The other leading members of the cast were a 22-foot anaconda, many caymans (Amazonian alligators), jaguars, water buffalo, anteaters, tapirs and capybaras.

Elliott and his colleagues, with two American cameramen, spent three and a half months at Para, at the mouth of the Amazon, usually within a day's journey of the city, so that they could return to civilization for the night.

When the filmmakers needed a gaggle of caymans, Ford offered a prize of 60 Milréis to the native who captured the largest alligator.

They ran out of imported food and had to subsist for five days on moldy doughnuts filled with small worms and on chickens which, Dannaldson said, seemed to be 90 per cent vulture.

[2] Director Charles E. Ford died of peritonitis after surgery in Cedars of Lebanon Hospital shortly after returning from the Amazon.