here are some of the "Baby Harness Spinner" costumes:

Go to the Spirit Halloween site to check out the full selection of Zombie Baby items. Some of the products have already sold out, so place your orders now while supplies last.

Get Your RC Geek on with Wow! Stuff's Six-Legged Attacknid

I've ranted before about how the Terminator franchise really needs a much better selection of scale-accurate replicas of Skynet's vast army of kill 'bots, and I think that's especially true in the area of remote control (RC) toys. So far, there has only been one officially licensed RC toy replica of a Terminator vehicle, the aerial HK unit from Terminator Salvation; otherwise, the only other RC Terminator replicas that I know of are ones made by extremely tech-savvy fans.

However, even though we'll never see an official Lego Mindstorms version of a T-600 or a T-1 tank, there are other RC toys that toy collecting Terminator fans can use as substitutes to terrorize their action figure collections. A WooWee Robosapien toy could be used as a substitute for a Harvester, a quadcopter could be used as a substitute for an aerial HK, and a Kid Galaxy Cybercycle could be used as a substitute for a Moto-Terminator. Even the rarely seen HK Centurion and T-7T Tetrapod now have their own substitute with the Attacknid, which is part of the Wow! Stuff’s Combat Creatures line of RC toys. The Attacknid differs from the Centurion and Tetrapod in that it has six legs instead of four, but that doesn't it mean it is any less cool.

In addition to crawling like a mechanical insect, the 10 inch tall Attacknid features a rotating turret that launches discs up to 30 feet. It also has removable, customizable armor panels on each leg, and it shuts down if its "Battle Brain" is hit directly three times. The disc launcher and Battle Brain features are provided so that RC geeks can have fights between their Attacknid units; nevertheless, the Attacknid's disc launcher and 360 degree range of all-terrain mobility should provide hours of fun for shooting at action figures during an imaginary post-apocalyptic future war with a Skynet that outsources with Wow! Stuff.

Check out the video below to see the Attacknid in action, and you can learn more about this battling ‘bot toys on the official Combat Creatures site.

Phantom Sharks and Mutant Alligators Come to Life at Shark City Ozark

For as glamorous as it looks from the outside, the entertainment industry is an extremely tough business. For every international superstar, there are thousands of actors, directors, writers and production crew members who are struggling to get by in such a demanding, hyper-competitive business. This is especially true for practical special effects artists: With Hollywood's desire to go digital, artists who aim to keep practical effects alive in both movies and television are facing increasingly steeper challenges from production companies that see CGI as sure-fire means of saving time and money--albeit at the steep expense of quality effects work and fan satisfaction.

Entering the fray of practical special effects services is Shark City Ozark (SCO), a creature effects shop in Missouri. I've been in contact with SCO about their latest projects, the recent SyFy production of Ghost Shark (read my review here) and the upcoming Ragin' Cajun Redneck Gators, which airs on SyFy this Thursday, September 5th at 9 p.m. (Fans of the 1959 creature feature Alligator People should check out Redneck Gators, since both films seem to be cut from similar creative cloth.) SCO provided mechanical creature effects work for both films and given my fascination with mechanical monsters, SCO let me post some of their behind-the-scenes production photos of their work and shared some insights with me about what it's like to break into a field where hands-on monster making isn't nearly as valued as it should be. Click below to continue.

If you're familiar with SCO's work with their mechanical shark maquettes from Jaws and Jaws 2, then you know that the folks at SCO know their movie sharks. Thus, the scaled-sized mechanical shark that SCO provided for Ghost Shark is clearly a labor of love, even if the film doesn't do the shark itself justice. Here are some examples of conceptual art by SCO for Ghost Shark:

When I contacted SCO owner Mike Schultz about SCO's mechanical shark, he mentioned a few details to me that didn't make it into the film. "I built him so he could bend into a deep 'C' curve and thrash around and snap like a Deep Blue Sea Mako, but by the time we went before camera all he was allowed to do was shake his head a little and barely snap his jaws," he told me. "We knew when we got the script what we were in for, but how often does one get the chance to make a mechanical shark for a film?!"

