Initiation has no Santa in it. Yuzna’s fourth entry swaps the franchise’s slasher premise for a coven of witches and a body-horror transformation plot, and George was brought in as lead effects creator to design and build everything that crawls, splits, or hatches. In the film’s central gag, Ricky (Clint Howard) reaches into the charred remains of a woman who has spontaneously combusted and pulls out a massive, slug-like larva — a hand-operated puppet kept wet and slick on camera.
Elsewhere, bugs appear to move under the coven members’ skin through raised, shifting prosthetic bulges. Kim (Neith Hunter), the film’s protagonist, goes through escalating mutation makeups as larval growths merge into her skin. The surviving sources do not document the materials or operating mechanisms.
The film was made on a tight direct-to-video budget. Yuzna and screenwriter Zeph E. Daniel had developed the coven’s Lilith-mythology concept originally for Society the year before. Only the story idea carried over; George’s shop still designed and built all of the larva, hand-bugs, and mutation makeups from scratch. What the budget favored direct, hand-puppeteered pieces. The exact materials and operators remain undocumented.