

The science of make-up prosthetics had experienced a substantial gestation period up until that point, and mainstream acceptance of the art was a long time coming, the first ever Oscar for special make-up effects awarded as recently as 1982 and presented to Rick Baker for his excellent work on the previous year’s An American Werewolf in London - a film as transformative for the horror genre as a whole as it was for its lycanthropic lead character David Kessler. As the ’70s drew to a close and the ’80s heralded a new decade of cinematic terror, one of the things that differentiated the blooming Nouvelle Vague of horror from its ancestry was an emphasis on innovative special make-up effects.
