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The Squirrel

Creator: Ray Harryhausen

Film: The Three Worlds Of Gulliver 1960

Written by Marc Hartley for the seventhvoyage

Glumdalclitch, the young girl who resides in the King of Brobdingnags castle, awakes to find that following their marriage ceremony the night before, Doctor Gulliver and his new bride Elizabeth had gone on their honeymoon. The young giant girl runs to find them.

     Meanwhile the young newly weds are sitting talking when there is a loud noise from a giant squirrel. Gulliver is dragged by his leg into the squirrels’ hole in the ground as Elizabeth runs to take cover. The Squirrel quickly gathers up nuts from the ground and takes them back to the hole dropping one of them onto Gulliver’s head.

       Gulliver yells to Elizabeth who in turn sees Glumdalclitch approaching and she gets the giant girl to look into the hole to help. The giant kneels down and lowers one of her plaits into the hole for Gulliver to climb out.

The Squirrel Facts

• Ray spent some time studying squirrels in London parks and used his observations when animating the model.

• He obtained the squirrel from a taxidermist and after his father had made the armature, he fitted it inside using sponge to build up the body.

Back

Ray Harryhausen

on the Squirrel

"Unfortunately the squirrel sequence lacks excitement and I have never been happy with the fact that the creature makes a sound more like a wheeze that a squeak."

"Having said that, I do feel that the Squirrel has a certain charm, which the film needed at that point in the story."