Initiation has no Santa in it. Yuzna’s entry, the series’ fourth, 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 its creatures and transformations. 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, in the film’s hand-bug gags, insects appear to crawl under the skin of the coven members’ hands through raised, shifting prosthetic bulges. Kim (Neith Hunter), the film’s protagonist, goes through escalating mutation makeups as larval growths merge into her skin. Nobody has written up the materials or how any of it was operated.
The film was made on a tight direct-to-video budget. Woody Keith’s screenplay already centered on a coven of witches at Christmastime; Yuzna reworked it with him and added the coven’s devotion to Lilith. George’s shop designed and built the larva, hand-bugs and mutation makeups.