:17:00
"Why not show the creature following the
boat up the river to the Black Lagoon?"
:17:04
"This would not only give added
suspense but would clarify the story."
:17:09
That was a good suggestion.
:17:11
The movie's famous now and
we know there's only one gill-man,
:17:14
but in 1954, when people were
seeing it for the first time,
:17:17
a gill-man in camp and another in the
lagoon might have been misleading.
:17:21
So, sure enough, somebody
added a shot to the script.
:17:24
As the Rita chugs toward the lagoon,
there's a shot of the gill-man following.
:17:28
It was a high shot from the boat deck,
showing the gill-man below the surface.
:17:32
"A long sharklike shadow, slithering
through the water, follows the vessel."
:17:36
"As he lifts one hand out of the water,
we recognise it as the green taloned thing
:17:40
we had seen poking out of the
inland water at the geological camp."
:17:44
OK, fine, so the shot's in the movie, but
then watch this cut right here in a second.
:17:49
That's where the shot was
before somebody took it out.
:17:52
You can hear the music
abruptly jump ahead.
:17:55
They must have taken it out,
and didn't have time,
:17:57
or maybe the inclination, to fix the music.
They just let it skip very noticeably.
:18:02
Who took the shot out,
and why, I have no idea.
:18:07
Universal briefly considered shooting
Black Lagoon in Eastman Color.
:18:10
Of all the Universal
sci-fi movies of the '50s,
:18:12
this is the one that really would
have benefited from colour.
:18:16
It would have been dynamite in colour.
If the colourisation fad hadn't died out,
:18:20
and if they'd got it right, I'd have had no
objection to seeing Creature colourised.
:18:25
When I told Alland Creature and Tarantula
would have been great in colour,
:18:29
he said the same thing,
that he'd love to see Creature colourised,
:18:32
that it'd look fabulous. But the expense
of shooting in colour worried Universal.
:18:38
In colour and 3-D, they projected that
Creature would cost them $750,000.
:18:42
So, pardon the pun, they scaled Creature
down, made it in black-and-white 3-D,
:18:47
which they figured
would cost them $650,000.
:18:54
This is embarrassing
to the memory of Jack Arnold,
:18:57
and I'm jumping ahead again,
but I'll point it out anyway.