10 Most Incredible Practical Effects In Sci-Fi Movie History
1. Kuato - Total Recall
In Total Recall, Arnold Schwarzenegger's character, Quaid, is trying to track down the Martian resistance leader, Kuato. Quaid meets a man called George who reveals the radiation of Mars caused him to develop a mutation which gained sentience. He opens his shirt to reveal that his "mutation" is Kuato.
While watching this scene, most viewers assume Kuato is an animatronic attached to the actor playing George. But it's far more complicated than that. In these shots, George is the animatronic! Viewers never suspect for a second that George is fake in these shots since you can see his chest inflating as he breathes. The engineers made the animatronic as realistic as possible by giving him subtle features like body hair and finger indentations.
According to the director, Paul Verhoeven, Kuato and George look so realistic he has been asked on two occasions if the actor was a conjoined twin.
When avid cinephiles debate about the greatest effects in movies, they often talk about The Thing and An American Werewolf in London. Rarely does anyone discuss the Kuato scene in Total Recall because the special effect is so good that most people don't realise it's a special effect.