Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

I was thrilled by this movie as a kid, and still love it today. For a small budget Science Fiction/Horror movie of the fifties, this is a great show. It's well paced, well acted, has great music to accompany the action, and Bud Westmore's Gill Man is a marvel to enjoy. Originally this was a 3-D movie, and thankfully, it looks so much better in regular flat screen. I never really did catch the 3-D craze.

This is a terrific adventure of Man out of his element fighting a Monster in his element. The Gill Man is a thinking being, but, still a monster, who remembers the injuries done him by man and seeks retribution. If the scientists had left him alone, he'd have left them alone. They were the invaders.

And, thank goodness that they didn't have a scene of the kidnapped Julia making friends with the now "peaceful" Gill Man (to show his human side), only to have the heroes show up and kill him. She was taken as "bait" to lure the humans into the Gill Man's lair.

It spawned two sequels (yes, there were sequels even back then), and both are good in their own right, they just didn't achieve what the original did all the way around. Enjoy.

Fmovies: A group of scientists heads up an Amazonian river in search of the fossilized remains of an unknown link between man and aquatic life. But the team of researchers gets more than they bargained for when they encounter a living example of their prehistoric Gill-Man. After a member of their party is killed, the group decides it best to leave the Black Lagoon. But the creature has become enamored with Kay (Julie Addams), the only female on the expedition, and blocks the scientist's retreat. Will they escape the Creature from the Black Lagoon?

As I think back to the late 60s, Creature from the Black Lagoon is one of the very first movies I can remember seeing. Its appeal to me was immediate and long lasting. The scenes of the creature's hand reaching up on the shore of the lagoon sent chills down my spine. And the four note musical introduction to the first images of the creature very nearly knocked me off the couch. Even at a young age, I knew it was a man in a costume, but that didn't matter. The creature design was awesome - it was frightening and fascinating all at once. The underwater photography was breathtaking. The shots of the creature swimming just under Julie Addams were the stuff of nightmares. Creepy! The underwater fight scenes, the spear-gun, Nestor Paiva, and the hidden grotto - I couldn't get enough of it. To my 5 or 6 year-old mind, Creature from the Black Lagoon was the perfect movie.

I'm not 5 anymore, but my opinion hasn't changed much. The cool thing is that I still get a charge out of that hand coming out of the water, I still jump a little when the creature music blares at his first appearance, and I still love the shots of the creature swimming under Julie Addams. I don't think I'll ever get tired of any of it.

I've noticed that some of the reviewers that hated this actually love to watch it. Over and over. I have to separate the different levels of like and dislike with a film like this. Cheesy? That's a word that popped up several times, Yes it was cheesy, but lovable. Silly story line? yes. Less than stellar acting? Yes. Simplistic? Yes. Fun to watch? Yes. Like one reviewer said, "They don't make em like this any more". I'm glad they don't. It was an era in film making that has passed and I appreciate films like this because they exemplified a time when we weren't very sophisticated. I'm happy to have grown up in a time like that, and that's why I watch movies like this one. Sophistication isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Creature from the Black Lagoon fmovies. Man, that suit is really something. I had the pleasure of seeing this on 3D Bluray and it looked fantastic. Del Toro said something about it being a perfect blend of form, design and shots which really makes sense because when the Creature is swimming around and soaking wet he looks truly real - - like an actual honest-to-God fish man, dead eyes and gawping mouth and the whole works.

The plot on the other hand basically devolves into a serious of cat and mouse scenes. There's some hints of sci-fi with its evolutionary origins, but that's all the brain really gets out of this one.

The swimming scene with Julia Adams and the Creature is pure balletic grace.

As many times as this movie has been copied, filmmakers still can't seem to get it right. Considering that this film is considered a trend-setter, it's amazing how many rules this film BREAKS by today's standards. It breaks the notion that full shots of the creature and lots of blood and violence are needed to create a scare. In this film, all you need is a shot of the creature's hand and that piercing three-note musical motive played by brass instruments, and let the imagination fill in the blanks. It shatters the notion that monsters MUST be computer-generated--a guy in a suit CAN be scary. And it proves that black-and-white photography can be just as rich as color photography. The underwater sequences especially are both beautiful (almost surreal) and eerie at the same time.

And then there is the Gill Man himself. It's as if the writers took the best qualities of his predecessors and combined them into the last and best (IMHO) of the Universal monsters. Like The Mummy, he has lived long after he technically should have died; like Frankenstein's monster, he appears to be savage, yet shows intelligence and appreciates beauty; like Dracula, he is seductive. Just check out the scene where he swims with Julie Adams (unbeknownst to her, of course). I believe this is why he has achieved the status of a genuine icon, and deservedly so. Here's hoping he swims the waters for a long time.

My Take: A classic for its day.

Jack Arnold's CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON is, most likely, FRANKENSTEIN and Dracula's little cousin. A little-known relative of the more famous monster movie classics, CREATURE is nonetheless a nice trip down memory lane. Plot concerns a rouge swamp beast (Ricou Browning and Ben Chapman sweating it out in the decent monster suit) who falls for (what else?) a beauty on board a research ship, while the men find good fortune in capturing the beast and saving the gal (whose only real requirement is to scream her heart out). Those who remember stepping into the drive-way while the weird eerie music played on the opening black-and-white titles brings a sudden memory of being a wee bit scared if that rubber monster you now find cheesy so much nowadays. Still, despite stiff acting and cheesy effects gimmicks, CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON is a nice trip back to the good ol' days of monster pictures. Originally released in a 3-D.

Rating: ***1/2 out of 5.