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As a monster creator, Carlo Rambaldi has been almost as famous as
Ray Harryhausen.
But comparing with his american collegue, he used a totally different technique: while Harryhausen built miniatures which were animated by “Dynamation”, Rambaldi built life-size creatures, moving them with complex hydraulic mechanisms (like the 1977 “King Kong”). After having worked in some movies (not always memorable) like “Barbarella”, “Sigfrido”, “The Bible”, he created the special effects for two italian television fictions: “L’Odissea” (The adventures of Ulysse) were he built Polifemo’s arm, and “Pinocchio”, where he made the whale and the wooden marionette. For “Pinocchio” he was intentioned to make a totally working marionette able to act for the whole fiction: but time and budget did not allow this solution, and Pinocchio changed regularly from marionette to little boy and back for the whole story, similar to Dr. Jekyll and mr. Hyde. |
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After a similar experience, Rambaldi preferred to go to U.S.A., where a
skilled technician like him could have chances for better ways of working. Since 1977 to 1982 he won three Academy Awards, for “King Kong”, “Alien” and “E.T.”. The weak point of his technique was the extreme complexity and the high budget, so that it has become outdated for the use of digital graphic. Filmografia 1960: Sigfrido 1967: Barbarella 1968: L’odissea (The adventures of Ulysse, TV) 1972: Le avventure di Pinocchio (The adventures of Pinocchio, TV) 1975: Profondo rosso (Deep red) |
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1976: King Kong (Oscar) 1977: Close encounters of the third kind 1979: Alien (Oscar) 1981: Possession 1982: E.T. the extra-terrestrial (Oscar) 1984: Cat’s eye 1984: Conan the destroyer 1984: Dune 1986: King Kong lives |
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