‘I’d feel like my blood was boiling’: The true story of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the heroes in a half-shell who shook the world

“From morning to lunch, we’d lose five pounds,” says Josh Pais, one of the four performers buried under mounds of latex and state-of-the-art tech to bring the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to life. Three decades may have passed since he and his fellow in-suit stars emerged from the sewers and forever changed the childhoods of an entire generation, but the claustrophobic memories remain. “It was like going into this weird battle,” he laughs. “It was intense.”

By the time the record-breaking superhero film came out in 1990, these heroes in a half-shell were already becoming household names – thanks to Peter Laird’s cult comic and a sleeper-hit cartoon series. The show, which substituted “Ninja” with “Hero” in the UK to avoid violent connotations, was a quiet phenomenon, its catchphrases and memorabilia sweeping across playgrounds in the late Eighties.

But movie executives weren’t paying attention. To them, a bafflingly named movie about four crime-fighting reptiles was no easy sell. “At the time we were pitching it, the toys were being made and the cartoon had only just come out,” says the film’s director Steve Barron. “It was on very early in the morning in America, 6am on Saturdays, so nobody was looking for the reaction – but kids were really loving it. Obviously it was a very wacky title, which I was immediately curious about. I felt it was important to stay close to the backstory of the turtles. That first graphic novel was almost like a film storyboard, but didn’t quite have the underpinning dramatic narrative that could make a three-act movie.”

With a script by Hong Kong entertainment company Golden Harvest already in hand, Barron looked to the headlines to revamp it for the big screen. “We found a newspaper article about a charismatic Fagin-type who had kids stealing for him and benefiting by stealing things they’d enjoy, like televisions and video games. That was an interesting way to bring The Shredder’s wants and needs into the wants and needs of New York teenagers. Once we had that, the script came together.” Infused with a gritty realness that contrasted nicely with its larger than life stars, Barron’s tweaked adventure paired the Turtles with intrepid reporter April O’Neil (Judith Hoag) and masked vigilante Casey Jones (Elias Koteas) to thwart a youth-fuelled crime spree masterminded by ninja expert and sinister big bad, The Shredder (James Saito).

His story locked down, Barron’s next task was finding his cast “I got a call from my agent, and he said I had an audition for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I was like ‘What?’,” laughs Pais. “I asked him to say it two or three more times just so I could process those four words together somewhat comprehensibly.” As the angsty Raphael – and the only of the four turtle performers to both act in-suit and voice his character – Pais threw himself into the role, regardless of how crazy it sounded. “I grew up in a very tough New York neighbourhood,” he explains. “There were lots of guys whose survival strategy was to hide all their pain and be bigger physically than they were. I had a sense Raphael was operating that way, so I just embodied that energy. I thought, ‘How would a turtle standing up move?’ When turtles push themselves through sand, their hands go out to the side – it was similar to the people in my neighbourhood, so I physicalised that. I threw a couple of flying kicks into the audition and that was the first step.” Pais got the job. He was cast as Raphael, Leif Tilden as Donatello, David Forman as Leonardo and Michelan Sisti as Michelangelo.

Fresh from working with Jim Henson on small-screen fantasy The Storyteller, Barron was convinced the Muppet maestro’s handiwork was crucial to the movie’s success – if he could only persuade him to jump aboard. “The look and muscles of the turtles always felt like a bit of latex to me,” reasons the director. “I’d just worked with Jim and thought his Creature Shop was absolutely brilliant. There wasn’t really another method of doing it. What Jim needed was convincing to do something that involved nunchucks, swords and ninja fighting. It was quite hard for him. The risk was his reputation and the reputation of his creature work on something that could have been seen as violent. I just reassured him that, while I wanted to keep the dark underbelly and reality of the film, the spirit of it would not be mean in any way. That convinced him.”

With Henson in, Barron’s turtle stars could begin the laborious process of bringing their characters to life.

“I was flown to London and brought to the Creature Shop, which was magical,” remembers Pais. “I was body casted and covered head to toe in plaster with two straws in my nose and once the plaster was on, it started to heat up. I found out later that they left us in there longer than they needed, just to see if we’d freak out,” he laughs. “We didn’t know what we were stepping into, but they knew it was going to be pretty gruelling. Each of us had a dresser who would help us put the costume on, piece by piece. The skin around the head was glued to the body, so the moment the head came on, you were sealed in,” he adds. “We’d then rehearse the movie like a play, without any costumes. Each of us had someone from Henson who would convert our facial expressions as closely as possible using animatronics in the turtle face.”

