Monster March: Revenge of the Creature (1955)

The Gill-Man made quite a splash into the Universal Classic Monsters cinematic universe with an exceptionally strong debut in Creature from the Black Lagoon. A scant year later, Revenge of the Creature brought audiences back to the Amazon, though not for long – after the first reel of the film, I found myself bored silly, attentive only when I realized I enjoyed this movie better when it was called Jurassic World.

Joe Hayes (John Bromfield) mounts an expedition into the heart of the Amazon to capture the fabled Gill-Man (Tom Hennesy and Ricou Browning). After successfully apprehending the beast, Joe brings it to the Ocean Harbor Oceanarium in Florida, where the Gill-Man is the subject of both scientific scrutiny and tourist obsession. The Gill-Man is studied by Clete Ferguson (John Agar) and Helen Dobson (Lori Nelson), but it’s the latter who catches the Gill-Man’s eye as he waits for a chance to escape.

 

We’re not even far enough into the Marvel Cinematic Universe to make a good analogy for a franchise debut twenty-three years after the series began (that’d be 2031, from Iron Man in 2008), but the advent of the Gill-Man felt a bit like, say, something as off-beat as Groot. Both Gill-Man and Groot don’t seem like obvious fits for their respective cinematic universes, but that innate weirdness ends up being their great asset, and they manage to blend in seamlessly, thanks to an almost corporate adherence to the vibe of the brand. What kept Groot top of mind, though, was that James Gunn, Vin Diesel, and the rest of the crew at Marvel kept finding new things for Groot to do – despite his limited vocabulary, he could dance, he became a baby, and he saved the day in numerous surprising ways.

 

The Gill-Man, on the other hand, is explicitly forbidden from doing anything different in Revenge of the Creature. If it’s intentional, it’s brilliant, because the plot of Revenge finds the Gill-Man shackled in a cage for the amusement of his captors and the tourists who flock to Florida to see him. It could be a clever metaphor for sequel-as-sideshow, reducing the Gill-Man to the star attraction in a freak show while forcing him to relive his greatest hits from the previous film. I think there’s ripe metafictional ground to be ploughed with such a storyline, one that acknowledges the cyclical and recursive sequel formula while finding something new for the franchise to address. I have no sense, however, that returning director Jack Arnold is using his own source material for satire. Instead, it often feels like a cost-cutting measure to relocate the aquatic monster series onto dry land, with a built-in excuse for why the water sequences look like they were shot at SeaWorld.

 

It’s unfair for me to criticize Revenge for not being the low-hanging satirical fruit I might have made it, so I’ll say instead that the premise of the film reminded me a great deal of Jurassic World. Both films are about the ill-advised nature of building a theme park around a murderous creature, and the overall arcs of both films are virtually identical. They even share the stock character of a female scientist (there, Bryce Dallas Howard; here, Lori Nelson) who wonders if she should give up all the science and amusement park scenery to settle down and start a family. The only difference, it seems, was the budget, and maybe that’s why I found Jurassic World mindless yet entertaining, while Revenge nearly put me to sleep.

 

For the better part of an hour, the Gill-Man doesn’t do anything. He’s imprisoned first in a wading pond, but when he proves able to leap out of his enclosure, the Ocean Harbor staff sedate him and relocate him to a larger aquarium tank, chaining him to the bottom. Then we’re regaled with sequences of him eating fish and menacing his captors, but it’s a far cry from the slasher rampage we saw in his debut film. The minute he’s introduced to Helen, a comely ichthyologist who delivers dialogue like she doesn’t want to disturb paint drying, you know exactly where the film is headed, but there’s something less compelling about seeing it the second time around, no tension in the chase this time. It feels inevitable instead of alarming, in the Universal Monster sequel tradition of retreading familiar ground. 

