THE GILL OF MY DREAMS

By Greg Lamberson

A few years ago, Universal Studios released its Classic Monsters Collection, featuring DVDs of DRACULA, FRANKENSTEIN, THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, THE WOLF MAN, THE INVISIBLE MAN, PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, THE MUMMY, and my favorite, CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON. It was a great set. Last year, in an effort to hype its inane return to monster-mashing, VAN HELSING, the studio released its Legacy Collections, boxed sets devoted to individual monsters featured in the original set. Titles like SON OF DRACULA and THE GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN were only made available in these sets, not as individual titles, so customers had to buy duplicates of the original titles in order to get the sequels. As a consumer, I thought this was a rip-off, and I passed.

Except for the CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON LEGACY COLLECTION.

I had to own that, even though the sequels—REVENGE OF THE CREATURE and THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US—suffer in comparison to the first film.

You see, the Gill Man, along with Willis O'Brien's KING KONG, is my favorite monster. Look on top of the bookcase opposite my writing station, and you'll see Sideshow Collectibles' amazingly detailed 12" "action figure" of The Creature, standing, webbed claws poised to strike, beside my Zuni Fetish Warrior Doll (from the telefilm TRILOGY OF TERROR) and Sideshow's Evil Ash figure (from ARMY OF DARKNESS). I also have a gold plated Oscar statue on that shelf, made from a mold of an actual Oscar; due to copyright issues, this item is contraband, so let this be our little secret.

My first exposure to The Creature was when I was four years old, in the pages of a Spider-Man or Batman comic book. Aurora advertised its line of glow-in-the-dark monster model kits with garish illustrations that captured my imagination more than the comics did. I cut the ads out and moved them around the screen of our black and white television set, creating my own stories.

Later, my mother purchased the actual models for me. Aurora packaged its products in boxes adorned by paintings that rivaled those found on the covers of Forrest J. Ackerman's seminal Famous Monsters of Filmland. The box for The Creature model deceptively painted its subject as a terrifying figure; lipstick-red fish-lips stood out on the glowing yellow head. The actual model got it right, though, but was not without flaws. The sternum never quite fit into place, so you had to drench it in modeling glue to hold it together. Not that mine ever stayed together; I treated those models like toys, and I must have gone through dozens of them.

The next logical step in my development as an obsessive monster fan was to see the movies that inspired those models. For some reason, the local television stations didn't broadcast the Universal films, so I grew up on a steady diet of 50s sci-fi (I don't abhor that term the way that Harlan Ellison does) and late night Hammer films. Consequently, Christopher Lee was my Dracula, not Bela Lugosi, and Peter Cushing was my Dr. Frankenstein, not Colin Clive.

But Hammer didn't remake CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, and since the Gill Man was a product of the sci-fi boom more than he was the Universal classics cycle, his films were broadcast on late night TV, much to my adolescent delight.

I was recently dismayed by a post on FANGORIA's message board by someone who found CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON boring.

Boring?

I can understand someone who prefers contemporary genre material to "the classics," but in no way, shape, or form is Jack Arnold's CFTBL boring. The 79-minute film, lensed in 3-D, no less, opens with the Big Bang, the creation of Earth, and the development of life, climaxing with that awesome shot of The Creature's footprints in the sand, representing the emergence of bi-pedal Creaturedom emerging from the ocean. Within minutes—or millions of years, depending on your point of view—The Creature claims his first victims, a couple of Amazon native guides working for a pesky scientist. The film does bog down for about 10 minutes while we meet the scientists (including Richard Carlson and Whit Bissel) who will stalk The Creature, but even these moments feature impressive cinematography and some 3-D gags. Once we meet Lucas, captain of the boat that takes us to the Black Lagoon, things pick up.

The Creature's first appearance—underwater, lunging straight at the camera—still packs a punch. Imagine how it must have terrified audiences back in 1954! And the "underwater ballet," in which The Creature swims beneath Julie Adams in the lagoon, mimicking her movements, is a classic moment in horror filmdom.

