BEHIND THE SCENES IMAGE: WAMPA IN THE WILDS!

Inside the huge Stuart Freeborn costume for the fearsome snow beast, the Wampa, Des Webb gets ready for filming opposite the dead Tauntaun carcass. Sadly, the majority of the creatures location scenes, filmed in totally inhospitable climes at Finse, Norway, were deemed unusable and re-filmed, replaced with a new ILM insert of the creature's face and also with new material shot towards the end of the film's Principal Photography, on a partial snow filled backlot at ELSTREE.

Life's hard when you're a Wampa!

To find out more about the making of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, check out our immensely detailed behind the scenes specials here: BACK ISSUE PDF CATALOG

CLASSIC IMAGE: A SMUGGLER'S SEARCH

From his vantage point astride a Tauntaun, things don't look too good for Han Solo in the search for his missing friend Luke Skywalker, somewhere trapped in the deadly snowy wastelands of the ice planet of Hoth, in this classic scene from THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK.

MONSTER AUCTION!

My good buddy Chris Baker recently got in touch with me on an event from last year that I wasn't previously aware of, and which I thought I'd pass the info and photos on. Here's what he said:

“These (attached) images are from a PIH Hollywood Auction Catalog I found online yesterday. The Auction actually happened back on December 17 & 18th of 2010, from the Saban Theatre in Beverley Hills. Phil Tippett added several pieces from his personal collection, These are the 'SW' ones from his lot

 

... wish I had a few extra hundred thousand just sitting around (lol)

    

(the images-click to blow up for more detail and caption info- are numbered in the order they were presented in the catalogue)”

Thanks for the info, Chris.

ILM CLASSIC IMAGE: A HELPING HAND!

Monster creator and all round effects genius Phil Tippett gives a little bit of support to the head of a cute, beautifully detailed, Tauntaun during stop-motion filming (or as they called their new variation: "Go-Motion") for the exterior Hoth scenes being recreated and filmed at ILM during EMPIRE's late 1979 Post Production phase .

CLASSIC IMAGE: A PRINCESS AND A SCOUNDREL!

An early version of Roger Kastel's 1979/80 art for the homage GONE WITH THE WIND style poster of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. Its a wonderful, timeless piece, and works beautifully in summing up the more sophisticated nature of the first STAR WARS sequel within its black and white reproduction.

CLASSIC POSTER ART: LUKE AND TAUNTAUN ON HOTH

I'm a big fan of this great artwork for EMPIRE that was used back in the early eighties for a National Philharmonic Orchestra recording of John Williams timeless score (currently available on CD from Varese Sarabande music). As far as I'm aware, it's appeared on several sci-fi related magazine covers over the years but has never been commercially available as a poster or other piece of memorabilia in the UK. If anyone's got any more information on this art-who its by (I don't have this CD or the magazines its graced the covers of), or, even better, if they have a higher res scan that shows the full image so that I could use it on the site, please get in touch - thank you.