On October 26, 1984, James Cameron’s The Terminator stormed into theaters and instantly captured the imaginations of an entire generation of filmgoers who may not have realized the true impact Cameron’s independently-made passion project would continue to have on Hollywood and pop culture for decades to come.
Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Michael Biehn, Paul Winfield and Lance Henriksen, The Terminator was a huge success when it was released, taking the number one spot at the box office for its opening weekend against fellow newcomers, Body Double and Terror in the Aisles. The Terminator also enjoyed a lengthy theatrical stay as well- 12 weeks- which gave the buzz surrounding Cameron’s groundbreaking film plenty of time to continue to spread throughout the US.
It’s no exaggeration to say that The Terminator changed the landscape of filmmaking and is probably one of the most influential pieces of cinematic sci-fi to have ever been created. It allowed Cameron- a guy who has always relished a challenge whenever in the director’s chair- an opportunity to prove he had the guts to make such an ambitious project without a huge studio. It also gave Stan Winston the opportunity to prove his creative genius with a robotic design that forever changed the world of special effects and created a mega-star out of Schwarzenegger (his co-stars all did pretty damn well for themselves after The Terminator too).
During a recent conversation with Amalgamated Dynamics’ Tom Woodruff Jr., who also worked as part of Winston’s team during a huge part of his early career, discussed how he saw his mentor’s career changed after working on Cameron’s sci-fi classic. “The Terminator is where I really think Stan’s career took off. Everyone was working out of small shops back then and really the only big show in town going on was Greystoke, which Rick Baker was working on. So when The Terminator came about, that was very exciting for Stan and for all of us working for him because it wasn’t work that anyone else was doing or had even tried to do before.”
Very few films come along that have created such a lasting impact on so many different facets of entertainment, but The Terminator is absolutely one of those cinematic experiences, with its influences being felt on everything from movies to television to comics to toys to practically any kind of merchandise you could possibly imagine. A huge part of why it has endured is undoubtedly due to the iconic special effects that were created by Winston and his team, and their ability to bring Cameron’s vision of a cinematic robot that could move about the screen wholly independently- and realistically- to life.
“Obviously, this wasn’t going to be a movie where we were going to be able to put a guy in a robot suit and just let him walk around,” explained Woodruff Jr. “That was the approach that everyone had been using up until that point but I don’t think there’s any way that (The Terminator) would have been as effective as it was had the endoskeleton not been created and James had gone a different direction with the look of The Terminator. Something else I always thought was very smart of James to do was to not reveal the secret about Arnie until we’re deep into the movie. It’s such a great “what the hell IS this guy?” moment that does an excellent job of bringing the audience right into Sarah and Reese’s nightmare as they try to outrun this thing. That was really smart thinking on his part.”
“I think what also sells the effects even more so is how the design looks like it really could be existing inside of Arnie’s body because of the way he was built and how we did all the appliance pieces for him too. James, Stan, Arnie and every single person who worked on The Terminator found a way to make everyone believe that Arnie really was this unstoppable mechanical monster and very few sci-films of that era were able to leave such a lasting impact. I knew early on that it was going to be something special though- the script was an incredible read and there was such an enthusiasm from everyone working on it that it was hard to not recognize that James was a really forward-thinking kind of filmmaker and this was a movie that was going to get a lot of attention,” added Woodruff.
It wasn’t only Cameron and Winston who were forging into new territories with their work on The Terminator. Woodruff was also venturing into new areas while working on the film and he discussed how that’s all part of working in the special effects industry.
“Before The Terminator, most of the work I had done was in prosthetics. I had done a little bit of simple electronic work on Star Trek II, but that was it. So The Terminator was an entirely new kind world for me as an artist. There were three of us in the art department which I was heading up. John (Rosengrant), Shane (Mahan) and I spent a good amount of time sculpting all the different pieces of the endoskeleton. We had to make sure that it looked authentic and wholly functional too.”
“So while we were in the initial phases of designing everything for The Terminator, James and Stan would go and visit different junk yards in the area and bring us back pieces they thought were cool and interesting,” said Woodruff Jr. “Then we would all put our heads together to figure out how they would work into the ‘functionality’ of the T-800 and then integrate them into the design somehow. That was a fun aspect for me because you never knew what they were going to bring back with them so that work had its own unique set of creative challenges to it.”
Woodruff also discussed a few of his favorite effects moments in The Terminator, which involved Schwarzenegger tending to his ‘wounds’ after his attempt to hunt down Sarah Connor goes awry. “Duplicating Arnie for some of the different partial endoskeleton reveals was also somewhat challenging just because it had to look like there was all this hardware beneath his skin and this wasn’t something that looked like we just laid on top of his skin. The scene in the bathroom, which I still love, was a hard scene for us. We took some molds of Arnie and then built these robotic-looking molds into the skin and just kept refining everything. We used hard plaster on the hand gag which really helped us pull those shots off though- I think they all still look great too.”
Below is a stunning gallery of some great behind-the-scenes photos from The Terminator that were graciously provided to Daily Dead by the Stan Winston School of Character Arts, and be sure to head back here tomorrow for more Stan Winston Week fun when we celebrate Aliens. In case you missed it, don't forget to check out the earlier installments of our Stan Winston Week celebration:
To learn more about the Stan Winston School of Character Arts, visit:
The Terminator Behind-the-Scenes Image Gallery:
"SWS broke new ground by creating prosthetics suggesting the Terminator’s underlying metallic endoskeleton, exposed after the cyborg suffers severe damage to his flesh tissue. Vacuformed plastic shells were vacumetalized to create a chrome metal effect, then surrounded with foam appliances sculpted to look like torn flesh. Schwarzenegger sports the final-stage damaged Terminator makeup."
"There were three design concepts. This was Brian Wade’s concept of the Terminator. Cameron selected elements from all three concept designs to make the final endoskeleton look."
"Brian Wade sculpts the damaged flesh tissue on a Schwarzenegger bust. This sculpt was molded and made into a foam appliance."
"SWS created a puppet arm for a scene in which Terminator cuts into his appendage, revealing the mechanical structure underneath. Crewmembers fashioned the dummy limb from a cast of Schwarzenegger’s arm, and hollowed out the interior to fit puppeteered mechanisms inside. A woman who was petite enough to fit her hand and arm into the fake appendage, wearing it like a glove, executed twitching movement in the fingers."
"Detail of the inner arm mechanisms."
"A Jim Cameron endoskeleton sketch."
"Winston Airbrushes the endoskeleton puppet with metallic blues, browns, and golds, creating the tarnished look of a motorcycle exhaust pipe to suggest the character’s exposure to fire."
"For relatively tight shots of the ambulatory endoskeleton, Shane Mahan wore the detached torso and head on a backpack rig. Mahan puppeteered rods to create movement in the arms and shoulders. The head and eyes were radio controlled by off camera puppeteers."
Heather A. Wixson was born and raised in the Chicago suburbs, until she followed her dreams and moved to Los Angeles in 2009. A 14-year veteran in the world of horror entertainment journalism, Wixson fell in love with genre films at a very early age, and has spent more than a decade as a writer and supporter of preserving the history of horror and science fiction cinema. Throughout her career, Wixson has contributed to several notable websites, including Fangoria, Dread Central, Terror Tube, and FEARnet, and she currently serves as the Managing Editor for Daily Dead, which has been her home since 2013. She's also written for both Fangoria Magazine & ReMind Magazine, and her latest book project, Monsters, Makeup & Effects: Volume One will be released on October 20, 2021.
Daily Dead's Official Podcast! Daily Dead's Official Podcast!
