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 An unidentifiable web-fingered skeleton hand is found while an expedition is
traveling down the "dangerous" Amazon River. The search continues in this
"treacherous" region to find the rest of this "terrifying beast." The Creature
is described as a "gruesome half man/half fish creature". This "Gill-Man" is
captured after what is described as a "devastating battle." The Creature
escapes with the woman on the expedition and the rest of them follow to save
the woman. The box concludes with this devastating question, "can they conquer
the beast, or will the creature sink back forever into the inky black waters of
his eerie lagoon?" 1954, 79 minutes, VHS
Just to clear up something from the get go, no, this movie is not based on the
hit pinball game. It's the other way around. The Creature is the most famous of
the whole "biped from the deep" horror movie genre. When he first appeared in
1954, if he didn't invent the genre, then he certainly defined it. The movie
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 . As is the case with most things, the original is by far the best. This movie
was released in 3-D and is quite good when shown in it's native 3-D, but it
holds up just as well when viewed flat. There aren't many gratuitous scenes
that betray its 3-D roots which is a good thing since it's not available in 3-D
for home viewing. A DVD release is suppose to happen sometime later this year,
but for now we'll have to take a look at the plain old VHS copy. The movie starts off differently then a lot of its imitators. 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. See, he's
actually got a habitat, not just some dumb beach he shambles around whenever
the kids are on spring break, daddy-o! In any event, that setting makes the
movie a little more realistic, at least as much as a movie about a big fish-man
running around harassing scientists can be. 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. Fair enough. We then meet the
boyfriend/girlfriend couple 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" (what is that?) and
doesn't care about the scientific impact of finding a dude in a rubber monster
suit. There is also another slight problem. He all wants to get in the girl's
swimsuit. Well, he'll half to get in line behind her boyfriend and the
Creature. So we have a nice study in the tension that surely exists in the
scientific world. Getting funding versus 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. So we follow this group of seething tensions up the river. The captain
is naturally 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. Well, of course, the evil money grubbing scientist wants to capture the
Creature and put him on display or something 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 usually results in
lots of screaming, broken chain restraints, crushed spectators and kidnappings
of pretty girls. It's interesting because most of the movie the humans are
chasing the Creature. Sometimes the shoot him in the ass with a harpoon gun,
sometimes the 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 acts out by snapping a few people's necks and stealing their babe. The
movie moves at a good clip and I had to smile when it was discovered that the
Creature had a secret underwater cave as a hideout. It wasn't the best
furnished hideout I've ever seen (except for Julia Adams in her one piece white
bathing suit - pretty hot stuff for 1954!). 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! (Didn't that happen to John McCain, too?) They sort try touch on themes
about just who is the real monster here us or him (it's him! He's half fish
half man for crying out loud!). Whether there's any deep meaning or not, on its
own the movie is entertaining and you have to admire the guy in the rubber
suit. That thing looks hot! Also setting this film above what you'd expect are
the great underwater sequences. Watching the Creature swim around in the water
chasing people and being chased is something you don't see often see. There
were a lot of underwater shots and they were clear and well photographed. It
was almost like watching newsreel footage of guys rassling gators or something.
The movie also had kind of a different ending where after they beat the tar out
of the Creature and he was stumbling around all woozy, the good guy scientist
told everyone not to kill him and just let him go back to his lagoon. Can't we
all just get along?
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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