Ironically enough, the same day I sat down to watch Creature from the Black Lagoon for the first time, Universal taps Dave Kajganich (The Invasion) to pen a remake of the feature. That news came earlier in the day and I didn’t read it until this morning, after watching the original last night as part of my tour of the Universal Classic Monsters: The Essential Collection on Blu-ray, which began with The Invisible Man and continued yesterday with The Phantom of the Opera.
What I found most interesting about Creature from the Black Lagoon was how it’s not much of a terrifying movie exactly, but more the obvious influence it has had on cinema with Steven Spielberg‘s Jaws specifically coming to mind along with Alien. As one person says on the included retrospective documentary, had it not been for this film those films would have likely turned out much differently.
It was overly campy and very much relies heavily on the Creature’s slow-moving webbed hand accompanied by the continuous theme that throbs throughout. And the Beauty and the Beast aspect goes from the delicately subtle, underwater introduction (as seen in the video clip below) to a more half-baked, capture and conquer scenario later on.
While you can’t expect the creature effects to hold up to today’s standards I was particularly impressed with the underwater scenes. The Creature’s movement through the water and the way the suit held up was incredibly impressive and lifelike. However, out of water this plays more closely to Captain Kirk’s battle with the Gorn in the original “Star Trek” series, though Kirk was able to hold his own much better there than anyone could against the Creature, who would have probably made a quick lunch of Kirk’s opponent.
Something that struck me as curious while watching, and I was glad to see it pointed out in the included documentary, was the use of poison in the lagoon and the moment Julie Adams as Kay is seen on the ship deck smoking a cigarette. Once finished, she flicks the butt into the lagoon with no thought as the Creature looks on from below. These scenes may have played differently back in 1954, but today the blatant disregard for the environment would be looked at much more severely and the humans would be looked at even harsher as they invade and infect the Creature’s domain.
The poison, in fact, also reminded me of Jacques Cousteau‘s The Silent World where the marine biologists Cousteau was documenting decided dynamite was the best option in order to take a census of the fish in a coral reef. Harder to count fish when they’re moving, so why not blow them up and count them as they float, dead to the surface.
In terms of its Blu-ray presentation, Creature from the Black Lagoon looks excellent, rich in film-like presentation with an even balance throughout. One thing I forgot to mention in my Phantom of the Opera piece was the way the colors seemed to pulse at times, particularly in scenes with large, white backgrounds where the reds or blues would dominate the image for only a brief second. I know I’m late in mentioning it now, better late than never. Creature has no such blemishes.
Creature does, however, mark an interesting inclusion in the set, coming just over ten years after Phantom. In fact the set as a whole presents an interesting overview of nearly 25 years of film history. Beginning with the 1931 black and white, 1.37:1 aspect ratios of Dracula, Frankenstein and others, moving to Technicolor in 1943’s Phantom of the Opera and finally, 1954’s widescreen, black-and-white presentation of Creature from the Black Lagoon, which was also presented in stereoscopic 3D (also included on this Blu-ray).
The developments in the language of cinema are easily recognizable, particularly in the latter stages with the introduction of color, the move to widescreen and even an attempt to lure in audiences with the gimmicky 3D as the studios would do anything to differentiate themselves from television. Cinema moves in cycles, and who knows, perhaps the mid-fifties are closely comparable to what we’re seeing today as the battle of television vs. cinema continues to play out, only on a much larger scale.
Could Avatar simply be this generation’s Creature from the Black Lagoon and in 20 years or so the New, New Hollywood will emerge? Hard to know, but it doesn’t sound too far fetched to me.
As for that remake Kajganich is working on. My only suggestion would be to make sure he looks at the film’s Creature influenced and not just the original itself. Is the goal to pay homage or to simply find a way to bring a CG, underwater, prehistoric monster to life so he can kill unsuspecting scientists in digital, PG-13 glory?
I’m not convinced filmmakers today can remake this film or make decisions as subtle as Ridley Scott and Steven Spielberg made with Alien and Jaws, in keeping the menace hidden for so long before the ultimate reveal. Today it’s all about showing rather than letting the imagination run wild, but one can hope.
If you’re interested in my Invisible Man piece you can find that here, my Phantom of the Opera write-up is here and if you’d like to buy the Universal Classic Monsters: The Essential Collection on Blu-ray (which I recommend you do if you are at all interested in any of these articles) then I suggest you click here.
