The famous opening scene from the series reboot "The Bride of Professor Morlock" in which Winston the Wonder Pug witnesses Morlock reemerging from the grave. Morlockians were so excited by the return of the character that in many theaters, the film had to be stopped for several minutes while audiences cheered.
Morlock was doubled in this scene by legendary hand model Gustave "Bergie" Bergström.
One of the defining aspects of the Professor Morlock franchise is Morlock’s ability to easily seduce members of either sex. By far the most graphically erotic scene of this kind in any of the films was the wedding night sequence in the series reboot “The Bride of Professor Morlock” in which the professor discovers that if he doesn’t produce a descendent once every thousand years, he turns into dust. The sex scene between Morlock and his bride, the Goddess of Darkness (played by Broadway star Stephanie Fredricks) was so explicit that over six full minutes had to be cut out for the film to receive an R rating in the United States, although the full unedited version is available on the Taiwanese DVD.
Fredricks won her fourth Tony Award the year that “The Bride of Professor Morlock” premiered for her work in the Broadway musical version of Disney’s “The Great Mouse Detective.” Her performance as Morlock’s bride was loved by the public and rhapsodized over by the critics, but she was so embarrassed by the film that she didn’t even mention it in her three volumes of autobiographies.
Jesse Merlin was reluctant to return to the Morlock role for the reboot because of the notoriously one-sided contracts he had been shackled to over the years but had no choice because he was nearing starvation and contemplating suicide when the offer was made. His salary was for SAG base pay but included 5% of the profits. When “The Bride of Professor Morlock” became the third biggest box office hit in history at the time, he became an overnight multi-millionaire.
Morlock (Jesse Merlin) once again ties up Janet Lawton (Mara Marini) in her underwear and tries to transplant her brain with that of a gorilla.
Marini loathed the scenes where she was tied up in her underwear but they had become emblematic of the character. Since she owned 20% of the profits of the film, she agreed to the scene only if the set was cleared. That meant that Merlin had to play all of his scenes with her against a green screen. They were never actually on the same set at the same time until "The House of Professor Morlock" when Merlin contractually prevented from speaking to her.
The gorilla was permitted on the set at any time because he was an old Marini family friend.
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