Horror Beyond Imagination: The Legacy of Horror on the Original Star Wars

It is an understatement to say that the influence of Flash Gordon serials and Kurosawa films on an upstart director named George Lucas have been well-documented. By now, fans are very aware of dogfights from The Dam Busters, or comedic droid counterparts (and, potentially, a larger plot) springing from frames of The Hidden Fortress.

But Lucas, a young filmmaker who loved Carl Banks’ Uncle Scrooge comic books and racing cars, also infused his films (perhaps semi-subconsciously), with tendrils of a different genre altogether: horror.

Its legacy in Star Wars continues to permeate: for over 40 years, horror has become a recurring inspiration for the saga’s movies, books and TV shows. And in turn, rather symbiotically, Star Wars (1977) has inspired monster makers, creature designers and movie directors.

For the Original Trilogy, horror’s greatest influence, beyond the hulking figure of Darth Vader and visages of stormtrooper helmets frozen in terror, came from the Star Wars casting chair.

Hammer Films, a British film studio, is responsible for some of the best horror films of its time (and perhaps ever). From the 1950’s to the 1970’s, movies like The Curse of Frankenstein and Horror of Dracula ushered in a new wave of classic scares and, of course, helped cement a few key cast members as stalwart legends.

Peter Cushing, of course, in his turns as Van Helsing and Victor Frankenstein, commanded the any macabre scene he starred in. And, perhaps more anonymously, the monster created by Cushing’s Doctor, Frankenstein himself, was more often than not played by a future Dark Lord of the Sith … a young David Prowse.

George Lucas’ determination to find stars that could populate his galaxy, while being able to act within fantastical worlds, led him to delve into the Hammer roster. But those men already had cemented their genre legacy, before Star Wars even premiered.

The actual production felt the influence of a few rising stars, as well.

In early 1977, a young, relatively inexperienced Rick Baker (future seven-time Academy Award-winner and legendary monster maker of An American Werewolf in London) submitted a bid to populate the stateside Cantina reshoots. The monsters he brought to Tatooine, including some of his already-existing molds or masks (like the now infamous Wolfman), became some of the first onscreen creatures of a galaxy far, far away. On Dennis Muren’s recommendation, he led a creature-creating team, including future legends … friends Phil Tippett, Jon Berg and Doug Beswick, to grow the cast of characters. Even Rob Bottin, later the man behind the effects of The Thing and The Howling, did his part bringing these aliens to life.

That was on the practical, classic side of movie making. On the bleeding edge of technology, a classmate of Lucas’ at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinema-Television was called in to help create the futuristic tactical displays for the film.

The USC alum, a certain Dan O’Bannon, would eventually become the screenwriter and art director of Alien, as well as director of the classic The Return of the Living Dead. He had first cut his tactical teeth on John Carpenter’s student film Dark Star, creating similar read-outs and graphics (working in conjunction with sci-fi legend Ron Cobb, who of course lent his talents to some Cantina designs). But what we consider now to “feel like Star Wars”, whether targeting computers or Death Star tractor beam read-outs, came from him and his team.

That all to say: the original Star Wars has served as an inspiration to so many (including myself, of course) … but maybe one the most tangible pieces of its legacy (at least to the horror genre), has been the talent who pushed themselves creatively, lending their efforts to a small, seemingly doomed-to-fail space opera. And we are all better for it.