Luke almost becomes dinner for a tentacled beastie in this classic scene in the Death Star's trash compactor. Filmed in the UK's long hot summer of 1976 at ELSTREE, all of the principal actors had to wear diving suits under their costumes, whilst Chewbacca's fur began to smell very badly amongst the grunge. Mark Hamill also received a bad eye infection that lasted for a while, where he was unable to film certain close-up shots required in his to follow shooting of his X-wing fighter cockpit scenes. The Dianoga creature itself was not the original design-which was abandoned for looking terrible (do any still photos exist of it?)- and a solitary tentacle was created instead as a replacement. The creature was later embellished with a stop-motion eye, operated by Phil Tippett, in post-production.
Despite all the problems, though, the scene is still quite rightly regarded as a classic.
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