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Lizards in Movies
 
Twice Told Tales (1963)
 
Spoiler Alert !

Some of these pictures and descriptions may give away plot details that you might not want to know before watching the film.
 
Twice Told Tales Twice Told Tales Twice Told Tales
Twice Told Tales Twice Told Tales Twice Told Tales
Twice Told Tales Twice Told Tales Twice Told Tales
This is based on a Nathaniel Hawthorne story. It stars Vincent Price as a demented scientist. His wife left him so he quit his job and locked himself away from the world with his daughter Beatrice. To protect Beatrice from the same evils of the world that made his wife leave him, Price innoculates her with a serum he makes from the poison of a deadly plant that burns anything it touches. That makes her kill any living thing she touches. She calls herself "the most deadly thing that was ever given life."

A young medical student, Giovanni, converses with her from his window and eventually sneaks into her private garden to see her, but she tells him he will die if he touches her. He doesn't believe it, so to prove it to him, she finds a fence lizard in the garden and tells him she will kill it with her touch. She grabs it with her hand and it starts to smoke, then it dies and turns blue. She carries it to Giovanni and asks him if he still wants to touch her. That changes his mind, but after she leaves he drops a hankerchief on the lizard, picks it up and carries it away to his medical school lab where his professor tests it and tries to make an antidote for the poison.

The lizard we see is a live fence lizard. It doesn't run away when the hand comes to grab it, so it might be restrained or chilled down to make it inactive. This is an American production from MGM Studios, probably shot in Hollywood, so I'd guess they found a local Great Basin Fence Lizard. Then they either killed it and painted it blue, or used a fake lizard prop to represent the dead lizard.