Iâm pretty sure the OP everyone is making fun of was joking to begin with, especially âthey spent the budget on flannel shirts,â but itâs sparked some sincere discussion about TV creature effects anyway with a few people arguing for-real that they didnât think Supernatural could have had the budget for cool looking demons.
The Ultraman talking point really says it all to be honest, for those who missed me reviewing a ton of Ultraman monsters check out some of these:
And if we stick just to Western TV shows pre-2000â˛s, this is some stuff I grew up with:
Flukeman, X-Files, 1994:
NaâKaâLeen Feeder, Babylon 5, also 1994, this one is early CG and still looks fine:
Unnamed (AWESOME!!!!) alien shopkeeper, Farscape, 1999:
None of these were that expensive or difficult to make back then and are even easier to do now. The She-Mantis is even recycled from another Babylon 5 alien prop! There are even Hollywood warehouses PACKED TO THE CEILING with animatronics, costumes and puppets that were made and never used, and theyâll sell them to new projects for relatively nothing because they might eventually deteriorate or get thrown out anyway.
Dr. Who was also mentioned above, but Iâd also put modern Who on trial for this laziness. Thereâs no reason why so many of its aliens are human-shaped, other than the fact that, from what I can glean, the directors tend to think puppets are âcornyâ and use them only sparingly. Vintage Dr. Who had all kinds of bizarre entities, whether they used a costume, a prop or even animation to convey them.
