"Phil" - creature from "How to Kill Monsters" upcoming UK movie
I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce my creature “Phil”. I’d love to say that the name was a clever and meaningful acronym, but in actual fact, my daughter just named him Phil and it stuck.
Back in 2022, I was asked by Dark Rift Horror to create a “Lovecraft style” monster for their upcoming movie “How to Kill Monsters” – they needed a puppet style creature with the ability to eat its prey. This was also to be used in a green screen studio environment, and had to be orange to match with the full size tentactles already used in filming with the actors.
As with many projects and prop work, time scales and deadlines were tight – only a few weeks, but I worked very closely with the movie company, updating them with Phil’s progress so that we could hit the delivery date required to enable them to keep with time slots allocated for filming.
I am a retired technician, with a disability, so this is not a job for me, but rather a passion and a life long dream. “How to Kill Monsters” was the first film I have worked on, and Phil was “born” in my garden shed, and made from ABS plastic, foam and latex. It was extremely nerve wracking delivering him to the wonderful HTKM team, however they said they were happy with him, and not only did he make the film, but he even made the poster! This was a bit of a dream for me to be honest.
I would like to end by thanking Stewart Sparke of Dark Rift Horror for his trust and support, letting me, a retired and “broken” rookie loose on his movie, which will be on general release later this year. “How to Kill Monsters” has done festival cinema releases around the world now, and even won a few prizes, so I’m so proud of Phil and my involvement with this project.
Many thanks for reading.
Gary Allen, Manchester, UK
https://youtu.be/tztZzWA1s5I
