Carlo Rambaldi obit

R.I.P. Carlo Rambaldi, Creator of E.T

He was not on the list.

Special effects master Carlo Rambaldi, creator of E.T., died in Italy on Friday. Rambaldi won Oscars for best visual effects for Alien and E.T., and a special achievement award for his work on the 1977 King Kong.

Rambaldi’s job was to take the fantastical visions of others and find a way to bring them to life, and at this he was a virtuoso. His depictions of mutilated dogs for the Italian film A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin (1971) were so convincing that they landed director Lucio Fulci in court on charges of animal cruelty. Fulci was saved from two years in prison when Rambaldi demonstrated his animatronic creatures in court, showing that no animals had been harmed.

While Rambaldi made his reputation in the blood-soaked horror films of Italian directors like Fulci and Dario Argento, his masterpiece was the title character for E.T. After director Steven Spielberg spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on an earlier prototype that never measured up, Spielberg turned to Rambaldi. Rambaldi worked between 15- and 20-hour days to finish the creature, which—in its various incarnations—was capable of over a hundred different movements.

Artists are often thought to live on in their creations, but this may be almost literally true with Rambaldi. Rambaldi created the alien creatures for David Lynch’s Dune, and in a later interview Lynch said that he thought that he could see Rambaldi—not just his sensibility, but his likeness—in his creations:

    I have a theory about Carlo Rambaldi: He always builds himself. And so, somehow, the Navigator looks to me a bit like Carlo Rambaldi. And E.T. looks exactly like Carlo Rambaldi!

While Rambaldi certainly also looked outside himself for his designs—Spielberg suggested that the alien’s face should be a combination of a newborn baby and the eyes of Albert Einstein, while its butt should waddle like Donald Duck’s—but looking at the two together I can’t help but see a resemblance. Similarly, while no one would want to be compared to one of Rambaldi’s gassy, spongy Navigators, Lynch may have been onto something.

Regardless, there’s no better way to remember Rambaldi than by watching the magic of his creations. Rambaldi himself even said that, no matter how aware he was of the strings that pulled his puppets, the illusions still moved him. Speaking of E.T., he said, “When I finally saw the finished movie, even I cried a little.”

Select filmography

Title       Year       Credited as         Notes    Ref(s)

Special effects   Other

Dragon's Blood 1957      Yes                         Dragon creator

Goliath and the Dragon 1960                      Yes         Special make-up effects               

The Giants of Thessaly   Yes                                        

Fire Monsters Against the Son of Hercules             1962      Yes                                        

Medusa Against the Son of Hercules        1963      Yes                                        

Bloody Pit of Horror        1965      Yes                                        

Danger: Diabolik               1968                      Yes         Set designer      

Lady Frankenstein           1971      Yes                                        

The Night of the Devils   1972      Yes                                        

Frankenstein '80               Yes                                        

Tragic Ceremony              Yes                                        

Flesh for Frankenstein   1973      Yes                                        

The Hand That Feeds the Dead   1974      Yes                                        

Blood for Dracula             Yes                                        

Deep Red             1975      Yes                                        

King Kong            1976      Yes                         Kong design and engineering     

The White Buffalo            1977                      Yes         Consultant on buffalo sequences             

Close Encounters of the Third Kind           Yes                         Realization of "extraterrestrial"

Alien      1979      Yes                         'Alien' head effect           

Nightwing            Yes                         Special visual effects      

The Hand             1981      Yes                         Special visual effects      

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial                1982      Yes                         Creator of E.T.  

Conan the Destroyer      1984      Yes                         Creator of Dagoth           

Dune     Yes                         Creature creator              

Cat's Eye              1985      Yes                         Creature creator              

Silver Bullet        Yes                         Creature creator