This movie was filmed partly on the island of St. Lucia in the Caribbean. Unfortunately, the directors didn't pay enough attention to some of the local speaking "extras" who, in the scene with the young boy in the town of Soufriere, one of the locals curses a certain part of his mother's reproductive anatomy in the local Creole dialect - Patois. Oops!!!
This is based on the Peter Benchley novel "White Shark". After the TV Movie "Creature" went into production, "White Shark" was re-titled and re-released under the name "Creature" to cash in on the movie.
In the original novel, Chase is not a scientist but a private citizen who has founded an institute, and Dr. Amanda Macy is not his son's mother. The creature is a surgically altered homicidal maniac, not a genetically created monster.
The swimming stage of the creature, still devoid of arms and legs, was obtained from the mould of the land Creature sculpture -- which was appropriately reassembled. On the side of the 'underwater' Creature, growing arms on the underside are already visible, as well as bulges on the side suggesting legs. The arms would, in fact, grow in the area under the pectoral fins, which are still visible in the land stage of the monster. The animatronic featured rough mechanisms for the scenes featuring this underwater stage
Stan Winston Studio was hired to bring the creature to life. Winston had precedently collaborated with the producers with the production of A Gnome named Gnorm -- which he had directed. He was also an enthusiast of Peter Benchley's work; he himself even considered directing at one point, according to Lewis: "he was circling around directing this at one point," he said, "and then he was a little bit intimidated: it's a fairly big undertaking, and he's got his deal at DreamWorks. But he said, 'Richard, if you're gonna do an amphibious movie, I have to do it.' And I said, 'oh, I can't afford you; I can't afford the scope of a T.rex.' And he said, 'well, we'll work it out.' And he was true to his word, because his team loves to do this, they didn't want someone to come and do a really shitty job of it." Lewis also felt for the special effects team, due to the budget and time restraints they were going to challenge: "I think this was hard for him and his guys," he continued, "because we do movies -- certainly the big-scope movies -- in around 100 days, and this was a 50-day schedule, so everybody had to tighten up a little bit.