Another day, another redesign! These are a lot of fun and I’m learning a lot about these old sci-fi movies in the process.
For the next redesign, I decided to go with CREATURE FROM THE HAUNTED SEA – 1961. Why am I doing this one? Two reasons. First off, the creature is just….just awful. I’ll get back to that in a second. My other reason is that this is a Roger Corman movie! If you’re not familiar with Roger Corman, he’s mostly known as the king of B-movies. He’s also known for helping to start the careers of other directors like Ron Howard, Martin Scorcese and others via the Roger Corman film school. If you haven’t heard of him – you probably have heard about one or two of the movies he’s either directed or produced as he’s worked on close to 400 films! I could go on and on about Corman, but I’ll save that for a future post.
Lets talk about the monster……good lord, the monster:
Watching this movie is both painful and hilarious at the same time. Creature from the Haunted Sea was shot in just 5 days and according to the wikipedia entry for the movie, the creature was: “a wetsuit, some moss, lots of Brillo pads, tennis balls for the eyes, Ping-Pong balls for the pupils, and pipecleaners for the claws. Then we cover him with black oilcloth to make him slimy.” Apparently, the actors had a tough time keeping a straight face while shooting scenes with it. Can’t blame them.
Onto my redesign. For this design I knew I wanted to keep some aspects of the creature. Even though it’s a redesign, I still wanted it to be a nod to the original. Gotta find some way to keep the bug-eyes, the long…uh, “claws”, as well as other aspects of the original like the seaweed like dangly parts and overall form (to an extent).
With that in mind I started with some roughs. Very rough, roughs. I had an idea already in mind of what I wanted it to look like, but I still wanted to play with the design. Plus, it’s a great way to warm up:
On to the final design. I kept the bug-eyes, but have them more on the sides of the head. The cranium is still a similar shape. I made sure to keep the 2 long lower canine teeth, though the mouth is larger like that of a deep-sea fish. Speaking of, I also gave him a big ol’ neck waddle. Reminiscent of the excess skin/flesh in some deep-sea fish that swallow their prey whole and expand significantly. I did muscle him up a bit since he needs to out swim and take down human or human-sized prey. I kept his claws, but they are on larger hands and don’t quite look like pipe cleaners. I kept the seaweed covering. But now it looks more like it’s growing from him. I wanted it to be mostly on his back and limbs to allow him to hide and stalk his prey underwater unseen.
And there he is! The Creature from the Haunted Sea redesigned! Lot of fun to work on this one and I’m looking forward to more. I’ve been rummaging through old movies of the era and there are a lot of great ones to choose from for my next redesign.
Let me know if you have any requests for a creature-feature monster that you’d like me to redesign.
And, if you’d like to learn more about Roger Corman:
Josh Hagen 