Corman’s monster is none other than the $150 creation of soundman/actor Beach Dickerson who shares: “I decide to get five helmets and make this giant head. Then we get a wetsuit, some moss, lots of Brillo pads. Then we get 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 look slimy. I mean, we decked him out and he was absolutely glorious. And I must say, that son of a bitch, he ran on land and swam underwater for the whole shoot and when it was all over he went to heaven.”12
The monster is telling of the production itself, tossed together in a rush of crazed inspiration, allowing what’s around to influence. It is seeing the movie inside someone’s head…someone sleeping in the shade of the Bermuda Triangle. What a shock when into this dream assembly suddenly appears an Academy Award winning icon. Pulled through, after four years out of sight, Humphrey Bogart is back.
His first utterance in the dark under palms is, “I am,” followed by, “Let’s get on with it.” Renzo Capeto, American gambler, gangster and yachtsman is Bogart’s incarnation, though at times it seems his actor Anthony Carbone struggles to control the possession. The same posturing body language, the cigarette going, the sailor hat, the toughness, the smiles, his gaze, mannerisms and speech patterns. How could you possibly make a boat movie with gangsters in black and white and not invite Bogart? The plot was right, the place, the boat, everything agreed. It was an open door awaiting his reappearance.
So, coasting with the perfect ghost, the boat floats right into the plot of To Have and Have Not. As in that earlier film, while hoping to look like a fishing vessel, their mission has been discovered by a patrol boat and The Bogart of both films arms his deck hands for trouble. “Now let’s appear casual,” he orders in 1961 and, “Mary Belle, sing a song.” Hoagy Carmichael backed Lauren Bacall, but Mary Belle has an out-of-the-blue piano track to make up a love song, as she bobs along. A shooting match erupts again and they escape again. Even the beyond-odd character Pete Peterson Jr, an animal mimic, is an impaired exaggeration of Walter Brennan’s Eddy, with his dead bee routine. Boat full of thieves, the cramped onboard camera work resembles Key Largo, while Renzo plots for the chance to take over their course, and soon does.
But this is the Bermuda Triangle, a mysterious and dangerous place, unpredictable, as the theatrical trailer for To Have and Have Not already warned: “The danger zone of the Mid-Atlantic where strange ships slip through the fog with even stranger cargoes…where all barriers are down and the only law is the law of the Caribbean.”
Prescient, in what amounts to his swansong, Creature’s Bogart echoes Tennyson in his conversation with an equally fated Cuban colonel, dreams of what to do, where to go next:
“You can go anywhere you like. I’m going home.”
“To America?”
“America? No, I can’t go back there anymore.”
True, his encore appearance is over, he’s bound for some unseen shore. The monster roars out of the water, there’s no place to get away, and The Bogart runs out of life on the beach, unable to move, staring at the sky.
Footnotes (Stock Footage):
1The Life and Many Deaths of Harry Houdini, Ruth Brandon, Kodansha International, NY, 1993, page 151.
2 Ibid, page 196.
3 Houdini U.S Patent # 1,370,316 granted March 1, 1921. Quoted from www.magictricks.com/Houdini
4 Death and the Magician: The Mystery of Houdini, Raymond Fitzsimons, Atheneum, NY, 1981, page 163.
5 The Fourteen Dalai Lamas: A Sacred Legacy of Reincarnation, Glenn H. Mullin, Clear Light Publishers, Sante Fe, New Mexico, 2001, page 448.
6 My Land and My People, His Holiness the Dalai Lama of Tibet, McGraw-Hill Book Co. Inc., NY, 1962, page 236.
7 Ibid, page 21-22.
8 Humphrey Bogart, Alan G. Barbour, Galahad Books, NY, 1973, page 96.
9 www.unmuseum.org/triangle.htm
10 How I Made A Hundred Movies in Hollywood And Never Lost A Dime, Roger Corman, Random House, NY, 1990, page 71.
11 Ibid, page 237.
12 Ibid, page 73.
