Creature from the Black Lagoon
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:50:03
"Richard Carlson was in his trunks
with his face mask on his forehead,

:50:06
and in just the way people take off
their hats for the dead,

:50:09
he reached up
and took off his face mask."

:50:12
"He doffed it so seriously
that we all started to laugh,

:50:14
and it took a long time to come back
together again. It was just too absurd."

:50:18
"We had this wonderful guy who did
the clapboard, an old vaudevillian."

:50:22
"The day Whit Bissell's face
was bloodied by the creature,

:50:25
this fellow clapped the board,
and said to Whit..." - Julie said this

:50:28
out of the corner of her mouth -
"'How are you fixed for blades?"'

:50:32
Jack Arnold had the same attitude
about the gill-man as Arthur Ross.

:50:36
Arnold said that he set out to make
it a very sympathetic character.

:50:39
In one interview, Arnold said
the creature was violent

:50:42
"because he's provoked into it.
Inherent in the character

:50:45
is the statement that all of us
have violence within,

:50:48
and if provoked, are capable
of any bizarre retaliation."

:50:51
"If left alone and understood,
:50:53
that's when we overcome the primeval
urges that we are all cursed with."

:50:56
"Man's inhumanity to man means
not only inhumanity to his own kind,

:51:00
but to anything else - especially
something different from himself."

:51:04
"You can trace the roots to primitive
tribes, one against the other,

:51:08
in cities, to this block against the
next block, the Jew against the Arab,

:51:12
the Protestant against the Catholic,
black against white."

:51:15
"We have not progressed to differentiate
what is superficial and what is not."

:51:19
"The sooner we learn the lesson,
the better off we'll be."

:51:22
"That's what I tried to say in my films,
in a manner an audience would accept."

:51:27
"I don't think they'd accept a polemic.
They'd walk out on it,

:51:30
or it'd be under investigation by the House
Un-American Activities Committee."

:51:34
"My objective was to entertain,
but I also wanted to say something."

:51:38
"If ten per cent of the audience
grasped it, then I was very successful."

:51:51
Whit Bissell, who's in several Jack Arnold
movies, was a versatile character actor,

:51:55
and an ideal choice for the part
of the gentle Dr Thompson.

:51:58
He was just as suited for his
ruthless mad-scientist roles


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