Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

As a kid the Creature from the Black Lagoon was probably my most favorite Universal monster. Although most of the value in watching it now is for nostalgic reasons. Still it's not a bad film but horror has changed so much over the past 50 years. I think what captured my imagination the most was the iconic image of the creature.

The story itself is pretty simple, scientists looking for fossils of new amphibious creatures come across something they've never seen before and decide to head out to the Amazon to investigate further. There are no real big plot twists or surprises but it wasn't needed. I don't really think the movie dragged that much it was about an hour and 20 minutes, so the story stays pretty tight and Fast-paced. Like most of the Universal monsters, I kind of felt bad for the creature. It was only defending its environment and my impression from watching the Creature from the Black Lagoon is that he was the last of its kind. That's why I think he was interested in the woman, so he could procreate. Like all species, I'm sure he instinctively needed to find a mate.

The music on the other hand that played as the creature crept up from the depths of Lagoon, although great, reminded me a lot of the theme music from Jaws except 20 years before it came out, which made the creature seem sinister. I didn't really see him as that sinister though.

The acting is not too bad either, it's about the same caliber as the rest of the famous Universal monster movies. Julie Adams, who plays Kay, was really beautiful. I also really like the captain of the boat, Lucas, played by Nestor Paiva, whom they hired to take them up the river.

If I had one thing bad to say about the creature from the Black Lagoon, and it's not really bad, is I really wished it had been done in color so you can see the beautiful Florida scenery. There were some really great underwater shots and I know the Lagoon was supposed to be black but from the vantage of the viewer, it looked really clear and was probably very beautiful.

There was not a lot of special effects used in this movie and being that most of the scenes of the creature were shot underwater, they obviously couldn't use makeup either. I was very impressed with the creature suit though. It must've been very scary to have to get into that suit and then get in the water. The only thing about the suit that could be improved on is the expressionless face in the creature, although for the time that it was made it was done remarkably well.

The thing with this kind of movie is that you can't really expect any scares but, if you're like me and a big fan of creature features and you haven't seen this, then I would definitely recommend you watch this. A remake is supposedly in the works and I am actually looking forward to seeing what they can do with it. I would give Creature from the Black Lagoon 3 ½ /5 stars