Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

The Creature is the most famous “biped from the deep” and if he didn’t invent the genre, then he certainly defined it. Creature from the Black Lagoon was so popular that it spawned two sequels in short order (1955 and 1956) as well as countless imitators such as The Monster of Piedras Blancas and The Horror of Party Beach. Even decades later in films such as the delightfully sleazy Humanoids From The Deep, you can still the Creature’s influence.

It all starts off differently then a lot of its imitators though. Whereas many of those crappy movies take place on some beach inhabited by a lot young hepcats who talk like Maynard G. Krebbs and sit around doing dopey things during their beach blanket bingo games waiting for the dude in the rubber suit to haul their sorry butts beneath the waves, the Creature lives in the Amazon. He’s actually got a habitat, not just a dumb beach he shambles around whenever the kids are on spring break, daddy-o!

Things get going when a scientist finds a mysterious webbed hand fossil and decides that an expedition is necessary to ferret out the rest of the skeleton.

We then meet the boyfriend and girlfriend who are scientists and also down there working on a study of blowfish or sponges or something. Naturally they’re all for chasing monstrous fish-men because sponges are so 1952. The get their scientist boss to sign on (the Amazon is just crawling with scientists!) and the expedition is a go!

Now, no expedition in search of strange creatures is without its human drama and they give it to us here. You see, the boss scientist is a jerk, because he’s only interested in raising money for “the institute” and doesn’t care about the scientific impact of finding a dude in a rubber monster suit.

There is also another slight problem. He also wants to get in the girl’s swimsuit, but he’ll have to get in line behind her boyfriend and the Creature.

So we have a nice study of the tension that exists in the scientific world between getting funding and pure research.

Pure Research is portrayed as the good guy (he’s got the girl after all) and at one point Pure Research decks Funding in an unfortunate brawl when both were in their swimming trunks.

This group of seething tensions is taken up the river by a sea captain who literally reeks of authenticity! This means he is a grubby fat guy who has that greasy five o’clock shadow all South American and African river boat captains have. You know he’s the real deal because he says “river” as “ree-ver.”

Eventually the Creature makes his big appearance and the movie becomes a series of scenes where the people are going after the Creature and vice versa.

Initially, the Creature seems to just want swim around in his lagoon and check out the girl as she swims. (He just doesn’t know what to say around pretty girls!)

The evil money grubbing scientist wants to capture the Creature and put him on display and make buttloads of money doing it. Hasn’t this dope ever seen King Kong ? It is never a good idea to put a monster on display. It always results in lots of screaming, broken chain restraints, crushed spectators and kidnappings of pretty girls.

I kind of got the idea that the Creature didn’t really know he was in a no holds barred streetfight with these guys until pretty late in the game. Sometimes the humans shoot him in the ass with a harpoon gun, sometimes they club him with a rifle after he has already been knocked out (come on!) and sometimes they shoot him with guns about 12 times. The Creature seems kind of bewildered by this treatment and understandably acts out by snapping a few people’s necks and stealing their babe.

The movie engenders a lot of sympathy for the Creature with the way he’s tormented for really no reason. I mean, here’s a fish-guy who was minding his own business in his eerie lagoon, kicking it in his happening secret underwater cave and then these people invade and beat his scaly butt up and down the Amazon. They even drug him twice and put him in a tiger cage half submerged in water like he was one of our boys in Nam!

The movie is fast paced as these sorts of silly premises need to be in order to succeed. The film also features great underwater sequences that were well photographed.

There is of course the expected attempt to try touch on themes about just who is the real monster here – us or the Creature. (Of course it’s the Creature – he’s half and fish half man for crying out loud!)

Regardless of any deeper meanings that can be read into it, the movie is entertaining and you have to admire the guy in the rubber suit. That thing looks hot and smelly!

© 2011 MonsterHunter