In the scene where Prof Tom and some other guy are listening to a radio report about a sea monster attack, the announcer ends the story by saying "The captain claims the ship was attacked by a sea monster. He should quit smoking that stuff and try ...."
Prof Tom and the guy grin at each other. It seems odd and unlikely this was a wink wink joke about smoking pot being a thing to laugh about but what else could it be?
Weed had been around a long time...it didn't just show up in the 60's.....
shareThat announcer is Merv Griffin who can also be seen in the trailer as can Paul Picerni of House of Wax and Vera Miles:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9HxCkBYum8
It ain't easy being green, or anything else, other than to be me
I took it to mean that the doctor, knowing about Tom's "hallucination" concerning a prehistoric monster, hears the report and looks at Tom knowingly and Tom looks back, that he just thinks it's another hoax or hallucination, while Tom is even more convinced that something big is roaming around the North Atlantic.
I have always thought that Paul Christian (real name Paul Hubshmidt), who plays Tom Nesbitt, was a very good actor, but never did much else in the US. I think after the Beast, he went back to Europe, not being very happy with the way he was treated here. I could be wrong, but that is my conclusion.
There is a scene in this movie that, to me, solidifies my feeling that Christian was a good actor, occurs when he is being interviewed by the psychiatrist, and he says "What about the sound I heard?" and the psychiatrist says that "it could have been anything, the wind ... anything". And then, after the men have left the room, Tom says quietly to himself "No wind ever made a sound like that!"
To this day, that moment still raises goosebumps on my neck, it was played so well, so subtly, hinting at the coming menace.
For a B picture, it was competently acted and of course the Beast, to my mind, was one of Harryhausen's greatest creations.