Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

Film: Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)
Stars: Richard Carlson, Julie Adams, Richard Denning, Antonio Moreno, Nestor Palva
Director: Jack Arnold
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

We continue on our month of classic horror movies with 1954's Creature from the Black Lagoon.  While I anticipate we'll return to some of the 1930's horror classics in a few days (in fact I guarantee it as I caught one of those pictures last night), we're now making a detour into the world of 1950's horror with this film, with arguably the final great Universal Studios' monster.  Black Lagoon, though it doesn't have the literary roots of something like a Frankenstein or Dracula, still seems to fall under the realm of the misunderstood monster, even if the "Gill-Man" as he's frequently referred to, is a bit more violent than some of his predecessors were (also the guy underneath the mask, Ricou Browning, was a snack, and is the last living original actor to play a Universal Monster).

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is relatively slight when it comes to plot, clocking in at a mere 79 minutes long.  The movie starts with Dr. Maia (Moreno) discovering a fossilized hand of an unknown creature deep in the Amazon.  Off-screen, we see a living creature lurking with the same hand.  We are then jettisoned to what looks like sunny Miami where Dr. Maia shows the fossil to Dr. David Reed (Carlson) and his girlfriend/colleague Kay Lawrence (Adams, who I recognized about an hour into the film as Eve Simpson from Murder, She Wrote).  Along with their greedy benefactor Dr. Mark Williams (Denning), they set out on an expedition of the Amazon.  They accidentally come across the creature, and in a series of struggles, eventually leave him to his doom at the shadowy depths of the lagoon, not quite dead and therefore more than capable to come back for a sequel or two.

The movie's most iconic strength, other than the fish-like creature itself at the center, is in the way that the movie films underwater.  Browning was a superb swimmer, and eventually helped coordinate the Oscar-winning underwater effects in Thunderball.  The photography shots are superb by 1950's-standards, and are still quiet beautiful today.  Reliant heavily on jump scares throughout the picture (which doesn't feel as strong today where horror has found the jump scare almost passé), the underwater frights are almost certainly the best parts of the movie, gorgeously-lensed and showing the claustrophobia of being that close to a monster who is picking off the crew one-by-one.

Claustrophobia is central to the Creature from the Black Lagoon.  The Creature, like Frankenstein, is slow moving out of water, but his terror is in the way that he traps you in the lagoon, and the laborious risks you take in having to deal with him.  It's hard not to imagine that Steven Spielberg had this film in mind when he crafted Jaws-there's a great scene late in the film where they have to remove a log blocking the boat from leaving the Lagoon, a seemingly mundane task, but one that is consistently rendered asunder by the Creature killing all of the boat's passengers as they enter the water.  While the acting is hammy and the script seemingly predictable by today's standards, there's enough interesting light in this film and well-constructed horror to make it stand the test of time as you watch it, making it one of the better horror films I've seen in this month's marathon.

This Month We Are Seeing As Many Classic Horror Movies from the Pre-1970 Era as Possible.  If you want to check out some of our past reviews, here they are:

Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, Dracula, Mad Love, Son of Frankenstein