The Creature of the Black lagoon

The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) is by far one of the best monster movies of all time. Filmed in 3D as many new are now I thought it was a good time to remind people of not only a great film, but a pretty good trilogy. Many people don’t realize that «Creature» was a trilogy. «Revenge of the Creature» and «The Creature Walks Amoung US» followed up, with limited success at the box office but actually expanded teh mythos of the gillman in ways you just don’t see in today’s monster flicks. Many classic monsters we not just villians, in fact humans were usually the evil force... going into nature and distubing it’s natural balance, attacking things they didn’t unsterstand and sometimes people were just plain sadistic jerks in the name of «science».

The creature is no exception and even expands on the theme. In the first film, explorers go into the jungle find a living gillman and think of nothing but capturing him to make money off it, the second film, they bring him back to an aquarium and «experiment» on him by giving him electric shocks (where did these scientist go to school? Was Illsa - She wolf of the SS a professor there?). The third film really gets poignant as the gillman loses his gills and is made to wear clothes and become «one of us». In the end he finds his way back into tthe ocean... and drowns.

Technically, the costume of the monster is fantastic, scary and not at all like a cheap halloween costume some people expect from films from that era. The music is memorable particularly since the theme is played literally HUNDREDS of times through the film which sadly lends itself to parody despite the fact that little riff is quite jarring to hear. The 3D is as annoying as always (only the 1st 2 films use it BTW). 3D is almost always, without fail, a headache inducing, distracting experience, even with today’s «advancements» in the technology.

In short... spend a Saturday afternoon watching all 3 before it gets remade by Micheal Bay... seriously.