The Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954)
Monday, August 24, 2015 at 9:37PM 
A couple of weeks ago news spread around the internet that Universal might revive The Creature From the Black Lagoon as part of their planned Classic Monsters universe (every studio wants their own connected franchises now post Marvel Studios). It didn't seem like much of a news story at the time, full of "mights" and "possibly" and "they're interested in Scarlett Johannson." Scarlett for the buxom conquest, not the amphibious creature of course!
You know the type of "news" I'm talking about. The type we get when there's no story at all yet. But since we're celebrating 1954 next week with the Smackdown, why not travel back in time to the original to see if it's worth reviving at all?
I may or may not have seen this old horror flick as a child on TV but if so I had no recall whatsover so this would be like a first screening. I imagined from the posters that it would be like a watery King Kong, a tragic beauty & beast story. This was quite wrong.
Thoughts I had while screening...
• Rather unexpectedly the film begins with a brief "Creation of the Earth" myth complete with Biblical narration and visuals of explosions, clouds, and an earth-like sphere, followed eventually by more nature footage of stormy oceans and sand.
It's surprisingly easy to picture Terrence Malick at 10 years of age agog at a drive-in in the Midwest when the movie arrived in early 1954. (10 might be the ideal age for this.)
• The initial discovery of a fossilized webbed & clawed hand, prompts an archeologist to axe it right out of the cliff face. Uh. Bad at his job. Aren't they supposed to dust and chisel around those things so as not to damage whatever else they might find embedded in the rock -- like, I dunno, the rest of the creature.
• Cue scary trumpet music. As THE SAME WEBBED & CLAWED HAND, only not fossilized, rises up from the water nearby and leaves long claw marks in the banks. It's alive!
• I didn't realize this was originally a 3-D movie while watching it but now it makes sense there's a lot of this same type of shot -- claw coming at you -- later on.
• Later at the "Instituto de Biología Martima" (that's what the building's sign says) we meet our trio of main characters.
Left to right: Dr. David Reed (Richard Carlson) who is ichtyologist which I think is a fancy word for marine biologist?, Kay Lawrence (Julie Adams who kept reminding of a modern actress but I couldn't quite place who. She is also still alive!), and Dr. Mark Williams (Richard Denning) who is the boss of sorts or at least the one who gets them their funding for their expeditions and research. It is unclear what Kay's job and qualifications are but she is some sort of colleague. Sometimes she appears to have a brain and says something noteworthy but other times she merely gazes at the men as they impart scientific wisdom as if she's never heard such words before. If they're really going to remake this this Beautywill have to have a real job rather than being The Girl.
Kay basically swims and sunbathes while the men work though she helpfully towels them off when they come up out of the water! Since this is a movie, there's immediately suggestions that Kay used to be with Dr. Mark and now she's with Dr. David though they're not married - why does the movie point this out? Either way she wins because both men have minds of scientists but bodies of athletes and look real damn good in swimsuits. Just saying.
• Meanwhile back at camp. The Creature attacks the natives who work for Dr Carl at his camp.
Some of them are hot but they all wear terrible Prince Valiant style wigs and speak in very Movie-Specific bad English. The Creatures primary mode of attack appears to be the grabbing of people's faces and then pushing them down. Somehow this kills them each time.
• If you have brown skin in this movie, you die.
• More beautiful nature footage including lots of crocodiles plunging into the water.
Kay: And I thought the Mississippi was something!
David: It's a winding brook compared to the Amazon.
• After discovering the natives bodies they come up with the idea of visiting the Lagoon and the men dive in to search for rocks. What follows, because we've just realized we don't want to be here all day just recapping a very slimly plotted movie is many many repetitive scenes of the men swimming under water and having skirmishes with the creature.
• He is surprisingly unable to swim much better than the men despite being an amphibian underwater creature. (But we should say this for the movie: the underwater scenes -- which even get their own credited director -- are well filmed, apart from, you know, the 1950s visual effects limitation of a man in an rubber monster swimming around.)
Temporarily trapped. But his beady eyes are not so unseeing.
FIGHT!
Dr David to the rescue part #7
• The final round of climaxes, from a capture (the monster looks actually spooky, immobile and drugged in the boat) to a weird fight with underwater bursts of poison, are actually good entertainment value. But should this movie be remade, it will need more setpieces because this is awfully slim even at 79 minutes.
Savvy businessman or Noble environmental scientist?
