Trivia: Lourie's three giant dinosaur movies

[dragon53]

TRIVIA---production designer/art director Eugene Lourie worked with French director Jean Renoir and received an Academy Award nomination for KRAKATOA: EAST OF JAVA. But Lourie is perhaps best known for being the director of three sci fi movies in which giant dinosaurs attack a major city: THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS (which inspired GODZILLA), THE GIANT BEHEMOTH and GORGO.

Production designer/art director Eugene Lourie received an Academy Award nomination for KRAKATOA: EAST OF JAVA (Maximilian Schell, Diane Baker). Lourie's special effects were intentionally filmed before the script was finished, so the script was written based on the special effects. In reality, Krakatoa is west of Java.




In KRAKATOA: EAST OF JAVA, Lourie also had a cameo in the movie as the lighthouse keeper.





Lourie also was the art director for BATTLE OF THE BULGE (Henry Fonda, Robert Shaw). One reviewer said, "Battle of the Bulge is at times stunning to look at..A good part of the credit must go to art director Eugene Lourie, who had designed films for directors as varied as Jean Renoir and Charlie Chaplin (and who directed several films himself, including The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms). Lourie's sets are outstanding...while his supervision of the picture's extensive visual effects is often equally superb."

IN BATTLE OF THE BULGE, Lourie's model German King Tiger tank rams an American M4 Sherman commanded by Telly Savalas (in reality the King Tiger was an American-made M47 Patton and the M4 Sherman was an M24 Chaffee).







Lourie is best known for directing three movies in which  giant dinosaurs attack a major city. The first was Ray Harryhausen's classic THE BEAST FROM 20,00 FATHOMS (which inspired GODZILLA) in which a frozen Rhedosaurus is thawed out by an atomic bomb test and attacks New York.






Lourie's second giant dinosaur movie was THE GIANT BEHEMOTH in which a Palaeosaurus, irradiated by nuclear bomb tests, attacks London.





Lourie's third giant dinosaur movie was GORGO in which a giant dinosaur is captured and put on display in a London circus when its even bigger mother wrecks London to free her baby.