Beverly Garland Remembers the Horrors Behind the Camera:  "Curucu, Beast of the Amazon"

A versatile and talented actress, Beverly Garland has enjoyed a long and highly successful cinema career. The Santa Cruz, California native made her first screen appearance in the film "D.O.A." in 1949. Among her numerous credits since are the Academy Award® winning "The Joker is Wild" with Frank Sinatra, and Universal's disaster epic "Airport 1975." She has also been one of television’s brightest and most prolific stars, with featured roles on such top rated shows as "My Three Sons" and "Scrarecrow and Mrs. King." In spite of her work in some of Hollywood’s more prestigious productions, it is for her appearances in such films as Universal-International’s 1956 opus "Curucu, Beast of the Amazon," that fans seem to perpetually ask about.

As any movie buff will tell you, the unpardonable sin for any horror or science fiction film is for its monster to be a ruse. It is simply an unforgivable faux pas for this type of faire. "Curucu, Beast of the Amazon" commits that sin, and its reputation has unjustly suffered down through the years primarily for that reason.

While the kiddies no doubt howled when the fearsome creature of the title was exposed as a fraud, that does not of necessity mean that the film is any less entertaining or suspenseful. In fact, "Curucu, Beast of the Amazon" has much in its favor. Writer and director Curt Siodmack was instrumental in bringing many of Universal’s greatest horrors of the 1940’s to life, including "The Wolf Man" and "House of Frankenstein." The cast includes two of the best the genre had to offer in the 1950’s, Garland and John Bromfield. Garland was to appear in such "drive in" classics as "It Conquered the World" in 1956, "Not of this Earth" the following year, and "Alligator People" in 1959. Bromfield had captured, and later fell prey to, the Creature from the Black Lagoon in the sequel "Revenge of the Creature," in 1955. Certainly, "Curucu" should have been more satisfying to all involved considering the level of talent possessed by the principals.

Recently, Garland spoke humorously of her misadventures during the making of "Curucu, Beast of the Amazon." Her recollection of it is vivid, if perhaps a bit too much so for her own liking. "Oh my God, that’s the only problem with "Curucu, Beast of the Amazon," the memories just don’t ever stop!" she says.

Filmed on location in Brazil, the conditions could have been expected to be somewhat extreme. Yet, no one could have foreseen how much so. "There was no makeup man, there was no hairdresser. I had to do everything myself. There were no dressing rooms, there were no trailers, there were no johns. We did everything on location. We worked in a coffee plantation and when you had to go to the john they had to get you in a truck and take you fifteen minutes to the hacienda. It was the caretaker’s house, they had two little children. It was hell, absolute hell!"

At least some of the problems inherent with shooting in a foreign land could have been expected. "Nobody spoke any English," recalls Garland. "Curt Siodmack spoke (mainly) German and Portugese. John Bromfield got married, so nobody was talking to me! There were some very good looking German boys, but I didn’t know what the hell they were saying so I figured I had better stay away!" she laughingly relates.

"You couldn’t drink the water, we had to drink beer," she says. "I had to do all my own makeup. I had to do it like at 4:00 in the morning. There was no sun, I couldn’t see. They had 25-watt light bulbs. It was a great location!"

But the perils didn’t end there for Garland. Siodmack’s script called for a dangerous encounter with a rather large serpent. "There’s one time in the movie where I have a boa constrictor – and I’ve got to tell you, he was as long as from that table to this table, however long that is. They had three natives on one end holding him and three natives on the other end holding him. Then they wrapped him around me."

"I’m on the ground and I’m screaming and Curt Siodmack yells ‘Cut, cut, cut, cut!’ I said, ‘What’s the matter?’ He said, ‘Are you all right?’ I said, ‘Yes, I’m fine, aren’t I supposed to be screaming with this thing around me?' He said, ‘Yes, but I wanted to know if you were all right.’ I said, ‘Yes, I’m all right, let’s do the damn scene and get out of here!’"

Obviously, the potential risk was lost on her at the time. The realization came to her much later, as she describes. "So, twenty years later, he (Siodmack) calls me on the phone. He said, ‘Can I come over and have some tea with you or a cup of coffee?’ I said, ‘Sure, come on over to the house.’ He came over and said, ‘Beverly, I really admire you because if one of those natives had let go at either end we could not have saved your life. The snake constricts and no matter what we could have done, we could have taken machetes, but we could not have saved your life.’"

Siodmack concluded his praise by saying to her, "I give you a lot of credit." To this revelation, Garland made a most fitting and sarcastic reply; "Thanks a lot!"

Another incident occurred in which the danger caught everyone off guard. At one point in the story, Garland and Bromfield are taken prisoner by natives and held captive in their village. Garland remembers it this way. "We are captured by the natives, and the natives have this huge compound with all these huts. They’re all done out of palm fronds. They (members of the film crew) built it and we don’t shoot there for three weeks. By this time, it’s so hot in Brazil, they all dry out."

"John Garfield and I are deep inside of this compound with all these huts. They throw the flamethrower and the thing blows! I mean everything burns – everything goes POP! It doesn’t go burn, burn, burn, it just POPS!"

"I said to myself, ‘I’m going to die.’ John Bromfield, I guess he said to himself ‘I’m going to die,’ too. He just stood there. I pushed him and he started to run and I thought ‘This is it, this is it for me.’ Then I thought, ‘What the hell’s the matter with you for Christ sake, RUN stupid lady!’ I ran, and I burnt my eyebrows and I burnt my eyelashes and the top of my head, but we lived. Pretty wild movie, I’ll tell you!"

Thankfully for everyone, Garland did survive her Brazilian encounter with "Curucu, Beast of the Amazon" and the perils associated with its filming. Her talent has entertained audiences for more than fifty years now, and her career endures with featured guest appearances on such current hit shows as "Friends" and "7th Heaven." Also, Garland is a successful businesswoman. Beverly Garland’s Holiday Inn in Universal City, a luxurious hotel located just one-half mile from Universal Studios, is a favorite stopover for visitors in the Hollywood area.

Beverly Garland in a Universal-International publicity photo.