:07:02
and realised for the first time that the
story was King Kong set on the water.
:07:06
I asked Alland if he got ideas from King
Kong. He immediately started laughing.
:07:10
He said he did, absolutely,
that that was the whole idea, his idea,
:07:13
to redo King Kong
but with a water monster.
:07:16
The first writer Alland assigned
to the movie was Maurice Zimm,
:07:19
who turned in a 59-page draft, titled
Black Lagoon in early December, 1952.
:07:23
It's sufficiently different
from the movie to mention here.
:07:26
In this draft, Dr Lyman Reed,
an undersea explorer,
:07:29
risks his life in various underwater
adventures to raise money
:07:32
to form an expedition and search
the Amazon for the Pisces Man,
:07:35
a man-fish that is reported to live there.
:07:40
We're looking now, by the way, at footage
shot at the Hermosa Beach Aquarium.
:07:44
Julie Adams and a crew
went there during preproduction.
:07:47
Dr Reed's girlfriend, Kay, an heiress,
puts up the money herself,
:07:50
but insists on going along
with the expedition.
:07:53
Unbeknownst to Kay, her guardian
hires an adventurer named Ted Clayton
:07:56
to find a way to also join the expedition
and secretly watch over her.
:08:00
On the expedition up the Amazon
are Dr Reed, Ted, Kay,
:08:04
Kay's doting companion Winnie,
:08:06
and an explorer named Carl Sloan,
who's got "bad guy" written all over him.
:08:09
The explorers set traps for the Pisces
Man, but it avoids them and weeks go by.
:08:13
Sloan finally gets fed up,
chloroforms Kay and places her on a raft,
:08:17
using her as bait for the Pisces Man.
The Pisces Man appears.
:08:20
It has a "huge, fascinating,
unbelievable head,
:08:23
with a throat sac like a frog's
and scalloped gills
:08:26
that, at a distance, resemble
the bobbed hair of a knight of old".
:08:30
The Pisces Man kills Sloan
and gets away with Kay,
:08:33
but Ted follows them to the monster's
grotto and subdues the Pisces Man
:08:36
by slapping a wrestling hold on it
until it passes out.
:08:39
Kay feels sorry for the Pisces Man,
which is locked in a tank
:08:43
and brought back to civilisation. The tank
is taken off the boat and put on a plane.
:08:47
Kay sneaks onto the plane and unlocks
the tank so the Pisces Man can escape.
:08:52
The Pisces Man "comes
slowly toward her, looms over her,
:08:55
and touches the whiteness
of her throat, ever so gently."
:08:58
"Then, with his eyes still on her,
he leaves the plane."