Rick Baker

[5] Benicio Del Toro plays the cursed title character in this remake of Universal Pictures’ famous 1941 monster movie. After his brother is discovered mutilated, Del Toro returns home to his father’s estate to find out who killed him. Anthony Hopkins brings gravitas as the father, and Emily Blunt pours her heart out in the role of the dead brother’s fiancée. In searching for the …

[6] After the world saw its first bona-fide blockbuster, 1975’s Jaws, daring Italian movie mogul Dino De Laurentiis decided he needed to go down in history for producing the second one. He settled on a remake of 1933’s King Kong and hired John Guillerman (The Towering Inferno) to direct. The screenplay is faithful to the original film in its broad strokes: A boat seeks passage …

[6] Lily Tomlin stars in this gender-bent retelling of Richard Matheson’s short story. Tomlin plays Pat Kramer, who after being exposed to a combination of myriad household chemicals, begins to physically shrink. As she becomes a reluctant worldwide celebrity and her family tries to adjust to her ever-changing size, an evil corporation plans to kidnap her and use her ailment as a weapon of warfare. …

[4] This ‘bad in a good way’ sci-fi/horror flick features a melting astronaut who must feed on human flesh to keep from becoming a puddle of goo. I’m all for melting people, but The Incredible Melting Man is too narrow in scope. The script strings together one ‘stalk n’ kill’ scene after another, with little attention to the naturally sympathetic plight of its title character. …

[8] Director Hugh Hudson (Chariots of Fire) delivers an emotionally compelling adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ vine-swinging legend. The first half of the movie, depicting Tarzan’s childhood up through his discovery by an Austrian explorer (Ian Holm), outshines the last, but the movie still works well overall. Christopher Lambert (Highlander) does a good job bringing out the extreme pathos of a character caught between two …

[7] Gizmo the cute Mogwai is back, and he gets wet again — this time in a New York City skyscraper run by a Donald Trump-like billionaire. Billy Peltzer and Kate Beringer (returning stars Zach Galligan and Phoebe Cates) both work there and re-team with their furry companion just in time to do battle with another army of nasty gremlins. This sequel to the 1984 …

[10] With the success of Animal House and The Blues Brothers behind him, director John Landis was able to take a chance on a horror-comedy about two American college students who have a close encounter of the hirsute kind while backpacking through the English moors. David Naughton and Griffin Dunne star as the two Americans, Rick Baker provides the groundbreaking makeup and special effects, and An American Werewolf in London remains …