As you can see from the photos above, SCO's mechanical shark was mostly inserted into the movie through green screen shots. (Given its amount of detail and its original range of motion, it's a shame that this shark wasn't around for the miniature shots in Jaws 3D.) Of course, SCO didn't just provide a shark that could do dry green screen work--it could do water shots as well:

As someone who is all thumbs with even the simplest of plastic model kits, my head spins to consider how someone can make both movie-accurate mechanical shark collectibles and a movie-ready mechanical shark that works for both dry and wet shots. Did I also happen to mention that unlike another mechanical shark named "Bruce", SCO's shark never broke down once during production? "I provided extensive art design and story-boarding for almost every key sequence," Schultz mentioned. "Ghost Shark required extensive design work and story-boarding with the shark attack sequences, although much of the action simply ended up as transparent blurs shooting through the frame. I'm not really sure why so few ideas made it to the final print. Then again, when schedules are changed four times a day and things must be done on such a tight deadline, I can understand why much of what we loved, planned for and of what they wanted never made it to print. You just do the best that you can and move to the next need to fulfill."

So with Ghost Shark done, what can we expect this week from Ragin' Cajun Redneck Gators? Unfortunately, Schultz doesn't know. "I am not sure what parts of my gator work will air at this point," he said. "They contacted me really late in production. I actually had to set aside painting the nearly completed ghost shark to make these various gators and gator parts for them and then return back to finish the shark, which was due on another set only days later--and with us running it! I do know that they filmed everything we built and shipped to them, but how much will survive has us really wondering. We'll just have to watch with everybody else."

According to Schultz, SCO made a gator head, tail, and 4-foot long dead baby gator prop for Redneck Gators. Here are some pictures of the concept art and completed work:

"We're really proud of our polyfoam-gators," Schultz added. "When you look at our gators closely, you will see that every scale and wrinkle and armor plate is anatomically correct. We did not make all of the gators for the film, but what we built looks real and scary. The actors did not have to pretend that something was there either. There is very little that cannot be done with a realistic looking practical creature right there on the same set with the actors and crew."

So with so much work to do and so little time to do it, will SCO keep making monsters for future creature features? Absolutely! "I want to keep doing these things," Schultz told me. "These have been roller-coaster adventures for all of us. We'll endure the ever-changing schedules, the crazy scripts, the rushed late hours and last second creature changes. We want to be there on location again. We want to be racing those insane deadlines and trying to make things better and memorable. We love the green screen and the hot stage lights and the cold stale food. We love breathing life into polyfoam and silicon. We build these living things and get to travel to location and operate them. We want these same people to call us back and we want to make more monsters for them."

Click here to see more behind-the-scenes photos from Ghost Shark and Ragin' Cajun Redneck Gator, as well as photos for another upcoming production called Bering Sea Beast.

Ghost Shark Review: Just When You Thought it was Safe to Swim with a Ouija Board

Ripoffs of the classic creature feature Jaws are a dime a dozen, especially if the ripoff in question also has a monster shark similar to the one in Jaws. Usually, these kinds of ripoffs try to distinguish themselves with by putting the monster sharks in an unlikely location (in a lake, in a supermarket, in a research lab, in a tornado, etc.) or giving the sharks some unique attribute or ability (swimming in the snow, swimming in the sand, etc.). Yet for fans of Jaws ripoffs who are looking for something a little different in their derivative entertainment, Active Entertainment has decided to ripoff the least of the Jaws movies, Jaws: The Revenge, with its latest film Ghost Shark. If anything, Ghost Shark proves that if you ripoff the lowest point of a popular franchise, you at least have a decent shot at making watchable (albeit not very memorable) entertainment. Read on for my complete review.

Even though the location and characters are different, Ghost Shark shares the same central concept as Jaws: The Revenge: A monster shark that's out for revenge against a group of people. Yet unlike Revenge, which was produced to showcase the acting talents of a studio executive's wife (yes, really), Ghost Shark is a cheap excuse to set up a series of increasingly preposterous shark attacks. Whereas Revenge kept piling on absurdities in its story to accommodate its unlikely star and astonishingly prohibitive production schedule, Ghost Shark takes the absurd concept of a vengeful shark and knowingly pushes it even farther every chance it gets.

