An American Werewolf in London (1981)

This classic horror film contained a visceral transformation scene (that won an Academy Award for Best Makeup for Rick Baker), the first to win in the newly-established Oscar category..

It told how backpacking American college student/tourist in the Yorkshires David Kessler (David Naughton) turned into a werewolf/lycanthrope - his body, face, and limbs crunched and his skin bubbled as it grew hair and elongated.

Some of the same special effects techniques were also used in Joe Dante's horror/comedy The Howling (1981) which featured stunning metamorphosis sequences of man-into-wolf (see below).

Dragonslayer (1981)

The use of Go-Motion brought this film an Academy Award nomination for Best Achievement in Visual Effects, which it lost to Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).

This sword-'n'-sorcery film, a co-production of Walt Disney and Paramount, introduced the innovative technique of Go-Motion, a process created by Industrial Light & Magic (and Lucas animator Phil Tippett).

It was a variation on the earlier technique of "stop-motion" animation (popularized by Willis O'Brien and Ray Harryhausen), by having the animated model (the Dragon) make several moves within a frame, thereby giving it a more fluid, blurry, and natural movement.

By contrast, the traditional stop-motion technique was more jerky, static and wooden in appearance, as in Harryhausen's Clash of the Titans (1981) released in the same year.

The Howling (1981)

Joe Dante's horror/comedy The Howling (1981) featured stunning metamorphosis, shape-shifting sequences of man-into-wolf (one was juxtaposed with a TV scene of the Big Bad Wolf in The Three Little Pigs (1933)).

The special groundbreaking makeup effects were originally to be produced by makeup wizard Rick Baker, but director Landis took him away to work on An American Werewolf in London (1981) (see above), so Baker's assistant Rob Bottin filled in - this was before the days of CGI.

During a memorable werewolf transformation scene with incredible special effects, the pneumatic transformations - without CGI effects - changed in real-time, accompanied by crackling noises:

• the snout and jaw structures elongated and grew
• cheeks, forehead and neck undulated and bubbled (air bladders under facial latex skin)
• talon-like nails/claws extended from fingers
• teeth grew into feral fangs
• and hairy fur and pointy devilish ears grew out

[The third werewolf film of the same year was Wolfen (1981).]

Looker (1981)

The visual effects in Michael Crichton's high-tech science-fiction thriller featured the first CGI human character, model Cindy (Susan Dey of The Partridge Family fame).

Her digitization was visualized by a computer-generated simulation of her body being scanned - notably the first use of shaded 3D CGI in a feature film.

Polygonal models obtained by digitizing a human body were used to render the effects.

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

Part of the reason why this film won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects was due to its awesome climax with amazing visual effects, revealing the power of the Ark of the Covenant as it was opened by the face-melting Nazis.

A few more of the film's most remarkable special effects shots included:

• the giant boulder rolling after Indy Jones (Harrison Ford) in the gripping opening
• the amazing final image of the government warehouse where the Ark was stored -- a lengthy matte shot, and a tribute to a similar final scene in Citizen Kane (1941)

Blade Runner (1982)

This classic, noirish science-fiction film was nominated for Best Achievement in Visual Effects (as was the ghost-story Poltergeist (1982)), but both lost to E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982).

One of the most awe-inspiring visuals in film history, paying homage to Lang's Metropolis (1927), was the powerful vision of the Los Angeles cityscape at night, circa 2019, with giant, fire-belching towers, floating advertisements, giant television screens, and police "spinners" (flying cars).

All images were based on the art design of legendary artist Syd Mead, who would collaborate with Jean 'Moebius' Giraud on TRON (1982) (see below).

The Dark Crystal (1982)

Dark Crystal was Jim Henson's darkest, most foreboding film, and the first film to completely use realistic puppets without a single real human or animal character.

The film was composed entirely of puppets, matte paintings, and some miniature sets. The character and world designs were made by famed fantasy artist Brian Froud.

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

This Steven Spielberg film was an Oscar winner for Best Visual Effects (defeating Poltergeist (1982) and Blade Runner (1982)). About $1.5 million of its $10 million budget was set aside for the creation of the E.T. alien, and another $1 million for other effects shots.

It was famous for the flying bicycle scene in which the kids escaped into the air on their bicycles, and later the scene of the alien and Eliott illuminated in silhouette (using miniatures) against a giant-size full moon.

