Skullduggery

Skullduggery (1970)

The Tropi...Was It Human?...Animal?...Or The Living Descendant Of The Missing Link!

An expedition into the interior of Papua New Guinea comes across a tribe of ape-like people who may or may not be ancestors of early man.

Date of release
1970-03-06
TMDB
4.5 / 10 (8)
Runtime
1h 45m
Genres
Adventure, Science Fiction
Director
Gordon Douglas

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Based on: Les Animaux dénaturés

Skullduggery is a 1970 American adventure film directed by Gordon Douglas produced by Saul David and starring Burt Reynolds and Susan Clark. It is based on the French novel Les Animaux dénaturés (1952) by Jean Bruller.

Production

The book was published in the US as You Shall Know Them in 1953. The New York Times called it a "humanely sardonic story". It became a best seller.

The author adapted the novel into the play Zoo, which was performed in Paris. Otto Preminger optioned the stage rights and got Nelson Gidding to adapt it under the title The Case of the Troublesome Topis.

Giddings later said he showed the original novel by Jean Bruller writing as "Vercors" to Otto Preminger with the idea of making a film of the book. After they viewed a play based on the novel presented in Carcassonne, Preminger agreed but later became busy with other film projects.

Giddings ended up writing a screenplay. The rights to the novel were sold to producer Saul David after he left 20th Century Fox. It was the first film he was to make under a deal with Universal.

The film was to have been the first major feature film production of ABC Pictures with the film crew planning on shooting in Papua New Guinea where an Australian Army General who Gidding had known in World War II provided extensive cooperation to the production.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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