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Date Posted: 22:44:22 09/24/06 Sun
Author: Rick
Subject: Trip to Mars: The Melting of the Statues

Interview from Filmfax #79 with Buster Crabbe...

"In one of the Mars episodes where Flash witnessed the disintegration of a stone idol when Ming blasted it with his ray gun, it was Eddie Keyes who developed the method of making the statue melt on cue. For the melting of this idol, Keyes made a plaster of Paris mold from an original clay sculpture. Once hardened, he lined the inside surfaces of the mold with tiny steel shavings that were held together by electromagnetic current running through a steel plate. When the shavings had been sprinkled to the desired thickness in each half of the mold, he closed the two halves to form a whole structure, then removed the mold. Each particle of steel clung to the other by magnetic force. With a non-metallic knife and tweezers, he removed all traces of the joining seams and touched up the detail. Finally, a light coat of paint was sprayed over the hollow, steel idol to make it resemble stone.

On cue from the director, Eddie pressed a switch to cut the magnetic current and the hollow steel statue collapsed, making it appear like a stone statue melting. He even had a fail-safe mechanism built into the table, in case the paint on the statue set too firmly or residual magnetism lingered in the metal shell: a vibrator jiggled the table with enough force to make the statue melt. Even today, in an age of space exploration, I find Eddie's technique fascinating. It doesn't seem likely that any other effect, short of an actual ray gun melting real stone, could produce a more convincing illusion that was developed by him in 1937."


Rick

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