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Creature from the Black Lagoon

This article is on the film. For the titular character, see Gill-man

Creature from the Black Lagoon is a monster film directed by Jack Arnold, and starring Richard Carlson, Julia Adams, Richard Denning, Antonio Moreno, and Whit Bissell. The eponymous creature was played by Ben Chapman on land and Ricou Browning in underwater scenes. The film was released in the United States on 5 March 1954.

Creature from the Black Lagoon was filmed and originally released in 3-D requiring polarized 3-D glasses, and subsequently reissued in the 1970s in the inferior anaglyph format. It is considered a classic of the 1950s, and generated two sequels, Revenge of the Creature and The Creature Walks Among Us, each a year apart. Revenge of the Creature was also filmed and released in 3-D, in hopes of reviving the format.

Plot

A geology expedition in the Amazon uncovers fossilized evidence of a link between land and sea animals in the form of a skeletal hand with webbed fingers. Expedition leader Dr. Carl Maia goes to see his friend Dr. David Reed, an ichthyologist who works at a marine biology institute. Reed persuades the institute's financial backer, Mark Williams, to fund an expedition back to the Amazon to look for the remainder of the skeleton. They go aboard a tramp steamer called the Rita, which is captained by a crusty old salt named Lucas. The expedition consists of David, Maia and Williams, as well as Reed's girlfriend Kay Lawrence and another scientist named Dr. Thompson. When they arrive at Dr. Maia's camp, however, they discover that his entire research team has been mysteriously killed while he was away. Lucas suggests it was done by a jaguar, but the others are unsure. The audience is privy to the attack upon the camp, which was committed by a living version of the fossil skeleton the scientists seek.

The excavation of the area where Maia found the hand turns up nothing. Mark is ready to give up the search, but David suggests that perhaps thousands of years ago the part of the embankment containing the rest of the skeleton fell into the water and was washed downriver. Lucas says that the tributary empties into a lagoon known as the "Black Lagoon," a paradise from which no one has ever returned. The scientists decide to risk it, unaware that the amphibious "Gill-man" that killed Dr. Maia's assistants earlier has been watching them. It, taking notice of the beautiful Kay, follows the Rita all the way downriver to the Black Lagoon. Once the expedition arrives, David and Mark go diving to collect fossils from the lagoon floor. After they return, Kay goes swimming and is stalked underwater by the Gill-man, who then gets briefly caught in one of the ship's draglines. Although it escapes, it leaves behind a claw in the net, revealing its existence to the scientists.

Subsequent encounters with the Gill-man claim the lives of two of Lucas' crew members, before the Gill-man is captured and locked in a cage on board the Rita. It escapes during the night and attacks Dr. Thompson, who was guarding it. Kay hits the Gill-man with a lantern; driving it off before it can kill Dr. Thompson. Following this incident, David decides they should return to civilization, but as the Rita tries to leave they find the entrance blocked by fallen logs, courtesy of the escaped Gill-man. While the others try to remove them, Mark is mauled to death trying to capture the creature single-handed underwater. The creature then abducts Kay and takes her to his cavern lair. David, Lucas, and Dr. Maia give chase to try and rescue her; ultimately she is saved and the beast is shot. Riddled with bullets and stabbed in the heart by David's dive knife, the Gill-man stumbles into the water and is last seen sinking into the depths of the Black Lagoon.

Cast

Antonio Moreno as Dr. Carl Maia
Ben Chapman as Gill-man (land)
Bernie Gozier as Zee
Henry A. Escalante as Chico
Julie Adams as Kay Lawrence
Nestor Paiva as Lucas
Perry Lopez as Tomas
Richard Carlson as Dr. David Reed
Richard Denning as Mark Williams
Ricou Browning as Gill-man (underwater)
Rodd Redwing as Luis
Whit Bissell as Dr. Edwin Thompson

Production

Producer William Alland was attending a dinner party during the filming of Citizen Kane (in which he played the reporter Thompson) in 1941. Mexican cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa told him about the myth of a race of half-fish, half-human creatures in the Amazon river. Alland wrote story notes entitled "The Sea Monster" ten years later. His inspiration was Beauty and the Beast. In December 1952, Maurice Zimm expanded this into a treatment, which Harry Essex and Arthur Ross rewrote as The Black Lagoon. Following the success of the 3-D film House of Wax in 1953, Jack Arnold was hired to direct the film in the same format.

Former Disney animator Milicent Patrick designed the Gill-man. Jack Kevan, who worked on The Wizard of Oz and made prosthetics for amputees during World War II, created the bodysuit, while Chris Mueller, Jr. sculpted the head. Ben Chapman portrayed the Gill-man for the majority of the film, which was shot at Universal City, California. He was unable to sit down for the fourteen hours of each day he wore it, and it heated easily so he stayed in the backlot's lake, and often requested to be hosed at. He also could not see very well, which caused him to scrape Julie Adams' head against the wall when carrying her in the grotto scenes. Ricou Browning played him in the underwater shots, which were filmed by the second unit in Wakulla Springs, Florida.

