The Creature From the Black Lagoon [1954]

If the classic Universal Studios monsters of the 1930s and 40s - Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster, the Mummy, the Wolf Man, the Invisible Man - were the Frank Sinatra-Dean Martin Rat Pack, then the Creature From the Black Lagoon was Elvis. The original monster cycle, from Dracula in 1931 to Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein in 1948, took its creatures from gothic literature, European folktale and German silent movies. By 1954, that kind of horror movie was dead. A new decade rejected full moon curses and abandoned crumbling castles for pristine laboratories and the mysteries of atomic science. The 50s was a great decade for monster movies, but the creatures were less romantic, less tragic, and arguably more dangerous. In place of vampires, werewolves and mummies, we were assaulted by armies of giant ants, aliens from outer space, dinosaurs revived by nuclear blasts or mutated by-products of ill-thought-out experiments.

The Creature From the Black Lagoon, more correctly known as the Gill Man, is the only American 50s monster to achieve anything like the iconic status of the earlier Universal fiends. He [it?] appears as model-kits, posters, t-shirts, novelty water-pistols given away by burger chains, glow-in-the-dark figures and a horde of other items [I even own a flask of authentic, provenanced Black Lagoon water - from the backlot tank at Universal Studios]. In The Seven Year Itch, Marilyn Monroe expressed sympathy for the beastie; in the first episode of Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?, Thelma reacted to a slide of Terry by shrinking and calling him the Creature From the Black Lagoon; Dave Edmunds cut a tribute signal to the aquatic monster; and the original film was followed up by two sequels. None of this happened for such contemporary creatures as the Amazing Colossal Man, the Deadly Mantis, the Phantom From Space or the Beast With a Million Eyes; only Japan's Godzilla comes close to being such a merchandising phenomenon.

Obviously, the Creature wouldn't have become a star if his first film hadn't been a hit.

Directed by sometimes-inspired journeyman Jack Arnold, who had scored with It Came From Outer Space and would go on to Tarantula and The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Creature From the Black Lagoon is the best-loved of a series of science fiction / monster movies [mostly in eye-popping 3-D] made by Universal-International [as the studio had become] in the early 50s. They have had the kind of lurid subject matter associated with drive-in double features, but are made with all the flair of a dream factory studio staffed by top-class technicians. Some 50s monster movies are draggy until the monster shows up and ridiculous afterwards, but Universal production values were high enough to keep the suspense going and, when it slank on screen, the Creature was a truly impressive creation, not some stuntman in a waterlogged sack with ping-pong-ball eyes.

The plot is standard. A skeletal hand discovered in the Amazon Basin convinces scientists that there exists in the remote Black Lagoon a prehistoric survival - like a lot of films, this refers to the coelacanth, a fish species long thought extinct but which was discovered alive and well in 1938 - which represents a notional [frankly ludicrous] evolutionary stage between fish and man. An expedition is put together, highlighting a romantic triangle between sensitive but two-fisted hero Richard Carlson, glory-seeking but gutless antagonist Richard Denning and white bathing-suited paleo-icthyologist Julia Adams. They go to the Black Lagoon, discover the Gill-Man, suffer losses [perennial stooge-victim Whit Bissell is among the clawed] but finally wound and beat off the monster, though not before it has intervened in the triangle by expressing a clear [and typically movie-monstrous] yen for the girl.

The dialogue and characterisations are a little above the level of pulp, and the actors good enough to make conventional scenes play well, but Arnold's real success is in the atmosphere. The backlot is covered in foliage to create a truly impressive jungle hell, and the good ship Rita chug chugs across the glassy surface of the lagoon in true African Queen fashion. Down below lurks the Creature, a fish-headed skin-tight suit created by Jack Kevan and Bud Westmore. The monster is played in the water by swimming expert Ricou Browning, later a contributor to marine adventures as diverse as Flipper and Thunderball and responsible for the Gill Man's distinctive swimming style [recently copied by Sigourney Weaver in Alien Resurrection], and on land by the taller, beefier stunt-man Ben Chapman.

The underwater scenes remain definitive, with the curvy Adams floating on the surface and dangling her long white legs above the Creature's claws, and the Gill Man performing a serpentine underwater ballet beneath her pin-up form. Few 1950s science fiction films bothered with sex, and this remains as classic an image of impossible love as King Kong and his tiny blonde or the Mummy and his reincarnated princess. It may be this element of 'mad love', harking back to classic Universal and at odds with 50s trends, was the single ingredient that made The Creature From the Black Lagoon more than just another fun monster romp for the kids.

Jack Arnold returned for Revenge of the Creature, in which the Gill Man is brought to an aquarium in Florida for study and runs loose in the expected fashion, but let his assistant Jack Sherwood take over for The Creature Walks Among Us, an unusual but series-killing episode in which the beloved Creature is shorn of his gills by a sadistic scientist and used as a murder weapon in a noirish but faintly unpleasant plot. They are footnotes to a great original, but still worth watching. Uniquely, the Creature was never seen to die in the climaxes of his films - by contrast, the Frankenstein Monster and the Mummy were always being crushed and burned to death between sequels - and was always seen sinking to the depths or swimming out to sea. One would like to think he is still out there.
KIM NEWMAN

First Published In: Cable Guide [issue unknown]

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