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Makeup fans will rejoice as Gillis and the Winston team bring us step-by-step descriptions of their various life-casting and mould-making techniques. Originally a champion of the ‘less is more’ approach, Elek found it hard to apply prosthetics so thin and smooth that ‘I could not afford to make any mistakes along the blending edge … It was a tough job.’ This decision caused headaches for Zoltan Elek, the man responsible for applying the makeups to the actors. ‘The earlier designs tended to be more outrageous,’ says Gillis, with Mahan explaining that in the end director Graham Baker opted for a more subtle approach ‘in order to allow the character of the actor to be read through the rubber pieces.’ Magid’s article tracks the development of the alien designs from day one to final wrap. The task of creating not just one or two alien creatures but an entire race fell on Alec Gillis, Shane Mahan, John Rosengrant and Tom Woodruff, working as a team under the Stan Winston Studios banner. ‘Be careful what you wish for.’ So the saying goes, and it pretty much sums up the trials of the prosthetics crew on mammoth makeup movie Alien Nation. The Right Blob for the Right Job (article by Robert G Pielke).Exaggerated Reality (article by Adam Eisenberg).A Planetful of Aliens (article by Ron Magid).That’s a lot to get through in just 68 pages. That’s both covers used up and still we’ve got two movies to go: John McTiernan’s classic action hit Die Hard and Chuck Russell’s forgotten B-movie reboot The Blob.

The back cover features one of the ‘Newcomer’ aliens from Graham Baker’s 1988 sci-fi/cop/buddy mashup Alien Nation. All becomes clear when you realise this is a still from David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers, a film that both advanced the craft of split-screen ‘twinning’ and allowed its director to indulge his fascination with ‘body-horror’ makeup effects. Jeremy Irons playing dead might seem an odd choice of picture for the front cover of a visual effects journal.