• March 27, 1991

Cinematic Sorcerers Swing into Action to Make Movies a Field of Dreams Come True. Here's a Leg Up on Half a Dozen Miracles in the Making

The dullest job in moviedom must be doubling for Kevin Costner. Arriving in Britain last fall to star in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, the athletic and intrepid actor kept a team of stuntmen idle as he avidly dueled with quarterstaffs (getting dunked repeatedly in near-freezing water), teetered in the spray-splashed prow of a boat bobbing on the sea and flew Tarzan-like on a rope. In Dances with Wolves, arrows had whizzed around him, but he rarely drew a bow himself until he donned the garb of the noble robber Robin. Yet after a few lessons, Costner on his first try nailed a stuffed rabbit at a pretty fur distance. "Don't ask me to do that again," he laughingly told Kevin Reynolds, director of the yarn coming this summer. In his love scenes with Maid Marian (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), Costner reportedly was also on target.

FLAME, BUGS & RAIN
Three films fight the elements

Ron Howard, director of the summer fire-fighting drama Backdraft—starring Kurt Russell and Robert De Niro—had to film fire spreading across a floor but didn't want the shot obscured by rising smoke. Pyrotechnic experts suggested he build the set upside down and ignite the top. Seen through an inverted camera, the smoke appears to hug the floor, leaving the room clear. After a take, firemen on the crew extinguish the blaze (top). Cast and technicians on this June's Rocketeer were bedeviled by clouds of voracious insects on location outside L.A. Star Bill Campbell plays a man who finds a rocket pack coveted by the Nazis. Trying it out he crash-lands in a swamp (middle). Campbell spent the day in the drink but, encased in his leather flight costume, at least escaped the skeeters. In Florida filming the fall detective story China Moon (bottom), Benicio Del Toro and Ed Harris did not have to work at acting hot and sweaty when the AC in their car gave out during five hours of shooting in the Florida sun.

HIGH HEELS & BIG HAIR
Relief is just a pair of slippers away

Reporting at 5 A.M. to have their manes teased into what was known on the set as big hair, the actresses of Soapdish proved daily just how-tedious their glamour trade is. From left (top), Cathy Moriarty, Elisabeth Shue, Sally Field and Teri Hatcher pass the ammunition—cookies. The summer comedy about the soap-opera lives of a soap-opera cast (Kevin Kline also stars) had the ladies tottering for hours on stiletto heels. Slippers were their soles' solace. Hatcher wears hers (left) during a tease touch-up. To chill out (below), Field did needlepoint. Between takes of one weeping-in-bed scene she whipped out her canvas, then slipped it onto the floor and bawled again on cue.

FREDDY GETS PUMPED
Daughter dearest shows up to give the Elm Street stalker a swelled head

"These films are more like visceral roller coasters than literature on film," says John Buechler, special-effects makeup creator for Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (sixth in the Elm Street oeuvre). Making the films is certainly a visceral experience for actor Robert Englund, who plays Freddy Krueger, scourge of teenagers' dreams. He endures two-hour makeup sessions (left). The sticky latex heightens his ferocity, because "with the itching and everything I'm in a constantly agitated state." In Six, as the filmmakers call this possibly final chapter, Freddy's daughter Maggie (actress Lisa Zane) tries to drive him from the dreamworld he haunts back into reality. She conks him with a pipe, causing his head to bulge hideously. The effect is created by air bladders tucked under Freddy's latex dome and body. They are inflated through tubes, which technicians (right) adjust. Ultimately, Maggie tugs so hard that Dad's arms stretch as he holds on for dear death (below). A makeup artist, known as a puff jockey (for the powder puff usually wielded), hovers to dab methyl cellulose ooze on Freddy's familiar facial sores.