Thread: Creature From The Black Lagoon

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Here's a video of the Creature From The Black Lagoon we made for our 2011 Halloween display. These are pics we took to see how he looks in natural light. He still needs some detailing, but we're glad he'll be ready to go for Halloween!

The Creature stands 6'6" tall, just an inch shorter than Ben Chapman in his costume. It was built on a 6'5" mannequin. The head is a vinyl bust of Ricou Browning's underwater Creature mask with 20MM Walleye glass fish eyes with reflective pupils. The hands are the Universal Studios costume hands that have been repainted and the original claws were cut off and replaced with new ones made from Sculpey clay. The feet are latex pulls from the original feet molds.

The skin was made in two layers. The lower layer is 1/8" foam neoprene (same as wetsuits are made of) and the outer skin is Nuvtex textured vinyl that has a wet look and is called Boa Spruce. Patterns were made from paper and traced onto the outer skin and cut out. The Nuvtex was glued onto the neoprane with contact cement, and both were cut out to the right shape then the neoprane was glued to the body. There's a little over 70 sections of skin, and it took me about 38 hours to get all the skin on.

The chest piece was made from about 60 ozs of Sculpy clay, as was the upper part of the dorsal fin. The lower part of the dorsal that goes over the rump was made from Apoxie resin clay.

The mannequin arms were made to just hang straight down. I removed the stock connectors and ran a 1/2"x2" bolt through the shoulders, and a nut can be tightened or loosed to allow movement of the arms. The nut is accessed by lifting up the skin on the shoulders to reveal a hole in the arm (as seen in the last pic of the video.) The hands are also articulated and can be rotated as needed. The body can be divided at the waist and broken into a top and bottom for transport, and we're planning on taking him over to Wakula Springs, where the movie was filmed, to take some pictures of him in front of the springs.

WOW! Simply amazing!

Great Job! Did you know they want to do a remake of the movie? Who knows maybe with today's tech it might turn out good.

You did an incredible job on this. Best replica of the creature that I have seen to date.

This is INCREDIBLE! That was my favorite movie when I was little. I came out well before I was born but I still loved it.

excellent, now play the screams and tots will run for miles

Absolutely perfect! Wonder how many little ones you will get near that

Originally Posted by Sleepersatty99

Great Job! Did you know they want to do a remake of the movie? Who knows maybe with today's tech it might turn out good.

I think a lot of the talk of a remake is just internet rumourology, but you never can tell. I would prefer they didn't remake it as they would likely just screw it up. I think they got it right the first time.

Thanks for the compliments! This was more than a Halloween prop for me as this is something I've been wanting since I was about 8 years old and building my first Aurora Creature model. I've always wanted a lifesized Creature but the only ones I ever found cost $5,000 to $10,000, and if I'm going to pay that much money for something I better be able to drive it somewhere or live in it. Universal Studios was selling a hideous looking replica for about $3,000, but the poor quality didn't make it a bargain. I spent about $750 over several months making this guy, and I'm hoping to get a set of original-pull hands sometime down the road to really finish him off, so figuring the hands are another $75 or so, I'm still way ahead.

Originally Posted by Breaker Mahoney

You did an incredible job on this. Best replica of the creature that I have seen to date.

Thanks! What my kids thought was funny was I insisted on replicating all the flaws in the original costume. The seam running up the side of the costume was apparently a result of the molding process, which was a problem we didn't have, but there is a seam running up the side of the costume so we made a fake seam running up the side of the Creature. We also couldn't figure out why they didn't put scales on the lower part of the leg, our guess was the costume used a boot they couldn't cast out of latex and so it was smooth with the airbrushed lines, so we left ours without scales as well and airbrushed in the accent lines.

The only flaw we didn't replicate was the zippers that can be seen running down the insides of the arms in some pictures.