Curiosidades

This movie was filmed partly on the island of St. Lucia in the Caribbean. Unfortunately, the directors didn't pay enough attention to some of the local speaking "extras" who, in the scene with the young boy in the town of Soufriere, one of the locals curses a certain part of his mother's reproductive anatomy in the local Creole dialect - Patois. Oops!!!

This is based on the Peter Benchley novel "White Shark". After the TV Movie "Creature" went into production, "White Shark" was re-titled and re-released under the name "Creature" to cash in on the movie.

In the original novel, Chase is not a scientist but a private citizen who has founded an institute, and Dr. Amanda Macy is not his son's mother. The creature is a surgically altered homicidal maniac, not a genetically created monster.

Stan Winston Studio was hired to bring the creature to life. Winston had precedently collaborated with the producers with the production of A Gnome named Gnorm -- which he had directed. He was also an enthusiast of Peter Benchley's work; he himself even considered directing at one point, according to Lewis: "he was circling around directing this at one point," he said, "and then he was a little bit intimidated: it's a fairly big undertaking, and he's got his deal at DreamWorks. But he said, 'Richard, if you're gonna do an amphibious movie, I have to do it.' And I said, 'oh, I can't afford you; I can't afford the scope of a T.rex.' And he said, 'well, we'll work it out.' And he was true to his word, because his team loves to do this, they didn't want someone to come and do a really shitty job of it." Lewis also felt for the special effects team, due to the budget and time restraints they were going to challenge: "I think this was hard for him and his guys," he continued, "because we do movies -- certainly the big-scope movies -- in around 100 days, and this was a 50-day schedule, so everybody had to tighten up a little bit.

Mark 'Crash' McCreery designed the Creature, with total freedom over its actual appearance -- under input from the director Stuart Gillard and producer Richard Lewis. The final design attempted to balance out between human-like traits and shark-like elements. Winston related: "what you don't want to end up with is a 'guppy man,' -- you don't want it to be a fish with legs. So to come up with a design that balances out and looks right -- that obviously has elements of shark and elements of humanity in it -- is a difficult concept to attack. But we did so with fervor, and Crash did a beautiful job of conceptualizing the character." Lewis also commented on the design: "it's not a shark that's walking on land. it really has very little to do with a shark. We wanted to try to fool the audience into thinking it could be in the beginning, but then it becomes quite clear that it isn't. it's bipedal, but it's primordial, and Stan doesn't pull any punches." Gillard added: "You know, when you hear the premise about a shark that walks on land, you go, 'whoa, man, what's this gonna look like?' And that's why I didn't come aboard until I knew Stan Winston was involved. Given the history I have with the production company, I knew we'd have quality going in, but with the creature being the star, I really wanted to make sure that it was scary and not laughable, and I knew that with Stan we'd have something good."