teeth. Flashlights were used to make the eyes glow. Originally the claws worked, but they were damaged on the first day of shooting. When Blaisdell unveiled the costume to the film's producer James Nicholson, Nicholson happily exclaimed "Paul, you've done it again!" The creature was mounted on wheels. Blaisdell would crouch inside to enable the creature to move. "Originally, the creature was supposed to be in a dark cave all the time so an air of mystery would surround it," said Blaisdell. "But Roger decided it would be more effective if the creature would make a defiant appearance outside its hiding place and be destroyed by a charge of bayonet-armed soldiers. He also wanted the creature to appear dead in the film's finale by having it lying on its side!" In the bayoneting scene, one of the soldiers stuck a bayonet in the wrong spot and nearly skewered Blaisdell's skull who was inside it, working the costume. Luckily Blaisdell's wife had persuaded him to don a helmet for protection, which deflected the blade. The creature's working pincers were broken on the first day of shooting, but its arms could still be raised. The melting eye socket effect was completed using chocolate syrup. Blaisdell's wife was inside the suit, manually working the chocolate-squirting device, which backed up and squirted all over her. Garland later recalled the first time she saw the creature at Bronson Canyon: I said to Roger, “That isn't the monster! That little thing there is not the monster, is it?" He smiled back at me, "Yeah. Looks pretty good, doesn't it?" I said, “Roger! I could bop that monster over the head with my handbag!" This thing was no monster, it was a table ornament! He said, "Well, don't worry about it because we're gonna show you, and then we'll show the monster, back and forth." "Well, don't ever show us together, because if you do everybody'll know that I could step on this little creature!" Eventually I think they did do some extra work on the monster: I think they re-sprayed it so it would look a little scarier, and made it a good bit taller. When we actually filmed, they shot it in shadow, and never showed the two of us together. Griffith said he called the creature prop "Denny Dimwit and somebody else called It an ice-cream cone. I was around when Paul Blaisdell was