The Creature Walks Among Us (1956)

For this year's Countdown to Halloween, it's all-Universal Monsters, all-the-time, from Dracula (1931) to The Creature Walks Among Us (1956).  Join me daily for a fresh perspective on movies you may not have watched in a long time, if ever.  Today, we come to an end with the one that's been written in this paragraph every day of the Countdown: The Creature Walks Among Us!

For what I would consider to be the final Universal Monsters movie, The Creature Walks Among Us (1956) seems fairly ambitious.  It’s not just the tale of a monster run amok.  In fact, the Gill-man isn’t the real monster at all.  He’s the victim of a mentally unhinged doctor who abuses his wife.  Don’t worry if that’s not how you interpret it; it’s how the other characters do and they’ll state that for you at the end of the movie so you don’t have to draw your own conclusions.

Speaking of being a little talky, that’s something the final movies I watched all have in common.  As they leaned more towards science fiction, they attempted explaining in detail the science part of the fiction.  Here, it’s something fairly simple: sonar.  The men on the expedition to retrieve the Gill-man from the Everglades can’t just use it to locate him without explaining to us how sound bounces off an underwater object and the amount of time it takes to return tells how far away it is.

In the 1950s, maybe sonar wasn’t commonly understood and The Creature Walks Among Us had to actually educate the audience.  On the other hand, it plays loose and free with the more fictional science.  Today, it’s fairly comical to believe that simply transfusing the Gill-man with human blood would actually change his DNA.  That’s what they do in an attempt to resume his evolution from amphibian to human.

Dr. William Barton (Jeff Morrow) is the aforementioned doctor.  He believes, among other things, that if he can change the metabolism of man, man will change.  This is for the greater good, right?  No, it’s so he can drink and drive.  Ultimately, they change only the skin of the Gill-man, not the animal inside.  This opens discussion about nature vs. nurture.  “What brings out the best in human kind and what brings out the worst, because it’s the stars or the jungle.”  Huh?

By the time doctors Morgan (Rex Reason), Borg (Maurice Manson) and. Johnson (James Rawley) realize Barton’s a kook, he’s pushing his wife, Marcia (Leigh Snowden), around like he hates her, yet bullying the man, Jed Grant (Gregg Palmer), he thinks is fooling around with her.  It turns out Grant really is coming on to her.  He says he just wants to be friends, but she replies, “Being a friend of yours isn’t going to solve my problems, can’t you understand that?”

It’s enough drama to drive the Gill-man into a rage, presumably to protect Marcia.  He really wants to jump back in the water and swim away, but since he’s lost his gills and developed lungs, he would only drown.  It’s a sad situation for him, spending the final part of the movie in a pen with the other animals.  They try to civilize him by putting clothes on him, but it doesn’t really work.  When he gets mad, walls start crumbling down and furniture starts flying.

With all this excitement happening, The Creature Walks Among Us still plays incredibly slow.  They spend much too long hunting and capturing the Gill-man during the first third of the movie.  In the second third, he’s wrapped in bandages while he recovers from third degree burns he received as part of being captured.  In the final third, he’s in his pen observing the soap opera unfolding around him until he can’t take it anymore, but then there's only six minutes of the movie left for him to rampage.

I’ll bet you can guess that even with its flaws, I enjoyed The Creature Walks Among Us.  It’s a fitting conclusion to the Universal Monsters legacy, featuring an original creation the caliber of Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy and the Wolf Man.  It has a structure similar to some of the earliest horror movies, yet takes a step forward toward the later science fiction movies.  Plus, it’s a sequel, something it has in common with 17 of the 34 movies I watched this month.

Tomorrow:  There is no tomorrow, as far as the Countdown to Halloween goes.  But there's always next year!  I don't write on here too much the rest of the year, but you can read my movie reviews and episode recaps for American Horror Story and Bates Motel on Boom Howdy.  I've also started writing recently for my old hometown's website, Enid Buzz.  Thanks for reading.  

Happy Halloween!

Revenge of the Creature (1955)

For this year's Countdown to Halloween, it's all-Universal Monsters, all-the-time, from Dracula (1931) to The Creature Walks Among Us (1956).  Join me daily for a fresh perspective on movies you may not have watched in a long time, if ever.  Today, it's a little more than a regular sequel; it's Revenge of the Creature!

Unless there were two of them, the Gill-man survived being shot at the end of Creature from the Black Lagoon and returned for a sequel a year later in Revenge of the Creature (1955).  He probably wouldn't have returned if he'd been left alone; however, a new crew returns to the upper Amazon to finish what the previous one could not.  One of the men boasts, "If there really is a Gill-man, we'll catch him!"

It's the same captain on the boat, Lucas (Nestor Paiva), and he judiciously recaps the last movie for those who might be challenged by its complexity:  five men died on the previous expedition.  While the new crew discusses the Gill-man being "captured in time," having skipped an evolutionary step, Lucas adds, "Inside it is a demon dragging it through the centuries."

I didn't even mention this.  Recognize that guy?  It's Clint Eastwood in his first screen appearance!

