elvin peterson

You forget that films are not only shot out of sequence but as in S.W. the live action was shot in the U.K. and the effects and many of the inserts were shot in L.A.. The cantina was shot in the U.K. and the characters in the black and white photo are in England. The color photo of Jim Nelson ( BUCK KNIFE NELSON) with the knife was just after I set up the shot with the head. At the time I did not see the footage that comes before the severed arm, just some production stills of walrus man and the guy with the bad complexion from the waist up, and no hands. Thing happen real fast on films , and you are on to something else. Imagine the cost of having the bad complexion guy get on his makeup months later and molding his arm and head and then sending it to L.A.. S.W. took 10.5 mil. to make not 100 mil.. I was just sent the box with the arm and hand and be ready for G. Kurtz to show up. All the parts were already in L.A.. By the way many of the inserts for the cantina were shot in L.A. . All the close ups, the band, and Han in the corner table. That hand was already in L.A. at Rick Baker's. It shows up I think on what we called the wolfman. The Kurosawa connection is right on.

I never saw the flipper you mention except a week ago on this site.

My real first name is Lorne. I thought I was being clever.  

I did the severed walrus arm shot along with Gary Kurtz in early 1977. Several days before we were to do the insert Gary brought the sleeve with him but not the correct hand . I dressed it with raspberry yogurt and red food coloring put it on a white plastic light diffuser and poured on sand. I believe it was the hand for the wolfman that was owned by Rick Baker. He lent many of the characters that appear in the bar scene. I also tried it with a severed head but Kurtz thought that was too gruesome . The real hand of the walrus did not look like the one you have illustrated. It was more like two fat fingers with flat nails, kind of like a sloth's fingers but with short , wide nails.