 

Just about the only bright spot is that the sequel brings back Nestor Paiva as Captain Lucas, here cast in a role roughly analogous to Edward Van Sloan’s turn as Van Helsing. Like Van Helsing, Lucas is on hand to assure us of the Gill-Man’s existence, to brush off the initial skepticism and encourage his passengers to embrace a wider understanding of the supernatural. Of course, Lucas also ends up guiding a new cast of the doomed right to the Gill-Man’s lair – leading me to believe that he might also be the Renfield of the Black Lagoon. Yet Lucas, a bright spot in the first film, is used perfunctorily in Revenge, right down to the reuse of footage from the first film. (Lucas using the boat’s horn to startle an alligator wasn’t all that funny the first time we saw it; recycling it for Revenge is distractingly perplexing.)

 

With Revenge and all the other Universal Classic Monsters sequels that preceded it, I am fast coming to the conclusion that, if the Universal Monsters popularized the notion of franchises and sequels, they must also be responsible for the truism that sequels are never any good. Film sequels were not exactly common when Bride of Frankenstein (the first monster sequel) debuted in 1935, and for many years they would seldom be as good. Revenge of the Creature is proof that sequels like Bride were the exception, not the rule. 

Revenge of the Creature is not rated. Directed by Jack Arnold. Written by Martin Berkeley and William Alland. Starring John Agar, Lori Nelson, Jon Bromfield, Tom Hennesy, and Ricou Browning. 

Tune in tomorrow for Silly Sunday, with Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) starring Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Lon Chaney Jr., Bela Lugosi, and Glenn Strange.

 

In two weeks, the Gill-Man trilogy concludes when The Creature Walks Among Us (1956), starring Jeff Morrow, Rex Reason, Leigh Snowden, Don Megowan, and Ricou Browning.

Monster March: Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

With only three movies under his fishy belt, and coming to the party more than ten years too late, the Gill-Man – the eponymous star of Creature from the Black Lagoon – had some rather large shoes to fill, following as he did in the footsteps of five giants in the Universal Classic Monsters cinematic universe. Thirteen years after the debut of Lon Chaney Jr.’s Wolf Man and a full twenty-three years after Dracula, the Gill-Man might best be seen as the spiritual successor to Chaney’s other monster, Kharis the Mummy. Fortunately for filmgoers, Creature from the Black Lagoon finally got that formula right.

After Dr. Carl Maia (Antonio Moreno) finds the fossilized hand of an amphibious humanoid, he invites a pair of Californian scientists, David Reed and Mark Williams (Richard Carlson and Richard Denning), to Brazil to help corroborate his finding. Another colleague, Kay Lawrence (Julie Adams), joins the expedition, but their arrival is disrupted by the discovery that some of Carl’s assistants have been brutally murdered by the Gill-Man (Ben Chapman and Ricou Browning), who’s become smitten with the hapless Kay.

 

At the risk of spoiling the rest of Monster March for you, the Universal Monsters movies tend to start strong, with diminishing returns for each sequel added to the canon. (That means that the first half of the month will be lots of good feelings, while the second half will leave many of us in cinematic despair.) For the first half of that statement, Creature from the Black Lagoon is no exception – it’s a fantastically strong debut for Universal’s latest and last original monster. Recalling the rhythm of a slasher film, Creature finds its titular antagonist swimming through the plot, surfacing only to commit homicide before retreating into the murky Black Lagoon. While the blaring trumpet score feels a little dated – we get it, the Gill-Man is scary! – there’s something timeless about the pacing and structure of the film, particularly the way that the film doles out brief sightings of the Gill-Man until his full appearance is revealed, almost as though he’s Godzilla being sighted piece by slimy piece.

