An exhaustive (to put it mildly) look at the making of the Creature of the Black Lagoon trilogy. No stone is unturned - the origin, original treatments, scripts, budgets, shooting, post production, marketing, release. I mean, they really go into detail. Towards the end when they started doing interviews from body doubles I began I get physically exhausted. And to have music cues...?
But it's definitive. It's all here. It's exhaustive. And there are lively bits among all the facts - John Agar was a party boozehound (professional on set, let his hair down at night), Jack Arnold was a lecherous old goat very grabby with his hands, Harry Essex was a credit-grabbing hack,William Alland's contribution has been undervalued. The actors mixed between the nice (Julie Adams - I love how she embraced fandom in later life) and the drunk. I enjoyed reading treatments for the proposed remakes.
A full-on, at times overwhelming book but the world is a better place for it to be in it.
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