Creature from the Black Lagoon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Creature from the Black Lagoon | |
|---|---|
 Film poster |
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| Directed by | Jack Arnold |
| Produced by | William Alland |
| Written by | Harry Essex Arthur A. Ross from a story by Maurice Zimm |
| Starring | Richard Carlson Julia Adams |
| Music by | Henry Mancini |
| Cinematography | William E. Snyder |
| Editing by | Ted J. Kent |
| Distributed by | Universal Pictures International |
| Release date(s) | March 5, 1954 (U.S. release) |
| Running time | 79 min. |
| Language | English |
| Followed by | Revenge of the Creature (1955) |
| IMDb profile | |
Creature from the Black Lagoon is a 1954 black-and-white science fiction film directed by Jack Arnold, and starring Richard Carlson, Julia Adams, Richard Denning, Antonio Moreno, and Whit Bissell. First release was March 5, 1954, in the United States. It was filmed and originally released in 3-D for polarized 3D-glasses (and subsequently reissued in the inferior anaglyph format), and marketed as an A-Movie. It is considered a classic of the 1950s, and generated two sequels, Revenge of the Creature (1955) and The Creature Walks Among Us (1956).
The "Gill Man" was played by Ben Chapman when on land and Ricou Browning in underwater scenes.
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[edit] Synopsis
A paleontology expedition along the Amazon River discovers the fabled Black Lagoon and its prehistoric menace, a fish-human hybrid. The scientists capture the creature after it kills their native guides, but it escapes. It then returns to kidnap the female research assistant (Adams) and carries her away to its lair where the others try to rescue her.
[edit] Remake
In the 1980s, director John Carpenter considered doing a remake, and a script was written by John Landis and Nigel Kneale, but the film ultimately went unproduced. However, a remake from Universal Pictures is now scheduled for a 2008 release with Breck Eisner (who had previously directed the adaptation of author Clive Cussler's bestseller 'Sahara') at the helm. According to Eisner, the remake will be far more akin to Alien as a horror/thriller. [citation needed]
[edit] Trivia
- The creature made a cameo appearance on an episode of TV's The Munsters as visiting cousin Gill.
- The underwater sequences were filmed at Wakulla Springs in North Florida (today, the springs are a state park), as were many of the rear projection images.
- Creature from the Black Lagoon is one of several other monster movie classics that is being used as a novel. Paul Di Filippo is making the novel for Creature titled Time's Black Lagoon. The novel will involve scientists traveling back in time to capture the Gill-Man.
- Creature From The Black Lagoon was later made into a pinball game, designed by John Trudeau (AKA "Dr. Flash"), and released in 1992 by Midway (under the Bally brand name). This game has a 1950s drive-in / retro theme. It also features such 50s classic songs like Rock Around the Clock and Summertime Blues. The game would go on to sell 7,841 units.
- The film has been immortalized in paleontology circles. When Jenny Clack of the University of Cambridge discovered a fossil amphibian in what was once a fetid swamp, she named it Eucritta melanolimnetes, which is Greek for "the creature from the black lagoon."
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- see: Clack (1998) Nature 394: 66-69; and Clack (2001) Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh: Earth Sciences 92, 75-95.
- The Black Lagoon is referenced in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comic book series in the New Traveller's Almanac.
- One of the underwater alien creatures in the X-COM: Terror from the Deep game shares great resemblance with the "Gill Man", apparently based on it as a tribute
- In the Simpsons episode There's Something about Marrying, Bart and Milhouse play various pranks on a Huell Howser look-alike. One of them is where they go fishing in a lake contaminated by the power plant, and the lookalike gets attacked by a gill man-like creature, which originally seemed like Blinky, the oft-referenced three-eyed fish.
- In the Family Guy episode, "I Never Met the Dead Man", the Griffin family catches a creature strongly resembling the "Gill Man", while fishing.
- The creature had different designs in its course, Willaim Alland envised the creature as a "sad, beautiful monster" and the sculpture of it was much like that of an aquatic delvopment of a human, quote: "It would still frighten you, but because how human it was, not the other way around." end quote. The design that nearly got into the film was a sleek, eel-like figure, which didn't have as much bumps and gills as the one that made it, there was also rumors that the "eel-man" was going to be a female creature if they made a creature film with a female Gill-Man.
- Multiple cartoons and movies needing classic horror extras have characters similar to the Gill-Man in the background.
- The film was referenced and featured in Fade to Black (1980 movie) as the main character's favorite monster movie.
- The creature is the subject of a song by Wednesday 13's former band Frankenstein Drag Queens From Planet 13.
[edit] External links
- Creature from the Black Lagoon at the Internet Movie Database
- Creature From the Black Lagoon at the All Movie Guide
- Script review for Creature from the Black Lagoon remake at Dread Central
- An interview with Ben Chapman, who portrayed the Creature from Chaos Control Digizine
- Photographs from the State Library & Archives of Florida
- Ben Chapman talks about the remake and playing the creature from Clash TV
- The Creature From the Black Lagoon sourcebook at "The Thunder Child"
- The Creature From the Black Lagoon annual festival at the Black Lagoon at "Creaturefest Festival"
- Wakulla Springs State Park, where the underwater scenes were filmed.
| Horror Icons In Film | |
|---|---|
| Classic: | The Creature | Dracula | Frankenstein's monster | The Invisible Man The Mummy | Count Orlok | The Phantom | The Wolf Man |
| Modern: | Norman Bates | Chucky | Ghostface | Jigsaw | Freddy Krueger | Leatherface | Hannibal Lecter | Michael Myers | Pinhead | Jason Voorhees | |
