Creature from the Black Lagoon review.
It’s been 70 years since the last classic Universal Monster came ashore. A look back at Creature from the Black Lagoon.
Classic Movie Reviews will contain spoilers.
Creature from the Black Lagoon
Directed by Jack Arnold
Screenplay by Harry Essex and Arthur Ross
Starring Richard Carlson, Julia Adams, Richard Denning, Antonio Moreno, Nestor Paiva, Ben Chapman and Ricou Browning
Creature from the Black Lagoon Review
Context is always key when discussing classic horror movies. When we look at the 70th anniversary of Creature from the Black Lagoon…we have to start with a look at the history. The creature (or Gill-Man) is considered the last of the Classic Universal Monsters. He also arrived nearly two full decades after the creative peak that was Bride of Frankenstein. It had been 13 years since the last Classic Monster debuted (The Wolf-Man). The Universal Monsters had become side characters in Abbott and Costello comedies by the time Gill-Man popped his head out of the water. The Monster series had already gone through years of diminishing returns followed by years of being comedy fodder. This is all to say…the bar was incredibly low for director Jack Arnold’s film.
This may explain why the story plays things so safely. Arnold elevates the film with his confident direction and some standout underwater sequences (performed by Ricou Browning). The script, on the other hand, is an unambitious one to be kind. The movie begins with narration straight out of an Ed Wood movie. This was the way of 50s horror, to be sure…but it doesn’t exactly help the film stand the test of time. The cast of unremarkable characters sets out on a very limited adventure. Thankfully, a remarkable creature is waiting for them.
While the content of Creature from the Black Lagoon may not immediately explain its classic status…one look at Gill-Man will. The story shrouds him in mystery for the entirety of act 1. It takes 25 minutes for the titular creature to pop into full view. He’s doing a lot of menacing hand work to that point. It takes over another 20 minutes for our main characters to even see the thing. That’s unfortunate given that Gill-Man is the only truly interesting character in the story. Bland stock adventure men populate the screen. And, of course, Julie Adams as Kay…the object of the creature’s affections.
It’s this plot that is most often cited as the enduring aspect of Creature from the Black Lagoon. Guillermo del Toro fancied it so much he won an Academy Award for reimagining it. What strikes you about watching it now is how small a part of the movie it is. It doesn’t develop until late in the story…and exists almost solely to give the story reasons to do things. It’s why Gill-Man follows the ship…it allows for the most memorable underwater sequence…it gives the story an ending. It is the catalyst for the exciting things that happen in the final act of the movie. That’s likely why it is so fondly remembered.
The rest of the movie is painfully slow. Slow in a way you can’t dismiss as being of the time. This was 23 years after Frankenstein…which wasn’t slow. On the other side of the world Godzilla was being made. This was the same year that Marlon Brando lit up the screen in On the Waterfront. The lack of action and slow pacing in Creature from the Black Lagoon is the result of a script that takes no chances. Arnold livens things up as much as he can…but he’s dealing with some wooden actors and an adventure that doesn’t really move all that much.
Still…it achieved a classic status. In part due to its association with the Universal Monster brand. In part due to the time of its release. The mid to late 50s marked the end of the classic horror era. Gill-Man gave it an excellent and enduring face. Even if his first adventure was basic compared to what his predecessors were doing decades earlier. Creature from the Black Lagoon stands up as a marker of time. A movie people could look back on and say “this is what horror was back in my day” when Alfred Hitchcock pulled back the shower curtain six years later. When William Friedkin possessed a little girl the same length of time later that Creature stood from Bride of Frankenstein. Or when Tobe Hooper took a chainsaw to the genre just one year after that.
Even in its own time it was a reminder of things as they once were. Though it pales in comparison to the peaks of the Classic Universal Monster films…those comprise a small percentage of the overall volume. It certainly stands above most of the sequels to the classics (Bride being the exception). It presents a monster people could care about again…something they hadn’t seen outside of comedies in a decade. They’d see Gill-Man again in two quickie sequels over the next two years. The final Classic Universal Monster film would belong to him. Creature from the Black Lagoon is a movie that played on people’s nostalgia in 1954…and would make others nostalgic for it for decades to come. Seven decades later…that legacy remains intact. Even if the movie that caused it isn’t nearly as special.
Scare Value
Classic horror can be tough to rate. You can’t put yourself back to the time period they were produced in. Still…movies like Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein hold up incredibly well. Creature from the Black Lagoon doesn’t shine like those James Whale masterpieces. The underwater shots were groundbreaking at the time and are still the highlight today. The creature looks great. The movie, however, stays firmly planted in the shallow end.
3/5
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