Creature from the Black Lagoon

Creature from the Black Lagoon; Horror, USA, 1954; D: Jack Arnold, S: Richard Carlson, Julia Adams, Richard Denning, Antonio Moreno, Whit Bissell

A narrator tells how God created Earth and various creatures. Some expedition crew finds a fossilised arm of an unknown water monster in the Amazon rain forest and starts a sensation. Dr. Reed and his crew set sail in a ship towards a mysterious black lagoon and there truly find a living example, but it falls in love with the female crew member, Mrs. Kay. After the monster kills four crew members by attacking the ship, it gets caught, placed in a cage and brought to a laboratory. But it escapes and again dives in the river. When it kidnaps Kay, David follows and shoots it, after which it dies in the river.

Trashy B-film "The Creature from Black Lagoon" is a sufficient and slightly banal horror from the specialist of that genre, Jack Arnold, and it's far inferior to his later achievement "Tarantula", and especially towards such classics like "King Kong". The actor in the costume of the only monster in the story, a humanoid like Amphibian, isn't convincing, while nobody cared that much for characters that end up turning into underused supernumerary extras stripped from any kind of spark or opulence, while there are also illogical situations present (if the Creature is afraid of the light, why does it attack during the day?). Naive ways of trying to establish the scary mood (somebody suddenly touches David's shoulder, but then it turns out it's just his friend) are dated, just like the whole film, while the flick ends hastily as soon as the Creature gets killed. True, the actors are solid, but quite frankly, the movie simply doesn't have much to show, thus one can't write that much about it, which is sad considering the plot about a monster falling in love with a woman had potentials, as it was shown in such films like "The Beauty and the Beast".

Grade:+