Four people were responsible for bringing The Creature to life: Milicent Patrick designed the costume, Bud Westmore constructed it, Ricou Browning wore it underwater, and Ben Chapman suited up for the landlocked scenes. The Creature's eyes are convincingly fishlike, and in one shot, his gills expand and contract, foreshadowing the air bladder technique favored by makeup FX artists in the 1980s and 1990s. Arnold's direction is first-rate, as is the score (by Henry Mancini, Hans J. Salter, and Herman Stein), but it's James C. Havens underwater direction that elevates this film to classic status. Of course, the screenplay, by Harry Essex and Arthur A. Ross, from a story by Maurice Zimm, basically apes the script for KONG, and once again, Beauty kills the Beast.

Pop culture demands that success stories spawn spin-offs, and Arnold returned to the Black Lagoon one year later, for REVENGE OF THE CREATURE, this time starring John Agar and Lori Nelson, who capture The Creature and take him to a marine park in Florida. He escapes, snatches Nelson, and causes mayhem. If LAGOON borrowed from the first half of KONG, REVENGE concentrates on the second half. The FX department altered The Creature's eyes so that the stunt men inside the costume could actually see through them (those bastards!), and the results are ludicrous. My favorite moment is when The Creature hurls a teenager at a palm tree. This is a fun sequel, typical for the time period, famous more for Clint Eastwood's brief scene than anything else. Even as a kid, I felt that The Creature was being disloyal to Adams by chasing after Nelson!

Two years passed before The Creature flexed his gills again. THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US is a strange film. While not successful, it does pose several interesting ideas. Scientists hunting The Creature in the Florida Everglades accidentally scorch him, and to save his life, inflate his lungs, transforming him into a mammal. The scene in which The Creature first assaults the scientists is startling, and when the bandages are removed from his head following his operation, the results are chilling; we feel his repulsion at what he has become. The makeup is truly unsettling this time around. Unfortunately, the Gill-less Man spends the bulk of the film observing the people around him, and all we can do is wait for him to break loose. The cathartic moment, when he smashes a mad scientist from a balcony, is extremely violent, and illustrates the tug-of-war going on within the film; though shot in 1956, the film wants to function as horror films did in the 60s. The characters are immoral and unlikable, and the film has a seedy feeling as a result. John Sherwood directed, but the film feels like a Roger Corman film. The ending, in which The Creature returns to the sea, not knowing he will drown in it, is ironic and thought provoking, but this sense of nihilism hardly fits the creature-feature mentality of the first two films.

Although The Creature came along too late to participate in Universal team-ups like HOUSE OF DRACULA, HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, and the Abbott & Costello monster fests, the Gill Man did remain in the public consciousness by participating in similar projects. He appeared as "Uncle Gilbert" (his first and only speaking role!) in an episode of TV¹s THE MUNSTERS, and joined his Universal cousins in the terrific Rankin-Bass stop-motion animated film, MAD MONSTER PARTY, and their cell-animated TV sequel, MAD, MAD, MAD MONSTERS. In 1987, Fred Dekker (NIGHT OF THE CREEPS) revived The Creature for THE MONSTER SQUAD, a fun monster mash that has not yet been released on DVD. The Creature re-design is actually pretty impressive.

John Carpenter planned to direct a CFTBL remake with a new mythology, tying The Creature to pyramids, the Bermuda Triangle, Bigfoot, and the Abominable Snowman; although Rick Baker's concept art looked cool, I'm grateful this project was beached. Creature fans may have been disappointed when Stephen Sommers dropped the Gill Man from VAN HELSING (2004), they must surely have been relieved after seeing the finished film. Guillermo del Toro announced plans to direct a Victorian-set remake, but changed his mind after realizing that the original film holds up just fine.

Amen, brother.