Ghost Shark starts with an inept fisherman and his dimwitted daughter on a charter boat trying to catch a prize fish in the wee hours of the night before fishing season ends. Just when they hook what they perceive to be their winning fish, a large great white shark snatches it out of their grasp, which launches the frustrated fisher-folk into a violent rage against the shark. As the dying shark lurches away from the boat, it finds its way into a cursed cave where it becomes a ghost shark that wreaks havoc in a neighboring coastal village. Because it's a ghost, the shark can now attack wherever water is present: buckets, swimming pools, fire hydrants, bath tubs, toilets, emergency sprinklers, water coolers, leaky kitchen pipes, water toys, rain, bikini car washes, etc. With the local authorities baffled by the sudden explosion of grisly deaths, it is left to a group of teenagers to discover the secret of the ghost shark and put its reign of terror to an end.

No water container is too small for Ghost Shark!

If the premise of Ghost Shark sounds silly to you, then you know what you're in for. The cast that plays the teenage protagonists looks like they just arrived from the Disney Channel, and they come across as a much blander version of the teenage characters from Scooby Doo. This kind of film exists to providing a high body count of bloody deaths and in that sense, Ghost Shark delivers to a point. To its credit, the film eschews CGI effects for a practical effects shark made by Shark City Ozark. (You can see behind-the-scenes pictures of Ghost Shark at the official SCO site, and you can read my two-part interview with SCO owner Mike Schultz here and here.) The mechanical shark itself is actually a three-foot mechanical miniature that is inserted via green screen shots, but it looks great and moves mostly like the real thing. Indeed, watching a practical effects shark instead of a CGI shark gave me flashbacks to Roger Corman's numerous cheapjack creature features from the pre-CGI era. Good times, indeed.

Oddly, my biggest complaint against Ghost Shark is that it doesn't go far enough with its whacked-out premise. Sure, the script's dialogue is clunky and its characters are cardboard, but the film's flat direction is what really keeps the flick from hitting its high notes. Even though he has a few special effect-laden titles under his belt, director Griff Furst appears to have no idea about how to shoot special effect-driven scenes to their maximum effect. He doesn't even know how to shoot the scale-sized mechanical shark to get the most shock value out of it. Ideally, this kind of film should play as a gorier, goofier version of Jaws parodies such as Saturday Night Live's "Land Shark" skit or the Carol Burnett Show's "Jowls" skit. Instead, even the film's most outrageous kill scenes are shot without the slightest hint of dark humor or morbid inspiration. It makes me wonder what an experienced professional such as practical effects guru "Screaming Mad" George would have done with Ghost Shark.

Worst case of acid reflux ever.

Ghost Shark may not rank among the best of the Jaws ripoffs, but it's still more fun to watch than Jaws: The Revenge. To Jaws ripoff fans, that's got to mean something, right? If not, that's OK--Ghost Shark 2: Urban Jaws is already on its way.

The Universal Studios Jaws Ride Lives on at the Amity Boat Tours Site

Fans of Jaws and its subsequent franchise were crushed when the Universal Studios theme park in Orlando, Florida decided to close its Jaws ride back in January 2012. Yet while this piece of Jaws history is gone, it is far from forgotten. The folks behind the Amity Boat Tours Web site, a site that has been around for 13 years, are updating the site into the "Finale Edition" that will serve as an archive for all things concerning the Jaws ride.

According to the site, "(T)he Finale Edition of AmityBoatTours.com celebrates the life, and community of the JAWS World -- from the honorary JAWS Skippers to the Summer vacationers of Amity, this site was built and designed for you. We have received many questions and concerns that the site will close, and grow old, now that the attraction is gone. Quite the contrary has occurred. We have been working, since weeks before the announcement of its closure, to begin crafting a brand-new way to bring Amity Harbor to you and something that we can walk away from proud and dedicated to. The Finale Edition of the site is just that... we are extremely proud to bring this new experience to you, as well as 'bulk-up' the AmityBoatTours.com world."

