Arena

A two-million-dollar budget and Cinecittà’s studio facilities in Rome bought Charles Band’s Empire Pictures a full roster of alien combatants for its space-boxing B-movie, keeping labor and set costs down by shooting in Italy. The creature effects were run out of John Carl Buechler’s shop, Mechanical Imageries Inc. George’s contribution was the Sloth: a hulking, multi-legged combatant with prune-textured, slime-coated skin and insectoid mandibles. ¹

The Sloth suit had to survive real wrestling. Steve Wang performed inside it for the film’s opening arena fight, and on screen he moves and fights freely in the suit. The surviving sources do not document its construction. It was the first time Wang worked inside a suit George designed. They had come up through the same Empire/Buechler orbit, and producer Brian Yuzna put them together again two years later to co-direct 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.