Behind the Mask: The Secrets of Hollywood’s Leading Creature Suit Performers
Published by BearManor Media, 2025. 308 pages.
By Joe Nazzaro

This was a tough review to write. There is so much information within these pages, on so many talented people working in the movie business that consistently create new characters to put on screen that just give us a sense of wonder. On more than one occasion, it had me busting out a movie to rewatch because of the information they go into on creating a creature suit and how they did it. Nazzaro covers a lot of different artists and designers, sculptors and painters, that really help make these movies what they are.

But here’s the part that gets me. The title of the book is about suit performers, but that is only a very small part of the book, talking to the actual performers. It is mainly on the effects people creating the suits, but very little time is given to the ones having to wear them. There is 20 pages spent discussing all the different characters in Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008), from the main characters to minor ones like Wink, the Angel of Death, and the legless goblin with a cart. Then when interviewing John Alexander who played that goblin character, as well as Johann Krauss, it’s only 6 pages. Alexander had played apes or gorillas in a few movies over the years, starting with the character of White Eyes in Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan (1984), as well as the title character in Mighty Joe Young (1998). So, it’s a shame that we don’t get to hear more from him, as well as all of these other performers, which is what I assumed the book was about.

Doug Jones is about the only one we get to hear quite a bit from, which is a good thing since not only is he on the cover of the book, but probably one of the most famous suit performers/actors in the business right now. But there are so many more that need that same love and attention.

There are a few good interviews and comments in the book that do give some insight into what it is like being a suit performer, both positive and negatives. Felix Silla, best known for TV shows in The Addams Family, playing Cousin It, and Twiki in Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century. But while working on the 1977 film Demon Seed, he stated, “it was cold because I was inside a tank of water, so when the water started coming in, and it wasn’t warm water, it was cold, I was freezing. That was the worst job I ever had. I did another one, The Manitou (1978), where they put 95 pieces of appliance all over my body. I was finding glue all over my body for the next three or four months after.”

Even though each of these performers have to go through a lot of demand, physical activity and endurance, it is part of the job. Tom Woodruff, who has been working in the makeup industry since the early ’80s, started early on getting into the actual suits of what they were creating. In Aliens (1986), he played one of the xenomorphs, played the Gilman in Monster Squad (1987), and then even the title character in Pumpkinhead (1988), so he’s no stranger as to what it takes to do the job, not just in a creating of the suit standpoint, but of bringing it to life. He says, “we realized that for a complete film character, there are three aspects that have to be explored: the design, the building of the creature and the performance. And how sometimes producers that ‘think’ they know what they are doing to really hinder that part of it.”

In the introduction of the book, Nazzaro posts a great question: when is it a prosthetic makeup or a suit? I think he does a great job explaining the difference between those two, because it is something to make you think, where is that line in the difference between them. Now don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of great information and stories here. You get to read names like Wah Chang and Stuart Freeborn in the early days, and some of the work they did. And even to the more modern-day films, and not just in the horror genre, but fantasy and sci-fi and even the superhero pictures. It is just a shame that the book didn’t concentrate on those inside the suits and makeup, and their trials and tribulations of what part of the business that is. Those were the stories I was expecting to read about because of the title.