The Silence Of The Lambs had a credit for Assistant Moth Wrangler is that what you’re thinking of?
Isn’t “eaten by a crow” pretty high on the list of “natural causes” for a maggot?
The cockroaches that got squished in Starship Troopers {Hello, lissener} looked pretty un-CGI to me.
They weren’t real cockroaches, they were the perfect satire of real cockroaches!
The making of on the DVD says they were ketchup packets.
Obviously a satire on America’s fast-food culture, then. {Are you sure? Because I’m pretty sure they were scuttling in much the same way that ketchup packets don’t}
No, no, not Lambs, not M.I.B. either…
It was something filmed here (Toronto)… oh, two years ago, maybe. I didn’t know anyone on the shoot, that’s why I don’t remember the show. And it wasn’t a blockbuster (although I think it was a major motion picture and not a direct to video). IIRC, the scene required a lot of roaches, and they may have actually interviewd the “roach wrangler” for a weekly newspaper. I do remember that the crew ended up chasing an escapee, but when they did a headcount, there was one extra roach and the “escapee” was not actually a show bug, but a critter that had come out of the walls of the location.
(Everyone’s trying to get a cameo these days.)
I’ll see if I can hunt up the film title.
Actually, the rats were much easier for the cast and crew to get along with than the average human. Not a diva in the lot. And the rat union wasn’t nearly as uppity as IATSE – granted the picket signs would be a lot smaller.
Although the Snarly Rat got replaced by CGI because he was too cute. Six were specially trained for one specific task each – e.g./ one was trained to “snarl”, one was trained to flip a switch, etc. But they all looked so Hammy Hamster cute when they did their trick that they got CGIed instead (and the CGI snarl is pee-your-pants funny – not supposed to be though). They were supposed to be eeeeeevil, mutant rats that were genetically engineered to be “smart” and now they were loose in the sewers on a rampage!
Problem was, instead of nasty, filthy looking rats in the sewers, they were all very clean, and pudgy, and fuzzy, and instead of rampaging they would sit on their haunches and wash their little, wee noses. Awwwww. Oh, right. Rampage, rampage, rampage.
They may have been fake. The rat movie above had several totally fake rats that they could get to “move”. They were rubbery and would “scurry” though they were fake. They were the “killable” critters.
The stompable cockroaches were most likely fake because fake ones let you mash them more spectacularly – you can fill them with much more splattery goo than what you would get IRL.
Like, the rat movie had one that had to get electrocuted. Much more interesting to pack a fake one full of flammable stuff so he practically explodes and burns to a crisp from the current. A real rat would just go zap! and collapse.