Despite devising such an innovative way of making Leo, Raph, Don and Mikey a reality, Barron found that the groundbreaking nature of his work came with a steep learning curve. “There were many teething problems,” he admits. “The suits got heavier as more technology was put into them, so our performers were carrying 48 pounds of stuff and having to perform multiple takes.”

Pais recalls the exhausting experience: “I had the hardest time being in the costume. There was a massive computer in the shell and because the technology was so new, we’d be shooting and hear ‘Michelangelo’s computer is down!’ and have to sit there, barely being able to breathe or see. I’d feel like my blood was boiling. On the first day, there was water on the sewer set and everything was slippery. When we rehearsed, there wasn’t any water – I’m sure many of us wiped out,” he laughs. “It was so intense, it bonded us. We were going through what our characters were going through on many different levels.”

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As if the physical challenge wasn’t bad enough, Henson’s bespoke kit had its own issues that revealed themselves in some unfortunate ways. “We were shooting in North Carolina near an airforce base,” remembers Barron. “We wouldn’t have known, but because some of the technology involved radio waves, some days the turtles’ mouths would move at an alarming rate and the eyes would turn around in their sockets because a plane was landing nearby. It was full of things to conquer.”

For Pais, it was a claustrophobic nightmare: “There would be times where one of us would freak out,” he says. “You’d hear a muffled, ‘Take the head off!’ then another and another, spreading like panic. If one of us had to take our head off, it was a 20-minute process and when the computer would boot down, whatever expression was on the face would be where it’d stay. I once heard someone say, ‘Take the head off!’ and thought, ‘I can ride this out’. It went on and on and I couldn’t take it anymore. I was moving my arms, shouting, ‘I need some f***ing help!’ but outside, I had a big smile on my face. People thought I was goofing around,” he laughs. “It was very funny – in retrospect.”

As the film’s director, Barron worked hard to ensure his cast remained calm – and sane – during such a difficult shoot. “Often, they didn’t want to take their heads off because that was a half-hour turnaround, so they’d prefer to sit in the discomfort of their own sweat,” he says. “We just made sure that as soon as we cut, they got to their resting points.” As the film neared completion and with distributors still unsure about what exactly they were dealing with, the decision was made to throw in some last-minute star appeal: “As it got closer to post-production, the distributors wanted to get a few names in to voice the characters and thought it would help to get Corey Feldman involved to give it a publicity angle and make it a bit more starry,” he recalls. “Thinking back, it made absolutely no difference at all. The turtles were the stars and that’s what pulled people into the cinema.”

When Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles finally hit cinemas on 30 March 1990, Barron’s gamble and Pais’ anguished hard work paid off. Despite being panned by critics on release, its combination of eye-catching animatronics, an unexpectedly dark tone and plenty of heart helped the turtles’ debut cinema outing capture the imagination of a generation of young moviegoers. Turtle mania had already crawled across the world thanks to the comics and TV shows – but the film ramped things up to another level. The year of its release, a quarter of a million turtles were imported into the UK, because a growing number of young fans wanted a real-life ninja as a pet.

“We had reports of people going to the cinema, seeing the trailer, standing and cheering – so we thought we might have something that could do well – not having any clue just how well it’d eventually do,” says Barron of early word of mouth. “It was the biggest grossing independent movie of all time quite quickly. We had no ambitions for that.”

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Pais remembers the experience fondly: “I didn’t have a sense of what we’d created – I just knew the experience was really intense. I remember going to the first screening and that first moment where you see the turtles walking down the sewer tunnel, I thought, ‘This is going to be a phenomenon.’ There was a darkness and visual richness to it – everything came together. It tapped into a zeitgeist,” he smiles. “A lot of people tell me that was the first movie they saw in the theatre.”

Thirty years on, this gritty corner of nostalgia cinema still holds a sentimental place in the hearts of young adults worldwide. “I think people are attached to it because they were nine years old at the time and it had a massive impact on them,” says Barron warmly. “When they watch it again, it brings back a time in their life where something different came along. It’s still got lots of followers.”

“It affected people so deeply,” adds Pais of the film’s unexpected longevity. “It gave them strength and by allowing them to identify with these non-human but very human creatures, it helped them in a deep way and that’s beautiful to see. At Comic Cons, I’ve had big men with big biceps pull up their sleeves and there’s a tattoo of Raphael. People feel very empowered by that movie and it holds a dear place in my heart to have been a part of that.” He chuckles. “It’s wild!”