I wish we could’ve seen more of him in the movie but instead we only see him for just a few seconds.
I wonder, were there any plans to have more of him in the movie but they couldn’t due to budget/time constraints? Because it would’ve been cool to see him and the Statue of Liberty go at it for a lil bit.
He was only ever intended for that one shot.
From the Cinefex article, p.30:
"Like the theater ghost, the Washington Square monster was
a late entry designed to add scale to the sequence. With virtually
no time to spare, the production sought out master stop-motion
animator Phil Tippett to create the creature. ‘The people at ILM
were good friends with Phil," said Michael Gross, “and Pam
Easley in our department knew him from The Golden Child. So
all of us approached him and said, ‘Phil. you’ve got to do this
shot.’ He agreed to do it, but only if we accepted certain limitations.
Given the time factor, he said he could do it if the shot
was only a hundred and sixty frames long and if he could build
the creature based on an existing armature. Also, he would only
be able to do one take — in camera — because there would be
no time for an optical composite. Since it was a see-through
ghost, we figured it would be okay —and that’s literally what
Phil did. He and his people built the creature, shot it and
delivered it to us one day early."
The full PDF of the article can be found at the second-to-the-last link on this page:
I highly recommend giving it a read, it’s got some great info.
Also, if you ever wanted to see the critter in better detail, you should check out this video:
The pics are from this auction listing:
https://propstoreauction.com/view-auctions/catalog/id/48/lot/11929/
Notice on the back view, you can see that the armature was removed after filming, no doubt to be recycled into yet another stop-motion movie beastie.
Alex
On a more personal note, I’ve always wondered if the armature they repurposed for the Washington Square Ghost might have been from the Rancor from Return of the Jedi. The two creatures share a similar shape, and Tippett definitely worked on both of them.
But despite them trying several ways to shoot the Rancor, including a first attempt with Phil in a suit…
and the final hand-puppet used in the film…
… I am actually not sure there was ever a stop-motion version done.
If not, it must have been some other armature.
Alex
Thanks for the info!
I don’t think it looks like the Rancor at all. The mouth is completely different and extents way further, the feet are non existent, and the hands are of a different length.
Ow wait, you mean just the arms. My bad. Could be repurposed with a different skin.
It’s not really noticable in the movie the thing has a snakelike entrails for a tail instead of legs. The way it’s shot and coiled makes it look like two legs.
Yep, I always see it as two legs too, despite knowing it isn’t. I think the way it is shot really works, it’s a lot more menacing than the slightly underwhelming and generic actual miniature would suggest.
The armature is the articulated metal skeleton that allows the stop-motion puppet to hold its pose rigidly when the animator steps away to shoot one frame. You can glimpse this creature’s armature in the top pic below, from the Cinefex article.
And notice the bottom pic, of the creature being molded back in 1989. Doesn’t that look like two legs?
After all, the feet are usually an anchor point in stop-motion animation. It would be more work to film this guy suspended from behind or below.
I wonder if the original design had him bipedal, but once filming was completed and the armature was removed from the foam skin, perhaps the legs deteriorated and were crudely wired back onto the model. And then over time, one of them fell completely off but was at that point mistaken for an intestine-like tail?
Alex
