Between 2010 and 2014, James Iles was the storyboard artist on 15 episodes of the new Doctor Who and concept artist on five others. He has also worked on the BBC Sherlock Holmes series. Now he and musician Alastair Jenkins — along with Jon Grundon (props maker on various Doctor Who episodes, including “The Fires of Pompeii”, “The Unicorn and the Wasp”, “The Waters of Mars”, “The End of Time” and “The Next Doctor”) and his prosthetics team from the Broken Hare studio, as well as lead actor Steve Hartnell — are intent on producing an “Old School” giant monster film called CongAAARGH! –– using practical FX and a carefully and intricately designed monster suit.
CongAAARGH! is, we are told, a short monster movie about “a giant, mutated conger eel”, which, when disturbed by human goings-on, not unsurprisingly rises from the ocean depths and terrorises a seaside town.
“We feel that many of today’s monster movies, fantastic as they are, have lost the simple charm, character and ‘real-ness’ of a man in a monster suit,” the guys have stated. “With CongAAARGH!, we aim to help keep this great tradition of film-making alive…” (source: Kickstarter)
The mutant eel suit, an absurdity worthy of being seen in the company of similar absurdities from the heyday of post-Gojira daikaiju eiga, has already been designed, as shown by these images created by Iles:
According to the film’s producers: “Our prosthetics team are in high demand, having built amazing characters for Doctor Who and X-Men, amongst a long list of other creations. Luckily for us, they are 100% behind CongAAARGH!, and as long as we can cover their material and labour costs, we know that we’re going to get a pretty darned amazing monster….
“From Daleks to full size mammoths, Jon’s team of fabricators at Broken Hare have built a huge range of practical monsters, and have the skills to bring our giant eel to life.” (source: Kickstarter)
The problem is, of course, funding. The CongAAARGH! team have instituted a Kickstarter project to raise what amounts to a very modest sum needed to cover the cost of producing an industry-standard prosthetic monster, as well as other more mundane expenses.
Interested in helping?
Get along to their Kickstarter project page and check it out. You can pick up some excellent incentives, not least of which is a DVD of the resulting film.
Source: via Avery Guerra.
