Before it landed on the iconic beast we all know and love, the 1980s action hit Predator featured a very different look for its namesake hunter -- and Van Damme, was it terrible.

Before the studio mercifully turned to FX legend Stan Winston to redesign the creature, they originally hired Jean Claude Van Damme to play the Predator, wearing a weird red suit that would be changed in post-production as part of the cloaking effects.

Obviously, after a few days of trying to shoot this, everyone involved figured out it was a huge mistake. So they took a hiatus from production, gave Winston the keys to redesign the look and hired Kevin Peter Hall to stalk Ahnold through the woods.

Luckily for all of us, Winston has put together a nice retrospective on what could’ve been, and you can check out some extremely rare footage below:

What do you think? Did you find lobster man very scary?

(Via Movies.com)