Also, visual effects were employed for E.T.'s spaceship, and the believable alien itself, although altered or digitally-enhanced in the 2002 remake for the 20th anniversary edition. (See below)

Koyaanisqatsi (1982)

As an experimental, art-house film, this feature-length documentary showcased innovative uses of time-lapse, slow-motion (and hyper-speed), and double-exposed (and super-imposed) photography.

Pink Floyd The Wall (1982)

Gerard Scarfe's animation was made for both the multimedia concert and the Alan Parker film - it was one of the first truly adult animated work in terms of maturity - sexually and politically.

(The film also featured one of the earliest commercial uses of time-lapse photography, and featured disturbing imagery of schoolchildren turning into conforming, faceless zombies on an assembly line and stepping into a meat-grinder.)

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)

The so-called "Genesis Effect" - a one-minute animated sequence, was cinema's first entirely computer-generated (CG) sequence. This visual effect marked the first use of a fractal-generated landscape in a film, and a particle-rendering system (to achieve its fiery effect). It was created by the LucasFilm division of Pixar at ILM.

The computerized simulation was first seen in a video proposal presented by Dr. Carol Marcus (Bibi Besch), in which the once-dead planet was struck by a Genesis 'torpedo' and reborn or revived, as the camera raced quickly across the reddish and then greening surface of the barren planet, becoming a reborn globe.

Dr. Marcus headed up Project Genesis, a computer-simulated endeavor that sought to transform uninhabitable worlds into lush paradises ("life from lifelessness"). She narrated the video and animation, in person and in voice-over:

"It is a process whereby molecular structure is reorganized at the subatomic level into life-generating matter of equal mass...It is our intention to introduce the Genesis Device into a preselected area of a lifeless space body - a moon or other dead form. The device is delivered, instantaneously causing what we call the Genesis effect. Matter is reorganized with life-generating results. Instead of a dead moon, a living breathing planet capable of sustaining whatever life-forms we see fit to deposit on it...The reformed moon simulated here represents the merest fraction of the Genesis potential should the Federation wish to fund these experiments to their logical conclusion."

The film also included the scene of Captain Spock's (Leonard Nimoy) self-sacrificial death to save the USS Enterprise from the Genesis Device explosion, with his ejection-burial in space to orbit around the newly-birthed planet caused by the Genesis Effect.

Another special effect was the scene of the brain-munching earwigs, in which vengeful superhuman Khan (Ricardo Montalban) placed a parasitic, insanity-causing Ceti eel into the ears of Officer Chekov (Walter Koenig) and Captain Terrell (Paul Winfield).

The film's release barely beat Tron (1982) to take the unofficial honor of being the first film to use computer-generated images (CGI) to any extent. (Note: this scene would be re-used for Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986).)

Tron (1982)

Steven Lisberger's fantasy inside-a-computer-video-game adventure/science-fiction film was one of the first films to be derived from the video-game craze.

It was the first live-action film to use computer-generated imagery (CGI) to any large degree (about 20 minutes) - in this case, to create a full 3-D graphics world, in its most innovative sequence of the famed racing bike or Lightcycle sequence depicting computerized lightcycles in a high-speed race. The Lightcycle sequence used the artwork and vision of legendary artists Syd Mead and Jean 'Moebius' Giraud, and visual effects done with a combined effort by Triple I, MAGI/Synthavision, Robert Abel & Associates, and Digital Effects.

Another FX technique used was backlight animation, in which light was shown through a specialized filter through each frame to create extraordinarily vibrant colored light effects, in this case, through the inventive Oscar-nominated costumes worn by the actors. (Lisberger's animated film Animalympics (1980) had extensively used the effect in semi-preparation for what would become TRON.)

The greatest testament to this film's unique visual effects, soundtrack, costuming, art direction and set decoration is that none of it has ever been duplicated, and remains unique to this day. The film also featured a soundtrack by Wendy (nee Walter) Carlos that melded synthesized music with the London Philharmonic's orchestral music.

It was refused an Academy Awards nomination because the voters felt the film "cheated" by using computer animation. In reality, the process was an extremely arduous one for animators. Seven years later, James Cameron's The Abyss (1989) won the Best Visual Effects Oscar for the same kind of technology.

Where the Wild Things Are (1982-83)

Maurice Sendak's children's book Where the Wild Things Are was the basis for Disney's experimental 35mm test footage, directed by John Lasseter (the future animator at Pixar). The revolutionary animation combined (or digitally composited) both state-of-the-art computer-generated 3-D backgrounds with traditional hand-drawn (digitally inked and painted) characters.

Another film adaptation (with live-action and animation) of the book was released in late 2009, directed by Spike Jonze.