How The Exorcist and Angry Geese Shaped the Venom-Spitting Dilophosaurus in Jurassic Park

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As a lifelong fan of the Jurassic Park franchise, I can’t help but feel a pang of nostalgia when I think about the iconic dinosaurs that have graced our screens over the years. However, there’s one creature that always seems to get overlooked – the Dilophosaurus. This frilled, venom-spitting terror may not be as imposing as a T. rex or a Brachiosaurus, but it certainly packs a punch and deserves more screen time!

For six movies across the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World trilogies, the T. rex, Velociraptor, and Brachiosaurus have always received top billing amongst the franchise’s prehistoric menagerie. This isn’t a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination — they’re just three of the most iconic dinosaurs from the original film (now streaming on Peacock alongside The Lost World and Jurassic Park III).

But there’s one species that deserves way more screen time than it got, and that’s Dilophosaurus, the frilled, venom-spitting terror that stopped greedy computer whiz Dennis Nedry (Wayne Knight) from smuggling InGen’s priceless embryos off of Isla Nublar in a Barbasol canister. While not half as gruesome as it is in the novel by Michael Crichton, Nedry’s onscreen demise is still a critically dark moment in the Steven Spielberg-helmed film adaptation, serving as a cautionary counterpoint to the awe-inspiring majesty of the herbivores. Being blinded before you’re eaten alive is terrifying, and Jurassic Park drives that home in a visceral spray of black, sticky goo.

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How The Exorcist changed the look of Dilophosaurus venom in Jurassic Park

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In Crichton’s book, the Dilophosaurus’ blinding venom is depicted as a foamy blob. While this works well for literature, it wasn’t suitable for filmmaking. As per “Jurassic Park: The Ultimate Visual History”, Spielberg preferred the lethal substance to be a yellow-green color blend. However, when this idea was presented by Shane Mahan from Stan Winston Studio, Spielberg reconsidered, finding it too similar to the green projectile vomited by Regan MacNeil in “The Exorcist”.

Consequently, Mahan swiftly changed direction towards UltraSlime, a product line of instant gels frequently utilized in movies and theater performances, which was tinted black with food coloring. Filmmakers used air cannons to spray this substance at Knight during the scene, simulating a torrential rainstorm on the Universal soundstage. As he described in the book, the process of filming it was challenging, representing a fake monsoon downpour. “I was slipping around, covered in mud, soaked to the bone, feeling like a ton of weight, struggling to walk,” Knight reminisced. “But I adored it!

The job of giving voice to the Dilophosaurus (or the “Spitter” as it was dubbed by members of the crew) fell to re-recording mixer and sound designer Gary Rydstrom, who would ultimately win an Academy Award for his work on the movie. Wanting to obscure the creature’s man-eating proclivities until the last second, Rydstrom began with a “cute little bubbly, hooty sound” taken from swans. That certainly fell in line with the book, which compares the animal’s cry to that of a hooting owl. When the Spitter extends its frill and goes in for the attack, Rydstrom mixed the jangling sound of a threatened rattlesnake’s with that of angry geese. “Geese turn out to be some of the nastiest things on the planet,” he explains. “When they get mad at you, they give you a raspy cough.”

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2024-11-08 20:32