A bird's-eye view of the Orlando Jaws ride. You can see the most of the places 

where the shark surfaces to terrorize theme park visitors.

I've been looking around the updated site and it appears to be on track (no pun intended) to becoming the definitive resource for anyone who is interested in the Jaws ride and its history. The Finale Edition site features a detailed history of the ride, plenty of trivia and photos, and video clips of the fictitious Amity TV station WJWS that would play on monitors in the ride pavilion to keep visitors entertained while they waited in line. The site also features photos of a similar Jaws ride that still operates in the Universal Studios theme park in Japan.

In honor of the revamped Amity Boat Tours site, I'm posting two Jaws ride video clips that I found on YouTube that are different from most others that are available on the Internet. The first is a video of the ride in anaglyph 3D (think of it as the other "Jaws 3D") and a video from 1990 that will give you an idea of how the ride functioned as it was originally designed Ride and Show Engineering, Inc. In this version, the shark would attack the tour boat and spin it to the side, shortly before the final confrontation between the shark and the boat's "Skipper". As you can see in the video, the shark that was supposed to attack the boat wasn't very convincing; however, the shark that surfaces in the boathouse (at about three minutes into the video) is very impressive with its thrashing head and snapping mouth. The ride was redesigned and re-launched in 1993 due to repeated technical problems, but it's a shame that Universal didn't keep the original boathouse shark.

Erth's Dinosaur Petting Zoo is Coming to the U.S.

As I was looking through the newspaper today, I found this interesting tidbit that might be of interest to monster, dinosaurs and/or puppetry aficionados: Erth's educational puppet show, "Dinosaur Petting Zoo", is currently touring England and will soon arrive in the U.S.--namely, locations in California, Texas and Arizona.

According to Erth's site, Dinosaur Petting Zoo is "(a) unique show that allows heaps of interaction for kids and adults while they travel with the Erth performers on a journey through prehistoric Australia. Experience an amazing selection of dinosaurs and creatures that inhabited that landscape millions of years ago. Children will have the opportunity to help feed, water and care for these prehistoric marvels with simple lessons in animal husbandry."

Erth is an Australian puppet company that began in 1990, and has used a creative selection technology and techniques throughout its history to bring a large assortment of amazing creatures to life. Given how impressive live puppetry has been for stage productions of The Lion King and War Horse, I think that it's wonderful that dinosaurs are getting their due in this form of performance art. However, others may disagree:

Click here to see the 2013 Dinosaur Petting Zoo touring schedule.

Great Moments in Creature Feature Special Effects History: The Monster That Challenged the World (1957)

It's almost impossible these days to read online discussions about new and upcoming creature features without encountering some debate over the effectiveness of practical effects versus CGI. I personally think that a combination of both is the best option, although I've been told by someone who works in the industry that the major studios will often dump practical effects for CGI for the sake of cost-cutting and expediency. That's a disappointing development, but unfortunately that is how Hollywood seems to work these days.

Regardless, for those of you who appreciate practical special effects in your monster movies, you should check out the 50s-era "big bug" movie, The Monster That Challenged the World (1957). There are a few things that are misleading about the title--in particular, there is more than one monster in the movie, and the monsters never actually get around to challenging the entire world. Also, this film is technically not a big bug movie because the monsters are actually giant prehistoric mollusks; nevertheless, the film's plot uses conventions that are very similar to the big bug movies from that decade, particularly Them! (1954) and Black Scorpion (1957).

Where this film earns its place in the history of monster movies is in its special effects, where early animatronics technology was used to bring the titular monster to life. Before there was a mechanical shark in Jaws (1975) or a life-sized Alien Queen puppet in Aliens (1986), there was a giant mechanical mollusk in The Monster That Challenged the World. Read on for more details about this early attempt at using animatronics to put giant monsters in the same sets as their human co-stars.

