Arena

Charles Band’s Empire Pictures shot its space-boxing B-movie in Italy, with a full roster of alien combatants. The creature effects ran out of John Carl Buechler’s shop, Mechanical and Makeup Imageries (MMI). George said he was called in to design aliens for the film and only one of his designs was picked, so he asked to build that one himself at Buechler’s shop. That was the Sloth: a hulking, multi-legged combatant with prune-textured, slime-coated skin and insectoid mandibles. ¹

Steve Wang performed inside the Sloth for the film’s opening arena fight, and on screen he moves and fights freely in the suit. Nobody has written up how it was built. It was the first time Wang worked inside a suit George designed. The two had both been on the Boss Film creature crew for Big Trouble in Little China, and two years after Arena George brought Wang in as his co-director on The Guyver.

Arena’s other signature creature, Horn, was a separate build — MMI’s work, performed on camera by Michael Deak — and isn’t George’s credit.