‘Making Monsters: Inside Stories from the Creators of Hollywood’s Most Iconic Creatures’

Written by Howard Berger and Marshall Julius
Foreword by Robert Englund
Afterword by Alex Winter
Published by Wilbeck Publishing

I think it’s safe to say here in 2025 that AI is here to stay. AI, CGI, green screen, blue screen, mocap…all of these tools can make for some pretty impressive characters, creatures, and exciting scenes in movies, but at the end of the day, does anything ever really top the physical makeups and costumes that turn actors into monsters or victims? Or the painstaking stop-motion effects of Ray Harryhausen, Willis O’Brien, and those they influenced?

There’s a reason that film buffs and we former monster kids alike still dote on such genre stars as Karloff, Lugosi, and the two Chaneys!

The new book, Making Monsters: Inside Stories from the Creators of Hollywood’s Most Iconic Creatures, is by Howard Berger and Marshall Julius, clearly both film buffs and former monster kids.

A Famous Monsters/Basil Gogos-style painting of a mix-and-match creature dominates the cover, the perfect choice for both nostalgic and modern monster fans. After separate and fun Introductions from each of the authors and a brief Foreword from Robert Englund—probably the closest thing we have these days to the traditional 1930s or 1940s monster movie star—we’re off and running.

Much of the book is essentially an oral history of various individuals’ personal interactions—current and historic—with monster movie (or TV) makeup and creation. Some of the names with which I was familiar include Ray Harryhausen, Caroline Munro, Russell T. Davies, George Romero, Simon Pegg, Bill Corso, Larry Karaszewski, and John Carpenter. Most of the rest are more modern and new to me, but no less interesting.

All the great monster makeup artists—Jack Pierce, Bud Westmore, John Chambers, Rick Baker, and, of course, FJA’s favorite, Lon Chaney, Sr., are also covered to one degree or another as are their creations—everything from Frankenstein’s monster and the Wolfman to Candyman, Pinhead, and Giger’s truly nightmarish Xenomorph. Space aliens, demons, and dinosaurs round out the coverage. There’s even a chapter dealing with Japan’s rubber-suited kaiju.

And whether or not I had ever heard of the speaker, it’s all engrossing to read. I knew how Chaney would physically torture and even injure himself to get just the perfect makeup for the characters he played. What I did not know until now is how that still goes on to some extent even today! Actors on movies I’ve never even heard of discuss the painful travails they went through to enact a cool-looking monster on-screen.

As interesting as all that was, the true highlight of this book for me is its photos.

As you may have heard, “one picture is worth a thousand words.” Well, at 320 pages, with one or more images on nearly every one of them, this book may actually have a thousand pictures! Classic black and white images, crisp, full color shots, rare behind the scenes looks, official stills and portraits, and concept art. It’s all here, a treasure trove for the monster movie fan, old or new.

Forest J. Ackerman’s photo appears a few times throughout the book and while Making Monsters treats its subjects way more seriously than the Ackermonster ever did, I like to think that he would appreciate it.

After a very detailed Index and a Film Credits section, we get bios of the book’s two writers. Here we learn—if we hadn’t already picked up on it—that co-author Howard Berger is himself a makeup artist with extensive film credits, and that former FOG! contributor Marshall Julius is, quote, “A veteran nerd with boundless enthusiasm for everything you love.”

If that right there isn’t enough to get me to read a book, I don’t know what is.

Booksteve recommends.