For a film that was shot in 16 days for a budget of $200,000, the 10 foot tall fiberglass mollusk puppet that was featured in The Monster That Challenged the World is still very impressive to watch. It was designed by Augie Lohman so that the head could tilt in various directions and its mandible pincers could twitch menacingly. According to producer Arthur Gardner, the monster's movements were controlled by Lohman and two assistants through a series of air pressure valves. Gardner estimated that the monster cost around $15,000 to build, and that it weighed around 1,500 pounds. After production, the monster was sold to the Ocean Park Pier in Santa Monica, CA, where it was incorporated into one of the attractions. (Fun horror trivia: Ocean Park Pier was the setting of the 1961 cult classic thriller, Night Tide.)

The film never shows a monster in its entirety. At first, you only see its head and neck, which look like some kind of fanged caterpillar; in other shots, large shells are shown, suggesting that the mollusk monsters looked as a whole like giant snails. I suspect that the giant snail design choice was made for budgetary reasons: As you watch the movie, it becomes clear that only one mollusk puppet was made even though the script says that there are dozens of mollusk monsters lurking in the waters of the Salton Sea, waiting to escape to the Pacific Ocean through a series of water canals. Thus, the filmmakers used the single puppet for attack scenes, and then used several giant shell props (in which the mollusks retreat to rest when they are not on the move) to indicate that there is more than one monster present.

Unfortunately, such a production decision drains the narrative of much of its tension. Even though the mollusk puppet is more impressive than the puppets from Them!, the giant ant film has two things going for it that the giant mollusk movie did not: Them! had 1) a better script and direction and 2) it had more than one puppet. A film is more likely to scare audiences with the threat of a pending giant monster invasion when more than one moving monster appears on the screen. With only one mollusk puppet available, you can't get past the feeling that you're watching the same monster in every attack scene--because you are. In that sense, the movie's title is a Freudian slip: there was only one monster to challenge the world because there was only one monster on the set, no matter what the characters say. Then again, many of the scenes feel like they were scripted in a manner so that characters could talk around the fact that the audience would never see more than one attacking mollusk at a time.

Another shortcoming of the movie that didn't help the mechanical puppet was the monsters' aquatic origin. Even though several scenes in and around the Salton Sea will remind horror fans of Jaws, the mollusk puppet wasn't designed to function in the water. Thus, the water attack scenes were either shot on a set with a rear projection of the Salton Sea or on a set that was supposed to look like the bottom of the Salton Sea. Neither approach is very convincing and they ultimately detract from the puppet's effectiveness.

Don't let my criticisms keep you from watching The Monster That Challenged the World; it may not be an influential classic, but it actually is one of the better creature features from its decade. Watching this film will give you an idea of what it was like to include complex practical special effects in a movie with a low budget, particularly during a certain era of Hollywood history. If you need a break from CGI effects in your horror and sci-fi movies, then you might want to spend some time with The Monster That Challenged the World.

A resin model kit of The Monster That Challenged the World

(photo courtesy of The Doctor's Model Mansion site)

Nerd Rant: Is High-Definition Technology Killing Practical Special Effects?

At the end of this week, theaters across the country will debut The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the long-awaited film adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's prequel story for the Lord of the Rings trilogy. While the film itself is getting positive reviews, I've noticed that many of the critics have also commented on one of the film's technical aspects--namely, the visual effect has resulted from the film being shot at 48 frames per second (fps) instead of the traditional 24 fps. The film's director, Peter Jackson, chose this new format for the sake of giving his film better image definition; some critics think that Jackson has achieved his goal in spades, while others think that the movie looks much more artificial than had it been shot at the normal frame rate.

In particular, Andrew O'Hehir's made this observation about the 48 fps format when he saw The Hobbit: "(F)or me ... this cinematic innovation apparently meant to create an atmosphere of magic realism makes the whole thing look immensely more fake. Mountains and fortresses that are presumably digital creations look like painted backdrops; humanoid figures of hobbits, dwarves and wizards appear just as artificial as the goblins, specters and trolls. ... Personally, I found the Thomas Kinkade-like glow of The Hobbit’s images both fascinating and disconcerting, and felt that it accentuated the movie’s other flaws."

