:29:00
Schecter calls the theme "a memorable
musical signature", which it certainly is.
:29:05
It's instantly recognisable, even when it
crops up in non-Universal sci-fi movies,
:29:09
like Women of the Prehistoric Planet
and Dracula Versus Frankenstein,
:29:12
that lifted music from Creature.
:29:18
People often speculate that this scene
was an inspiration to Steven Spielberg
:29:22
when he shot
some of the scenes of Jaws.
:29:24
The plot of Creature is so indebted
to King Kong, I think back to Kong.
:29:27
This scene of a curious gill-man playfully
poking and touching her legs
:29:31
reminds me of the scene where King
Kong takes Fay Wray up the mountain
:29:34
and pokes her and tickles her.
:29:36
I also wanna talk about the people
who worked on the creature costume.
:29:40
Prominent among them was a creative
designer named Milicent Patrick.
:29:43
Talk about Beauty and the Beast.
She was born an Italian baroness,
:29:47
she was a former Goldwyn Girl, a model,
an interior decorator, an artist -
:29:51
she was the first
woman animator for Disney -
:29:53
and she helped design the creature
and did some painting on the costume.
:29:57
Chris Mueller was a sculptor, Tom Case
a painter on the various gill-man suits,
:30:01
and Jack Kevan, who was
Bud Westmore's right-hand man -
:30:04
Bud Westmore's right- and left-hand man -
Jack Kevan did a little of everything.
:30:09
Kevan worked as Westmore's assistant
but he was a hell of a lot more.
:30:12
He was a real hands-on guy who did
most of whatever work had to be done.
:30:16
He was born in Pittsburgh,
attended UCLA,
:30:18
and he went to work
doing make-up at MGM in 1932.
:30:21
He made up the main characters in
The Wizard of Oz, then, in World War II,
:30:25
he made prosthetic appliances for
wounded men throughout the Pacific.
:30:28
After the war he got a job at Universal.
:30:30
He worked on A&C Meet Frankenstein,
It Came from Outer Space,
:30:34
Man of a Thousand Faces,
Tarantula, scores of movies.
:30:37
And in 1958 he and Creature's
dialogue director, Irvin Berwick,
:30:41
struck out on their own and made a horror
film, The Monster of Piedras Blancas,
:30:44
a thinly-disguised attempt to duplicate
Creature's success
:30:47
with a lookalike monster.
Jack Kevan told me
:30:50
"They were lucky to find Ricou Browning,
who could swim underwater
:30:54
and not be restricted by the
equipment he had to wear."
:30:57
"We took a full body cast of him. On top of
his figure we built the monster to fit him,