 

To continue to reveal where Monster March is headed (for those playing the home game, I’ve watched the films in chronological order but reviewed them in thematic sequence), Creature truly reminds me of the later Mummy sequels starring Tom Tyler and later Lon Chaney Jr. Those films too anticipated the slasher horror sub-genre, but they did so in ways that was, shall we say, less than compelling. There is not much to fear from a mummy whose shambolic gait reminds one of a lurching, limping zombie. The Gill-Man, on the other hand, is quick and nimble, darting through the lagoon with balletic poise. So too does the Gill-Man’s very appearance put Kharis the Mummy to shame; while the mummy looked wrinkled, sad, and fragile, the Gill-Man is downright weird, covered in scales and fins with expressionless eyes and a piscine mouth that flaps open. It’s the kind of riveting screen presence that turned the Gill-Man into an unconventional matinee idol – any time he’s on the screen, I defy you to look away.

 

Here’s the catch with Creature from the Black Lagoon, though – and it’s the same catch we have with most of the Universal Classic Monsters movies – the human cast is tragically white-bread to the point where the Gill-Man can’t help but emerge the standout star. The supporting cast is often the weak link in a Universal Monsters picture, and I have to confess that I frequently lost track of how many humans were aboard the exploratory vessel. Julie Adams gets all the attention for being carted away a few times in the Gill-Man’s arms, though I was more drawn to the performance of Nestor Paiva as Captain Lucas, who seems to be the only character with a personality aboard the Rita. Lucas cackles and cracks wise, apparently the only person having fun in the movie. The rest of the characters putter about the plot, largely without emotion, firing off dialogue so dry that you expect someone to dub a wisecrack over the film. 

 

In that sense, maybe one more comparison needs to be indulged. Like Bela Lugosi in Dracula, the Gill-Man elevates the entire picture. Any time he’s on, it’s riveting stuff, and you feel you’re in the presence of true greatness, a classic in the making. (If anyone had “treating Gill-Man like an Oscar winner” in Monster March bingo, stamp your cards now.) The rest of the film struggles in his shadow, even as you know that anyone not wearing gills may not be long for this world – and, honestly, the sooner the better. It’s not that these characters are actively offensive, but the best parts of the movie are the creeping tingles of expectancy as we wait for the Gill-Man to make his next move. Even though much of the film is clearly shot on a soundstage, occasionally with the use of hokey rear projection, Creature manages to drum up suspense with each movement of the Gill-Man’s murderous pursuit.

 

But like Dracula, the Gill-Man is surprisingly lusty, maybe even more lascivious than Dracula’s suave seduction. In sequences that must have inspired the opening to Spielberg’s Jaws, the Gill-Man creeps up on the swimming form of Kay Lawrence, grasping at her exposed ankles. We’ve all been there, felt the wayward tendrils of seaweed brush against our legs in the deep, and the Gill-Man’s slack-jawed and unblinking expression layers on a frightful new dimension to the quotidian. Dave Edmunds warned us that “all he wanted was a lady,” but the fact that he is only ever interested in the sole female scientist adds a creepy subtext. Both Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster wanted brides, but the Gill-Man wants a conquest. Even if none of the characters in the film knows it, the Gill-Man brings a weird erotic charge to a genre that often sublimates that element deep into the unconscious.

 

In terms of franchise development, Creature from the Black Lagoon is so reminiscent of The Wolf Man because it’s a creative shot in the arm. Finally, something new happens in the stagnating cinematic universe. Even though he would never meet the other Universal Classic Monsters – the closest he got was a television appearance with Abbott and Costello, before joining The Monster Squad – the Gill-Man is a fantastic and fun example of a franchise raging against the dying of its own light. If only I’d been able to see it in 3-D! 

Creature from the Black Lagoon is rated G. Directed by Jack Arnold. Written by Harry Essex, Arthur Ross, and Maurice Zimm. Starring Richard Carlson, Julie Adams, Richard Denning, Antonio Moreno, Nestor Paiva, Ben Chapman, and Ricou Browning. 

Tune in tomorrow for Silly Sunday, with Invisible Woman (1940) starring Virginia Bruce and John Barrymore.

Next week, the Gill-Man hits dry land in Revenge of the Creature (1955), starring John Agar, Lori Nelson, Tom Hennesy, and Ricou Browning.