Novelization

The actual film was novelized in 1977, in a paperback novel written by author Ramsey Campbell under the pseudonym of "Carl Dreadstone," as part of a short-lived series of books based on the classic Universal horror films. It offers a completely different origin for the Gill-man, who in this version of the story is gigantic, almost as big as the Rita herself, weighing in at 30 tons, and is both coldblooded and warmblooded, is a hermaphrodite, and also possesses a long whiplike tail. The gigantic creature is dubbed "AA," for "Advanced Amphibian," by the expedition team members. After slaying most of the team members, destroying a Sikorsky helicopter, and kidnapping Kay more than once, the creature is killed by the crew of a US Navy torpedo boat.

The novel also differs greatly where the human characters of the story are concerned. Only David Reed and Kay Lawrence remain the same. Mark Williams is a German man named "Bruno Gebhardt," and dies not as a result from drowning but by the monster falling on him. Lucas is named "Jose Goncalves Fonseca de Souza" and is a mostly sympathetic character until his suggestion of throwing the wounded and unconscious Reed to the monster makes an enraged Gebhardt/Williams throw him to the beast instead. Dr. Thompson and Dr. Maia both die grisly deaths whereas in the movie they survive; Maia is eaten by the monster, and Thompson is impaled on a long tree branch flung at him by the creature like a spear (in an apparent nod to a deleted scene from Revenge of the Creature wherein the Gill-man killed a guard in this fashion).

Remake

In 1982 John Landis was keen on getting Arnold to direct a remake of the film, and Nigel Kneale was commissioned to write a screenplay. Kneale completed the script, which involved a pair of creatures, one destructive and the other calm and sensitive, being persecuted by the US Navy. A decision to make the film in 3-D led to the film being cancelled by producers Universal, both for budgetary concerns and to avoid a clash with another 3-D film they had in production, Jaws 3-D. In 1995, Universal gave Peter Jackson the option to either remake King Kong or Creature from the Black Lagoon. Jackson chose King Kong, as seeing it on television when he was nine years old had originally inspired him to become a filmmaker.

In December 2001, following the success of The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, Gary Ross signed on to write and produce the remake with his father, Arthur A. Ross, one of the original's writers. He told The Hollywood Reporter, "The story my father wrote embodies the clash between primitive men and civilized men, and that obviously makes it a fertile area for re-examination. In August 2002, Guillermo del Toro, a fan of the original was attached as director. Because of his commitments to numerous other projects, Universal was forced to go without del Toro as director, and hired Tedi Sarafian (credited on Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines) to write a script in March 2003.

In October 2005, Breck Eisner signed on as director. "As a kid, I remember loving Jack Arnold's original version of this film," he explained. "What I really want to do is update an iconic image from the '50s and bring in more of the sci-fi sensibility of Alien or John Carpenter's The Thing. Ross said in March 2007 the Gill-man's origin would be reinvented, with him being the result of a pharmaceutical corporation polluting the Amazon. "It’s about the rainforest being exploited for profit," he said.

The film was delayed by the 2007-08 Writers Guild of America strike, and Eisner put a remake of The Crazies on his priority. Once he finishes filming that, he will begin filming Creature from the Black Lagoon in Manaus, Brazil and on the Amazon River in Peru. Eisner was inspired to shoot on location by Fitzcarraldo, and the boat set has been built. Eisner continued to rewrite the script, which will be a summer blockbuster full of "action and excitement, but [still] scary". Eisner spent six months designing the new incarnation of the Gill-man with Mark McCreery (Jurassic Park, and Davy Jones's designer). The director said the design was "very faithful to the original, but updated", and that the Gill-man will still be sympathetic.

Legacy

The movie has an enduring legacy in both media and the general public. A musical based on the movie will open at Universal Studios Hollywood in Spring 2009. It has also been widely referenced, in part due to its groundbreaking character, in other media. In fact, many movies featuring monsters put a Gill-man likeness in the background as a homage. More directly, the Gill-man appeared in the Robot Chicken episode "Shoe," voiced by Seth Green. He tells a guy that he prefers to be called the "African American Lagoon." Its likeness also was used for the film The Monster Squad. However, due to licensing issues with Universal, the creature is referred to as "Gill-Man." Ben Chapman introduced the creature in costume with Abbott and Costello on live television on an episode of The Colgate Comedy Hour. Even earlier, in The Seven Year Itch, the film is referenced when Tom Ewell and Marilyn Monroe come out of a theatre showing Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Creature from the Black Lagoon was later made into a pinball game, designed by John Trudeau (AKA "Dr. Flash"), and released in 1992 by Midway (under the Bally brand name). This game has a retro 1950s drive-in theme. It also features such 50s classic songs like Rock Around the Clock, Get a Job, and Summertime Blues. Completing side missions in the pinball game causes the screen to display "Universal Presents... Creature from the Black Lagoon," and then requires the player to chase after the monster just like in the film. The game sold 7,841 units.

The film has been immortalized in paleontology circles. When Jenny Clack of the University of Cambridge discovered a fossil amphibian in what was once a fetid swamp, she named it Eucritta melanolimnetes, which is Greek for "the creature from the black lagoon.