Quick shout out to rdeckard. Just watched The Howling Man and was immediately struck by the transformation scene. I noticed two techniques borrowed from films. In the first moments, his face darkens and the contours change, a very clever trick used in Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde 1931 that can only be accomplished in black and white.(Wikipedia – ‘The secret of the transformation scenes was not revealed for decades. Mamoulian himself revealed it in a volume of interviews with Hollywood directors published under the title The Celluloid Muse. Make-up was applied in contrasting colors. A series of colored filters that matched the make-up was then used which enabled the make-up to be gradually exposed or made invisible. The change in color was not visible on the black-and-white film.’)

Secondly, there’s a very nice, and deceptively simple effect using cuts between pillars taken from WOL. I really like this Jack Pierce make-up because of its simplicity. There’s something more disturbing about it because the humanity is still very visible. The reasons for it are prosaic. Hull just didn’t want to spend ages in make-up.

And cue someone posting Warren Zevon…