Creature from the Black Lagoon

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Creature from the Black Lagoon
Film poster
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 Richard Denning Antonio Moreno
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)
All Movie Guide profile
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.

[edit] Synopsis

A geology expedition in the Amazon uncovers fossilized evidence of a link between land and sea animals in the form of a skeletal hand with webbed fingers. Expedition leader Dr. Carl Maia goes to civilization to see his friend Dr. David Reed, an ichthyologist who works at a marine biology institute. Reed persuades the institute's financial backer, Mark Williams, to fund an expedition back to the Amazon to look for the remainder of the skeleton. They will go aboard a tramp steamer called the Rita captained by a crusty old salt named Lucas, and the expedition will consist of David, Maia and Williams, as well as Reed's girlfriend Kay Lawrence and another scientist named Dr. Thompson. When they arrive at Dr. Maia's camp however, they discover that his entire research team has been mysteriously killed while he was away. Lucas suggests it was done by a jaguar, but the others are unsure. Indeed, the audience was privy to the attack upon the camp, committed by a living version of the fossil skeleton the scientists seek.

The excavation of the area where Maia found the hand turns up nothing. Mark is ready to throw in the towel, but David suggests that perhaps thousands of years ago the part of the embankment containing the rest of the skeleton fell into the water and was washed downriver. Lucas says the tributary they're on empties into a lagoon known as the "Black Lagoon," a paradise from which no one has ever returned. The scientists decide to risk it, unaware that the amphibious "gill man" that killed Dr. Maia's assistants earlier has been watching them, and, taking notice of the beautiful Kay, follows the Rita all the way downriver to the Black Lagoon. Once the expedition arrives, David and Mark go diving to collect fossils from the lagoon floor, and after they return, Kay goes swimming and is stalked underwater by the Gillman, who then gets briefly caught in one of the ship's draglines. Although he escapes, he leaves behind a claw in the net, clueing the scientists in to his existence.

Subsequent encounters with the Gillman claim the lives of two of Lucas' crew members, before the Gillman is captured and locked in a cage on board the Rita. He escapes during the night and attacks Dr. Thompson, who was guarding him, but before he can kill him Kay hits him with a lantern, driving him off. Following this incident David decides they should return to civilization, but as the Rita tries to leave the find the entrance blocked by fallen logs, courtesy of the escaped Gillman. Efforts to remove them result in Mark's death by drowning, and the monster abducts Kay and takes her to his cavern lair. David, Lucas and Dr. Maia give chase to try and rescue her, and ultimately she is saved and the beast shot. Riddled with bullets, the Gillman stumbles into the water and is last seen in the dark water of the Black Lagoon.

[edit] Cast

• Richard Carlson as Dr. David Reed
• Julie Adams as Kay Lawrence
• Richard Denning as Mark Williams
• Antonio Moreno as Dr. Carl Maia
• Nestor Paiva as Lucas
• Whit Bissell as Dr. Edwin Thompson
• Bernie Gozier as Zee
• Henry A. Escalante as Chico
• Perry Lopez as Tomas
• Rodd Redwing as Luis
• Ricou Browning as Gillman (Underwater)
• Ben Chapman as Gillman (Land)

[edit] In literature

In Paul Di Filippo's novel Time's Black Lagoon, the Gill man is depicted as descending from a race of extraterrestrials who came on a giant spaceship called "The Mother," that landed on Earth in the Devonian Period. The gill-people have the ability to communicate telepathically among themselves and among the human characters. Highly telepathic individuals are alphas in their tribal communities, and include "Fleshmolders", "Mudshapers", "Fishcallers", etc.

The Creature from the Black Lagoon itself is a degenerate member of this race, resulting from an individual who explored deep in the ocean and became exposed to archaebacteria, becoming deformed and insane, driven to infect others with the disease. Eventually there were no healthy gill-people left, and the race's numbers dwindled over the epochs to one individual in the 1950s, which is the one that appears in the original film.

[edit] Remake

In 1982 John Landis was keen on getting Arnold to direct a remake of the film, and Nigel Kneale was commissioned to write a screenplay.^[1] Kneale completed the script, which involved a pair of creatures, one destructive and the other calm and sensitive, being persecuted by the US Navy.^[1] A decision to make the film in 3-D resulted in Universal Studios cancelling the project, both for budgetary concerns and to avoid a clash with another 3-D film they had in production, Jaws 3-D. ^[1]

According to a featurette on the King Kong 3-disc Deluxe Extended Edition DVD, Universal gave Peter Jackson the option to remake one of two old horror films whilst working on The Frighteners in 1995; King Kong or Creature From The Black Lagoon. Jackson chose King Kong, as seeing it on television when he was nine years old had originally inspired him to become filmaker.

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 underwater sequences were filmed at Wakulla Springs in North Florida (today a state park), as were many of the rear projection images.
• Creature from the Black Lagoon is one of several other monster movie classics used as a novel. Paul Di Filippo wrote a novel for Creature titled Time's Black Lagoon. The novel involved 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.

IPDB listing for Creature from the Black Lagoon

• 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."

see: Clack (1998) Nature 394: 66-69; and Clack (2001) Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh: Earth Sciences 92, 75-95.

• 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.
• 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 development 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 creature was often illustrated in movie posters and such as having red lips and bright green skin when in fact its skin was simply dark green.
• Tim Burton's film The Nightmare Before Christmas had a background character who resembled the creature and was female.

[edit] In Popular Culture

• The creature made a cameo appearance on an episode of TV's The Munsters as visiting Uncle Gilbert.
• The Black Lagoon is referenced in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comic book series in the New Traveller's Almanac.
• 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.
• In Sonic Adventure 2, a small version of the creature is used to strengthen a chao, it also causes the the ball on its head to become a fireball.
• In the comedy Twins, Vincent Benedict Danny deVito makes a joke reference to the movie when he criticizes his brother's (Arnold Schwarzenegger) origin at one point.
• The creature is the subject of a song by Wednesday 13's former band Frankenstein Drag Queens From Planet 13.
• The Teacher From The Black Lagoon and other children's books with similar titles (Music Teacher, Gym Teacher) by Mike Thaler more than likely got their titles from the movie.
• The film was referenced and featured in Fade to Black (1980 movie) as the main character's favorite monster movie.

[edit] Footnotes

[edit] References and External Links

• Creature from the Black Lagoon at the Internet Movie Database
• Creature From the Black Lagoon at the All Movie Guide
• 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.