:14:01
but I'm sure you're already taking
all his comments with a grain of salt.
:14:04
Essex went on to tell me "Universal
pleaded with me to do the picture."
:14:08
"And so I began to redevelop
the whole damn thing."
:14:10
"It's pretty much formula for the kind
of horror stories we used to do then,
:14:14
except in this case I added
the Beauty and the Beast theme."
:14:17
"The idea was to give
the creature some humanity."
:14:20
"He wants to love the girl,
but everybody's chasing him."
:14:22
"It's an old formula of mine that
I've used with great success."
:14:26
Harry, Harry, Harry...
:14:29
Some interesting touches in scripts
that never made it to the screen:
:14:32
The first intent was to keep the gill-man
off camera until the middle of the movie.
:14:37
Universal spent so much money on the
gill-man costume that, understandably,
:14:41
they finally decided
to show him early and often.
:14:43
But all you see of him in
the first halves of early scripts
:14:46
are flash shots, you see him
in silhouette, in shadow, et cetera.
:14:50
There was an evocative scene, also
not filmed, where the captain of the Rita
:14:53
talks about the fable of a mermaid who
lived in one of the Amazon's lagoons.
:14:58
"A beautiful legend about this mermaid,
she falled in love with a man on a ship."
:15:03
"And nobody believes him. Then one day,
when the time came for him to go away,
:15:07
she follow him, far out into the Amazon,
:15:09
only to lose her way and be
devoured by the crocodiles."
:15:13
"Who knows? - Maybe this mermaid was
even the wife of this half-man half-fish."
:15:18
That dialogue was meant to be heard as
narration over water and jungle images.
:15:22
It would have explained the gill-man's
fascination with Julie Adams.
:15:26
I'm trying to tell the story
in chronological order,
:15:29
but I wanna jump ahead and mention
that according to Chris Mueller,
:15:32
the sculptor who sculpted
the head and hands of the gill-man,
:15:35
when Universal was making
the second Creature movie,
:15:38
there was talk of having the gill-man
and a female creature in the sequel.
:15:42
There is no female creature in the sequel,
Revenge of the Creature,
:15:45
nor have I seen a draft of the Revenge of
the Creature script that mentions one,
:15:49
and I think I've seen all of them. I guess
it was just an idea being kicked around.
:15:53
I'll talk a little more about that later.