Full Version: Stan Winston
I look over his accomplishments: Jurassic Park, T2, Titanic...
And one towering achievement that will most likely go unnoticed by most media outlets:
John Carpenter's The Thing.
Utterly incredible, even moreso considering how this precedes the dominance of digital fx today.
And one towering achievement that will most likely go unnoticed by most media outlets:
John Carpenter's The Thing.
Utterly incredible, even moreso considering how this precedes the dominance of digital fx today.
Winston and Rick Baker set the standard for horror movie FX in the 1980s and early 1990s. I was surprised, looking over Winston's credits at IMDB, just how many big-budget films he's been involved with. He earned his time at the top, that's for sure.
QUOTE (Overstreet @ Jun 16 2008, 02:35 PM) 
A little movie magic died for me today. He was one of the great effects people.
I think it's amazing that the two movies that he is most remembered for -- the Terminator and Jurassic Park franchises -- are widely remembered for the advances they made in computer-generated imagery (the T-1000 in T2, the first major lifelike CG animals in JP1). And yet there is Stan Winston, in the middle of all that digital whatever, keeping it real with robots and stuff. A great loss.
Stan Winston was all over the movies I grew up watching. This is a tough one. 
Greencine reminds me of another title I overlooked yesterday, one that Winston directed: Pumpkinhead.
It's not a great movie, but it's one I eagerly awaited on video. Couldn't get to the one theater downtown that showed it for a week; that was often the case with horror movies in those days, at least the ones that didn't feature Jason or Freddy. But I was a Fangoria fanatic, and so I knew more than anyone else on the block -- or in the county, and possibly the state -- about Pumpkinhead.
I eventually saw the film a second time, years after my first viewing. I remember next to nothing about it now, except that it starred Lance Henricksen, who was trying to break into starring roles after Aliens, and was effective in conveying a mood of terror. But my interest in horror films was beginning to fade by that point, so I never bothered with any of the three (!!) sequels it spawned, and until today, I'd forgotten that Winston was behind the camera for the original.
It's not a great movie, but it's one I eagerly awaited on video. Couldn't get to the one theater downtown that showed it for a week; that was often the case with horror movies in those days, at least the ones that didn't feature Jason or Freddy. But I was a Fangoria fanatic, and so I knew more than anyone else on the block -- or in the county, and possibly the state -- about Pumpkinhead.
I eventually saw the film a second time, years after my first viewing. I remember next to nothing about it now, except that it starred Lance Henricksen, who was trying to break into starring roles after Aliens, and was effective in conveying a mood of terror. But my interest in horror films was beginning to fade by that point, so I never bothered with any of the three (!!) sequels it spawned, and until today, I'd forgotten that Winston was behind the camera for the original.
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