R.I.P. Carlo Rambaldi, creature creator extraordinaire.

Sad news: today the Italian special effects artist Carlo Rambaldi died, aged 86.

Mr. Rambaldi was responsible for many a memorable practical gore effect in the seventies, especially in seminal Italian gialli like Bava's "Twitch of the Death Nerve" and Argento's "Deep Red".

Yet his greatest claim to fame would come later, designing and building incredible creature props for the 1976 "King Kong" remake and the alien prosthetics for "Alien". Giger designed the creature, but Rambaldi was tasked with getting a filmable suit of the damn thing on set. He was also responsible for the tentacled ehm... thing from Zulawski's "Possession", the creature effects in David Lynch' "Dune" and the aliens from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind".

And he made E.T. for Steven Spielberg's "E.T.: The Extraterrestrial", creating a set of effects that still hold up well today.
Let's all give thanks to Carlo Rambaldi for his many stellar creations. Hopefully he's now upstairs sharing anecdotes with Stan Winston and Willis O'Brien.