The Special-Effects Guru Who Animated Our Most Nightmarish Failings

Stan Winston excelled in scaring the bejesus out of us with nightmares that could be walking down the street right now. He was a special-effects wizard whose most dazzling work reminded moviegoers that the deadliest threats are often the result of man being blind to the consequences of his own endeavors.

Winston, who died last week at 62, had been freaking out audiences for more than three decades, contributing to a long list of action films and thrillers, including "Jurassic Park," "Batman Returns" and "A.I."

He didn't build his career bringing Yoda and other fanciful creatures to life. He dealt in Frankensteins, like the adult dragon-meets-cockroach monsters in "Aliens," the 1986 stomach-churning sequel to 1979's nightmare-inducing "Alien." His monsters left viewers feeling culpable for their own terror. Victims had no one to blame but themselves.

His most frightening and cautionary magic was in "The Terminator" and "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," films that focused on time travel, Armageddon and computers gone wild. ("Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" will not be discussed here even though Winston worked on it. The film pales in comparison to its predecessors and it co-stars the insufferable Claire Danes, whose resting facial expression can best be described as condescension.)

In the "Terminator" films, the computers that man created to do his dirty work turn on him. For anyone who has ever felt as tortured by technology as aided by it, these films are a satisfyingly paranoid confirmation of what the future holds.

"The Terminator," released in 1984, starred Arnold Schwarzenegger as a robotic killer who'd come from the future to hunt down and assassinate Sarah Connor -- the key to the survival of humanity. It played to the actor's bodybuilder physique, his stilted delivery and his carved-from-granite jaw line. He arrives from the war-torn future in an electrical blast, naked and curled into a ball of muscle. He is a cyborg, a machine covered by living flesh. And when Winston's effects reveal microprocessors, widgets and a metal skeleton hiding beneath the skin, they underscore the fact that humans harbor the capacity for their own destruction.

Although Schwarzenegger went on to play the warm and fuzzy "Kindergarten Cop" and now, of course, serves as California's governor, there is still the illogical suspicion that if he cut himself he would not bleed; he would rust. "The Terminator" was simply that convincing.

The 1991 sequel, "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," will be remembered for its liquid metal monster and the unveiling of the most spectacular female celebrity biceps. Linda Hamilton's lean, muscular arms predated the current battle of sinew being waged by the likes of Madonna and Sarah Jessica Parker. The ability of the new and improved "Terminator" to constantly reconstitute after being blown up, shotgunned and frozen heightened the film's oppressive theme of relentless pursuit and the indestructibility of technology once it has been loosed on man. In "Terminator 2," even seemingly benevolent technology has to be destroyed because man simply can't be trusted with it.

There were few things more chilling in science-fiction thrillers than the scenes of tiny droplets of liquid metal slowly pooling into an inescapable cyborg threat. The subtext is that there is no middle ground, no possibility of technology in moderation. Computers should do everything. All musical recordings should be digital. Everything should be accessible via the Internet, or what's the point?

Over the years, special effects have served to transport audiences to fantasy lands of talking fish, charming extraterrestrials and mechanized children who want to be human. But Winston specialized in monsters who served as warnings about our capacity to harm one another and ourselves. His most recent work was on "Iron Man," a film about a weapons developer who has a change of heart when he realizes the unintended consequences of his militarized gadgetry.

In a culture that can't get enough of computer chips and Wi-Fi, Winston's work remains a jaw-dropping caution sign. As folks walk down the street with an iPod plugged into one ear, a Bluetooth clipped to the other and a BlackBerry clutched in repetitively stressed hands, it's hard not to wonder whether they are merely efficiently connected, informed and entertained, or isolated, under siege . . . and dangerous.