Hasta La Motion!

This week will be the 20th anniversary of the release of The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996), a film plagued with problems. The original director Richard Stanley was replaced by John Frankenheimer, who then faced dealing with the eccentric stars Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer, and even Stanley himself who snuck back on set in an animal costume.

But one even more fascinating aspect of the production was its mix of Stan Winston-crafted creatures and digital visual effects by Digital Domain at a time when so much experimentation was going on in what could be convincingly created in CG on film.

I wrote about the often hilarious challenges the effects team faced at fxguide last year, after make-up and creature effects artist Shane Mahan and visual effects supervisor Kevin Mack shared their experiences on Dr. Moreau in a panel at Trojan Horse was a Unicorn. Check out it for a lot of fun details and imagery.