Editor's Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on September 8, 2011, and we're proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
It’s not often lately that an independent fright film with a man-in-a-suit monster makes it into nationwide U.S. release, but Creature has bucked the odds. Conceived by director Fred Andrews as an old-fashioned terror-in-the-swamp flick with a back-to-basics threat (known as “Lockjaw”) terrorizing a group of young friends in a Louisiana swamp, Creature is opening in theaters across America. Fango spoke with Andrews and some of his cast about the movie; in this first of our two-part story, he and creature actor Daniel Bernhardt talk about bringing Lockjaw to life.
What makes your monster and the film’s story unique in this genre?
FRED ANDREWS: I definitely think the thing that makes it unique is that the creature is not a mindless killing machine. He’s an integral part of the story, and very much a central character. He has a personality that comes out, which Daniel did incredibly well—not just through his physicality, but his emotional range. In most genre pictures—and I’m a huge fan, and have worked on a ton of them in many capacities—it’s just a mindless killing machine. Lockjaw is not; he has a motivation for everything he does or doesn’t do. And that is something very different from running around killing people just to kill people. That’s not our film.
What’s the storyline in a nutshell?
ANDREWS: In a nutshell it’s a creature chasing people around the swamp, but really, it’s a little more complicated than that. You have this group of kids in their early 20s, and one of the guys, played by Mehcad Brooks, is a Navy SEAL just back from the war. Aaron Hill plays the boyfriend of Amanda Fuller’s character, Beth, and he’s a Marine getting ready to go over to the war. Then you have Dillon Casey playing Oscar, a friend and also a Marine with Aaron. They decide they’re going to have a party before Aaron leaves, and they end up stopping by this tourist trap kind of store where Sid Haig is the owner/proprietor. They decide to check out this local legend, and that’s when everything starts to go wrong. It’s a bit of a typical setup in the beginning, but once they get there, the film becomes a completely different kind of thing.
What led you to choose Daniel to be your creature, and who did your FX?
ANDREWS: I’ll answer backwards, because Daniel is the long story. Jerry Constantine is an amazing effects artist, and we’ve worked together in the past. When I was first working on this idea as a graphic novel, I was collaborating with Jerry on these sculptures for it, and the evolution the creature had, so in my mind it was always going to be Jerry taking my maquettes and 2-D drawings and bringing those to life. He ended up adding a lot more, because it was a good three-month process just developing what the creature was going to look like.
As we were going through that process, we were trying to decide who was going to be the creature. How it happened was, I got a call from Daniel, who wanted to talk to me about the role, and I was like, “Absolutely.” When Daniel and I met, I think it took less than 15 minutes before he was going to do it, and I believe I even gave him the out, like, “Look, you understand you’re going to be in makeup for 14 hours. You’ve got this really good-looking face; you’re like a model, a big kickboxing star…
DANIEL BERNHARDT: But the pitch was kind of different when you came to me. I first got this call from Jon Sheinberg, one of the producers, who said, “Daniel, would you like to play this part? I want you to meet the director.” So Freddy and I met for coffee, and for two hours he pitched me the story and I was so blown away. What I really liked was that his first line was, “How would you feel about playing a legend? Like King Kong, like Predator? We’re not going to see your face, but how would you like to play that character?” I was like, “What? Yeah!” We started to throw ideas around, and I said, “How about if he’s a half-human crocodile?” and “How about if I study crocodiles and move like one?”
ANDREWS: Because it started as a graphic novel, I had like 160 pages of this creature’s mythology. To try to condense that down to 90 minutes, you know… Daniel really did that. There was no doubt about him doing the project; it was really like love at first sight that way.
BERNHARDT: You had me at “hello.”
ANDREWS: You had me at, “Do you mind the makeup?” “No.” “Awesome!”
So how was it spending 14 hours in the makeup to play the creature?
BERNHARDT: Jerry did such an incredible job. I believe, when we did the full makeup, it was about a five-hour job to get in and about four hours to get out. We just created this great friendship and trust and worked so well together, and I didn’t mind it. Sometimes I would hang around on set—
AMANDA FULLER, co-star: He really liked scaring the girls, walking around the set, creeping up behind them…
ANDREWS: Although we had a great set, one of the things Daniel and I talked about separately, prior to even all the casting being done with the other actors, was how Daniel was going to be around them. It was a central part of the character to kind of be watching the whole time. He’s omnipresent. He’s there all the time.
BERNHARDT: Even though I didn’t really have any lines, I told Fred, “Listen, I just want to be in the read-through.” My character, through the whole movie, is watching them, so I wanted to be there and watch them the whole time. And I would just keep watching them during the shoot.
ANDREWS: Without giving away parts of the film, certain characters end up encountering Lockjaw, and Daniel’s treatment of those actors… He kept his distance, but he’s such a tall guy, and I think there was a little bit of physical intimidation going on. It was all very much on purpose, and once he got in the makeup, too, it was just so good. It was really easy to act off of, and that was one of the important things with me. In the very early development stages, we had talked about CGI, and I was very much against that. Because I get nothing out of that; I get no emotion out of it as a director, and the character ends up being a flat drawing. That’s more of a graphic-novel way to go, but taking it into three dimensions, I wanted that character to be three-dimensional, so the actors could touch it and smell it and feel it, and they could be scared when they were supposed to be scared, and when they were running they were actually running away from something. It was a big, big deal. I had to argue for it, but luckily I won out.
BERNHARDT: You were also very particular about stances, my physicality, how I walked, and we came up together with this idea. You also wanted me to read a book—
ANDREWS: Grendel by John Gardner. Which is my favorite book. It’s Beowulf from the monster’s point of view.
BERNHARDT: He said, “I just want you to read that book to understand.” And once I read it, I really got what he was talking about, because Grendel was always misunderstood, and kind of watching everybody. And when he would kill someone, it was not because he wanted to kill the person, but just because he had to.
ANDREWS: Except sometimes he wanted to do it because he was angry. Or reacting.
BERNHARDT: Like if somebody was screaming and he killed them.
Did shooting in the suit on the hot locations cause any problems?
ANDREWS: When I was doing the scheduling, I tried to take into consideration how much weight Daniel could lose. He was on a special diet for this, and with it being 200 percent humidity, 95 to 98 degrees, Daniel was losing about 10 or 15 pounds a day in water weight, so he constantly had to be hydrated. But even when he was not on the schedule, he would come in and get in makeup regardless. I’d be like, “Daniel, what are you doing?” and he would say, “I’m here for you, just in case.”
And you know what, if he had not done that… We had such a tight shooting schedule. I’ve got to give credit to my production designer, Jakub Durkoth, to Chris Faloona, my DP, who was just amazing, and certainly to Jerry as well; this film does not look anything like the money we had for it. It looks five to 10 times larger than its budget, and part of that is just because of the people I had, and everybody, including Daniel, going the extra mile. Like one day he just showed up and said, “I’m getting in makeup,” which was great. I was able to shoot scenes I probably wouldn’t have been able to get on such a tight schedule.
TO BE CONTINUED
