Meridian: Kiss of the Beast (1990) / Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)
The last element I needed was the Beast. But this couldn’t be a Buechler puppet or a Dave Allen stop-motion special. In any romantic Beauty and the Beast tale, after all, at some point, well… Beauty bangs the Beast. And it can’t look like a woman humping a marionette (although now that I say that out loud, it gives me an idea for a movie… but I digress!). I needed a costume, a rough, scary, but somehow human-looking and kinda sexy beast.
I called Greg Cannom in Los Angeles. He was at that moment doing effects makeup for Francis Ford Coppola’s new horror flick, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, starring Gary Oldman and Winona Ryder. Yes, big-budget horror was becoming a thing. What chance did I have?
Greg was more than helpful. He told me of a costume that they’d just used on set, Dracula in beast form, hypnotizing and seducing the helpless Lucy. “Charlie,” Greg said, “this thing is perfect. But obviously it belongs to the production. I can’t… ” Greg seemed to be struggling with something. He was moving into the big-budget movies, but his roots were in my world. I let him talk.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” he said finally, as though I’d been twisting his arm. “I will steal the costume, dye it, change its look just enough, and you can use it in your movie.”
“Wow,” I said, waiting for the inevitable other shoe to drop. “Just one condition, though, Charlie,” he said. Here it comes, I thought. “Yeah?”
“You have to bring me there. I gotta see that castle.” Word had gotten out.
Greg got his wish, and I got my sexy beast-man. It was almost certainly the only monster suit in movie history to be featured in two separate roles… and get laid in both. - Charles Band