It's a demon that they're able to put into a coma by placing explosives on the surface of the water; however, it's also a demon that they're able to revive after "walking" him through the water several times in a tank at the Ocean Harbor Oceanarium in Florida.  This science is explained by Helen Dobson (Lori Nelson) as she winks at the hunky "walker," Joe Hayes (John Bromfield), from a walkway above.

She's just a flirt, though, because by the end of the movie, she's met, gone on a date, and become engaged to Professor Clete Ferguson (John Agar).  I'm pretty sure I missed that last development, but a radio announcer tracking the escaped Gill-man's movements along the beach says it's Ferguson's fiancée that he's carrying with him.

Yes, of course the Gill-man escapes.  He even gets to flip over a car on his subsequent rampage.  In this new setting in and around Jacksonville, there's a lot more action in Revenge of the Creature than in the first movie.  In that sense, it's a tighter, faster-moving and more entertaining movie.  Besides, it's more fun to see crowds run from a monster than one person swim away from one.

As I watch all these classics chronologically, I notice little things that I think are milestones in the making of horror movies… more things they started getting away with.  Here, it's not only that the Gill-man commits the most unforgiveable cinematic crime of all: killing a dog, but it's also that we see the body of the dead dog lying in the bushes, I could swear with blood on its neck.

Jack Arnold directs again and I'll be darned if he doesn't attempt a jump scare or two.  First, a young couple making out in their car is startled when a policeman approaches the window.  Second, a hand reaches out to touch Helen on the shoulder, but it's not the Gill-man, it's just good ol' Clete.  This may be just another Universal Monsters sequel, but it's also an early experiment with tropes of the horror genre that remain with us today.

Tomorrow:  This Island Earth!

Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

For this year's Countdown to Halloween, it's all-Universal Monsters, all-the-time, from Dracula (1931) to The Creature Walks Among Us (1956).  Join me daily for a fresh perspective on movies you may not have watched in a long time, if ever.  Today, Universal bridges two eras with Creature from the Black Lagoon!

By the early 1950s, the classic, earth-bound creatures that had served Universal so well for 20 years had become guest stars in comedies and the studio was looking elsewhere to find its monsters.  Instead of Transylvania, It Came from Outer Space.  It was the Atomic Age and size mattered, whether it was a giant Tarantula, a Deadly Mantis, or, going the other direction, an Incredible Shrinking Man.

In the midst of these new sci-fi horrors came a monster and a movie that spanned both eras.  The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) was from this Earth; however, the movie itself is just about as Atomic Age as you can get.  It opens with nothing less than the explosive creation of our planet:

This is the planet Earth, newly born and cooling rapidly from a temperature of 6,000 degrees to a few hundred in less than five billion years.  The heat rises and meets the atmosphere, the clouds form and rain pours down upon the hardening surface for countless centuries. The restless seas rise, find boundaries, are contained.  Now, in their warm depths, the miracle of life begins.  In infinite variety, living things appear and change and reach the land, leaving a record of their coming, of their struggle to survive, and of their eventual end.  The record of life is written on the land where 15 million years later, in the upper reaches of the Amazon, man is still trying to read it…

Then, twice later, the scientists investigating the discovery of a fossilized claw discuss outer space and how they can use what they learn to help man survive.  There’s very little mention, if any, of evolution or the wonders that we might find in our own backyard.  That’s very forward thinking, if you ask me, and one of the things I love about the time.

The Creature from the Black Lagoon is a very well made movie, saving any complete glimpse of its monster until almost a third of the way into it.  Before then, it’s just its claw here and there, almost grabbing the leg of Kay Lawrence (Julie Adams) before pulling away.  What a great claw it is!  Large enough to cover a man’s face, it has webbed fingers and looks like it might have nails that are razor sharp.

Well, we know they’re razor sharp.  The creature is able to slice its way out of a net and makes mincemeat of two men from the expedition in their tent one night.  On the other hand, when we see it swimming, it’s very graceful.  As Kay leisurely swims on the surface, it’s doing the backstroke directly below her, almost mirroring her movements.  It also smoothly weaves its way in and out of its underwater environment.

The creature is more effectively scary in the water than it is on land, where its face has dark holes for eyes instead of translucent fish eyes.  However, nice detail is paid to show it breathing, an effect that makes it appear to be more than a man in a rubber suit.  On land, we don’t really see it’s backside, but underwater, you realize his back has Godzilla-like spikes.  It’s definitely more threatening when it’s wet.

Eventually, though, the threat becomes a little tedious.  I thought of my mother telling me to stay either inside or outside on a hot summer day, because the creature is in and out of the water all the time.  There are too many close calls.  Is this a deadly creature or a timid one?  This is a movie that could have benefitted from the shorter running time of the old Universal B movies.

Nevertheless, I love it.  The Creature from the Black Lagoon was directed by Jack Arnold, who made many of the great 1950s sci-fi features, and has a terrific, although uncredited, score by Hans J. Salter, Herman Stein and… Henry Mancini.  It shares several other credentials with It Came from Outer Space, which came out a year earlier.  It’s an interesting little hybrid with an enduring monster.

Tomorrow:  Revenge of the Creature!