Suburban Commando, Mutant General Suitor Concept Drawing

original production artwork

This 10” x 11” original Mutant General Suitor concept drawing by Emmy and Oscar-winning makeup artist Bill Corso was made for the production of the science-fiction comedy Suburban Commando (1991).

Initially optioned as a vehicle for Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito, the film’s name switched from Urban Commando to Suburban Commando when New Line Cinema bought the rights and tapped replacements Hulk Hogan and Christopher Lloyd, resulting in “Surb” being hastily added to the artwork’s title to accompany the inexplicably misspelled “Comando.” (Printed copies distributed to crew members at the time still show the earlier moniker.)

According to Corso, who sculpted and painted the mutated Suitor costume at Steve Johnson’s XFX company, the movie’s producers wanted a cross between a Xenomorph and the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Starlog magazine reported from the set that it took six hours for the 6’ 8” monster performer to put on the head appliance and matching foam-rubber body. The cranium dome was nixed after the Hulkster cracked it during rehearsal.

“The real challenge was making a man-in-a-suit that didn’t look like all the others that have been done over the years,” Johnson told Starlog in its June 1991 issue. “It’s as reptilian and monstrous as we could get it--very alien, but only in that it’s a departure in texture and detail. I put a lot of thorny kinds of things on it to make it look as deadly as possible, tendrils that come from the mouth and nose area, and a couple of major tentacles that come off the head and go forward over the shoulders.”

An excruciating squeeze of Suitor’s testicles with a powerful bionic arm triggers the transformation from his human form to his true extraterrestrial identity.

“Looking back, I’m not sure the design fit the tone of the film,” Corso later said in an online retrospective, “but it sure looked cool.”

Over his decades-long Hollywood career, Corso received three Outstanding Achievement in Makeup Emmy Awards for his work on The Stand (1994), The Shining (1997), and Grey Gardens (2009), and took home a Best Achievement in Makeup Academy Award for Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004). His other makeup credits include Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990), How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000), Planet of the Apes (2001), The Haunted Mansion (2003), Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015), and Deadpool (2016).