Dr Mark is kind of an asshole and going to get them all killed. Dr. David to the rescue part #11
• As for the Beauty & Beast theme, it wasn't as expected. Yes, the monster clearly wants to mate with the girl and doesn't kill her like he kills the (mostly non-white) men. But she doesn't fall for him and the only sympathy directed at him is from Dr. David, the hero, who argues the whole time that he out to be studied in his natural habitat or left alone, not harpooned and chased and brought back to the world as a trophy. In one particularly good burn he accuses Dr. Mark of being more like a big game hunter than a scientist.
Dr David to the rescue part #18
• But if they really want Scarlett Johansson for a proposed remake, they're going to have to totally revamp the Kay role from frequently screaming victim to active heroine. In fact you could fuse the Dr. David and Kay roles and solve the problem. (But I guess that makes your Creature in the Black Lagoon gay?) As it stands Kay's only character trait a kind of mediating goodness between her bickering men, and her only job is to do no job at all while the men work, and provide eye candy for both the moviegoer and the Creature.
• Her defining moment is bathing in a very pointy bra'ed swimsuit for minutes on end without warning the men that she's gone for swim despite seeing crocodiles on the way into the lagoon. Underwater shots of her from the Creature's POV are quite beautiful and make you wonder if Steven Spielberg saw this as an impressionable 7 year old.
[cue Jaws music]
The End.
Reader Comments (16)
A movie that really should be experience in 3 - D
I can't really see the point in a remake, this is so perfectly of its era but that's never stopped Hollywood before.
Love Julie Adams but she's had much better showcases than this, however this is probably what she'll always be remembered for. I think she's at peace with that, she recently published her autobiography, which I unfortunately have yet to read, called The Lucky Southern Star: Reflections from The Black Lagoon.
i loved this movie as a kid and i am glad others found/still talk about it!
Nathaniel, who would you cast as the leading lady if they remade it? I remember seeing Lea Michele did a photoshoot inspired by this film and thought she'd be a good fit for it if it was ever revived. A good mixture of naïveté and confident sexuality that horror films go for with their final girl. Plus she needs to be seen as something more than Rachel Berry, despite how well she can embody Tracy Flick.
damn, I demand more vintage hotties in swimtrunks please!
they are way sexier than gym-goer stars these days.
I've never seen this, and tend to avoid these cheap looking (or sounding) monster movies because they always annoy me, but this one looks quite beautifully shot, and the idea of ScarJo in anything makes me happy (although, she needs something with an Oscar attached rather quickly)...so maybe I'll see this.
I loved this as a kid. It's pretty damn scary when you're 8. The photography is striking. It ain't subtle, but who wants it to be. The sequel, Revenge of the Creature, is a lot of fun.
A lot of 50s monster movies were proudly formulaic, so having a strong visual hook really mattered. More people remember the Creature than have seen the movie - the film itself is pacey, but the monster is memorable, unique, and well executed.
She has a little Jennifer Connelly about her.
This is one of my favorites of the classic monster movies. Definitely cliched and of its time, but a blast to watch if you're open to it. And I'm sure Spielberg was thinking of this while making Jaws.
They've been trying to remake this classic for years- it's still a perfect subject for 3 - D but please no CGI for that still marvelous Creature suit.
I think it was Life Magazine that featured a full page photo of the creature. I was 7, newly in California from Iowa, and found it utterly terrifying. I don't think any image has ever scared me more.
"Kay Lawrence (Julie Adams who kept reminding of a modern actress but I couldn't quite place who)" - Megan Fox and/or Jennifer Connelly.
"Kay basically swims and sunbathes while the men work though she helpfully towels them off when they come up out of the water!" She also has a full wardrobe change, complete makeup kit, and lets her hair down three times. Yet audiences wouldn't want anything less. And where are the musquitos?
What about this movie requires current reviewers to provide their tepid, out of time and irrelevant comments (e.g., Julie's wardrobe changes, really???)? No matter current opinion, Creature had great entertainment value for the folks who mattered, and that was the general movie going public of a period in American history that you could only really "get" had you been an adult at the time. Any subsequent critique holds no value. It's particularly disturbing that modern day critics either deliberately or inadvertently portray themselves as hip or clever by stating the obvious in picking apart various scenes, including the movie's introduction. Lastly, why would someone suggest that Julie Adams reminds them of an actress who wasn't born at the time that she starred in the role. Shouldn't it be the other way around?
I actually saw this film when I was about six or seven years old in the mid 60s. Of course it terrified me but I was drawn to it just the same. Since I worked with a film production company and ran movie theaters for 25 years, I actually started working on a screenplay for a remake back in the early 90s. After trying to get the rights from Universal, of course they wouldn't sell, so my script was never completed. Anyway I do believe they will have it remade some day, but it will never be close to the original. If you haven't seen this film, you must try it out and also if you have the opportunity watch it with the commentary track. A true classic by every stretch of the imagination ...