Carlo Rambaldi

Carlo Rambaldi (born 1925 in Vigarano Mainarda, Italy) is an Italian-born special effects artist who is most famous for designing the title character of the 1982 smash hit "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" and the mechanical head-effects for the creature in "Alien" (for both Rambaldi wons an Oscar). Rambaldi has also worked on "Profondo Rosso (Deep Red)" (1975), "King Kong" (1976), "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (1977), "Dune" (1984), and "King Kong Lives" (1986).

In the popular TV show, Alias, the prophet Milo Rambaldi was named after him, and in the Nintendo franchise Star Fox, the character Falco Lombardi shares his last name as a tribute to him. (In the Japanese version of the franchise, his last name is Rambaldi, and in the American & European versions the last name is slightly changed to Lombardi).

Rambaldi has the distinction of being the first special effects artist to be required to prove that his work on a film was not 'real'. Dog-mutilation scenes in the 1971 film Lizard in a Woman's Skin were so convincingly visceral that its director, Lucio Fulci, was prosecuted for offences relating to animal cruelty. Fulci would have served a two-year prison sentence had Rambaldi not exhibited the film's array of props to a courtroom, proving that the scene was not filmed using real animals.

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