#jack bricker

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Some of the more impressive, albeit sparsely shown makeup effects in Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf (1985) which had its special effects overseen by Jack Bricker.

I'm not sure who was responsible for the much more wolf-like werewolf mask that is only seen in brief close-up shots. And there is the little gargoyle puppet, based on the same sculpt as the static gargoyle mounted on Stirba's staff prop.

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Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf (1985) is not a film fondly regarded by many; least of all the various special effects artists who worked on it! The BTS featurette 'A Monkey Phase' has Steve Johnson (of Fright Night and Bad Moon fame) and Scott Wheeler almost apologetic for it. Rob Burman (who applied the makeup of the wolfman in first image) also has not had kind things to say about the film on social media.

One reason for Johnson's distaste for especially the werewolves was, fresh off The Howling and American Werewolf in London, here he was making 'guys in gorilla suits and Planet of the Apes masks'. The special effects were overseen by Jack Bricker; according to Wheeler, Bricker's mistake was 'When he built the understructures of these particular makeups, they pushed a little further out and a little more roundish than was originally intended, and that gave it more of an ape look'. Another error was that the heavy fur on the suits obscured the sculpted musculature underneath, making them look like cheap gorilla suits.

The worst moment for Johnson would come from, ironically, the easiest prosthetics to apply. For the werewolf orgy scene, only fangs and fur were applied to Sybil Danning, Marsha Hunt and Judd Omen's nude bodies. When Steve Johnson applied fur to Omen's penis, the actor started getting erect, and had to stop it by bellowing opera lyrics. Wheeler would recount, 'I was so glad I was not Steve Johnson that day'.