I've noticed before on Blu-ray how higher definition can make multi-million dollar film productions look cheaper than they actually are, as if they were shot for television instead of the silver screen. Granted, this doesn't happen on all Blu-ray transfers--for example, the Blu-rays for Jaws and the Alien series look fantastic--but I've noticed it happening with enough frequency that I can only wonder how things will further change when and if the 48 fps format becomes the industry standard. In short, here's my question: Can practical special effects still be used if high-definition technology exposes their artificiality, or will only high-definition CGI special effects technology be able to keep up with the new fps format?

Essentially, special effects involve the creation of celluloid-ready optical illusions in order to enhance the audience's experience of watching a movie. In some ways, special effects are like stage magic: Just as magicians have to carefully control what a live audience can and cannot see in order to make stage tricks appear magical, special effects artists have to control what a movie audience can and cannot see in order to maintain their suspension of disbelief. The effects can be a complicated as stop motion animation or as (relatively) simple as forced perspective shots, and many special effects techniques have deliberately exploited the shortcomings of film as a medium to keep the audience unaware of the effects' artifice. So, what happens when special effects artists are forced to contend with a film format that is intended to show everything in such high detail?

Of course, filmmakers want fake things to appear real for the purpose of capturing the audience's imagination. Yet film projects that are heavily based on special effects--scale miniatures, animatronic costumes and puppets, complex applications of makeup, etc.--shouldn't look too real, because if they do they'll look exactly like what they really are: fake. Will practical special effects still have a place in 48 fps movies, or will the 48 fps format serve as another damaging blow against the usage of practical effects and further promote the usage of CGI special effects in their place?

KMD Artistry Restores Two of Hollywood's Classic Human-Insect Freaks of Nature

KMD Artistry, which is owned by visual artist Kelly Delcambre, specializes in restoring and replicating props and costumes that have appeared throughout Hollywood's history. To date, KMD projects have included replicating costumes from Universal's classic monster movies to restoring mechanical props used in films such as the original Fright Night (1985). Delcambre has also designed and produced many cosplay costumes, which are very remarkable in their own right. Yet with me being a huge fan of "Big Bug" movies, I wanted to call attention to one of KMD's restoration projects that is near and dear to my dark, twisted heart: the human-fly costumes from the original The Fly (1958) and its first sequel Return of the Fly (1959). Click below for more pictures of the human-fly monster restorations, as well as a few thoughts about how the restorations compare to the original costumes. All pictures are provided courtesy of KMD Artistry.

KMD's recreations of the human-fly monsters from the early Fly movies speak for themselves--they are very faithful to the original designs. The fly head from The Fly is closer to human proportions to accommodate the hood that concealed it through most of the movie, while the fly head from Return of the Fly is larger and more grotesque to add shock value to the sequel's lean, low-budget script.

Because KMD's fly head recreations are not meant to be worn by actors, additional details were be added to the heads and claws while others were removed. For example, David Hedison could move the fly head's proboscis in The Fly by using his mouth. As you can see from the replica produced by KMD below, the proboscis does not move because there is no one inside the mask to move it.

David Hedison in The Fly ... 

... and KMD's replica of The Fly.

The fly mask in Return of the Fly had two triangle-shaped patches of mesh fabric that were below the eyes, one on each side of the mouth. These patches were put in the mask to allow the actor who wore the mask to see and breathe.

The man-insect monster from Return of the Fly ...

... and the same monster mask on display at the "It's Alive!" Animatronics Exhibit at

the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles, 2006.

Note the triangular patches on the lower half of the mask.

Since KMD didn't have to worry about an actor underneath the mask, additional monstrous details were molded into the fly head in place of the mesh patches.

 Kelly Delcambre and his Return of the Fly replica.

KMD's life-size Return of the Fly bust. 

The Delambre-Delcambre connection: Brett Halsey (who played Philippe Delambre 

in Return of the Fly) and Kelly Delcambre at Monsterpalooza 2010. 

Check out KMD Artistry's Facebook page and YouTube channel for more examples for Delcambre's amazing work. Click here for some additional commentary about the original Fly trilogy.