The Creature Walks Among Us

Gone Gill

The Creature
Walks Among Us
USA 1956 Directed by John Sherwood
Universal Blu Ray Zone A

John Sherwood directed the third and final of the Creature From The Black Lagoon trilogy. He would go on to shoot a much more interesting monster B-movie the following year, The Monolith Monsters but I have to say that, after the amazing first film in the Creature franchise (reviewed here) and the not so terrible follow up called Revenge Of The Creature (admittedly an aquatic retread of King Kong in a way, reviewed by me here), The Creature Walks Among Us is a pretty terrible movie and a terrible swan song for the creature who has not, to date, made a reappearance other than in a guest spot on the old Abbott And Costello TV show... despite his iconic status as one of the ‘big five’ classic Universal monsters.

There have actually been a few attempts to resurrect the character over the years, including the original script that eventually metamorphosised into the second of the Jaws sequels, Jaws 3D. Alas, the closest thing we’ve had is Guillermo del Toro's wonderful homage to the character, The Shape Of Water (reviewed here) but... well, lets just say that there seems to be an attempt to develop a new Creature movie every decade or so and I keep my finger crossed that, some day, the Gill Man will swim and claw his way back to the silver screen.

However, at time of writing, this is the last of the official Gill Man movies and, like I said, it’s a shame that it turned out the way it did.

The film stars two B-movie sci-fi names of note playing the two genetics professors of the film, Dr. Thomas Morgan played by Rex Reason and Dr. William Barton played by Jeff Morrow. Barton finances a mission to capture the creature for his own twisted purposes and he takes an expedition through Florida, where the creature was last seen at the end of Revenge Of The Creature. However, Barton is a troubled fellow. Not only does he want to use the Gill Man to experiment on in an attempt to mutate mankind into creatures that don’t have to rely on oxygen to breathe so they can go into space (if I’m understanding this movie properly) but also he has a lot of problems with his wife, Marcia, played by female lead Leigh Snowden. In fact she is caught between having feelings for Dr. Morgan and also being constantly hassled for sexual attention by one of the other members of Barton’s team. This causes friction and jealousy galore until Barton murders a guy for his unwanted attention but... I’m getting ahead of myself.

Anyway, in the struggle to capture the Gill Man, it ends up accidentally dousing itself in paraffin and when Barton throws a flaming lamp at it, it goes up like a torch. They take it back to the ship but it’s outer skin has burned off and they have to perform surgery to get the creature’s auxiliary lungs, which can breathe air, to take over from its gills, which are now gone. He is then taken away to Barton’s compound, now unable to breathe the water without dying and as fodder for experimental research.

Alas, the big problem with this film is not its story, at least they were trying something different, it’s the fact that the creature of the title, without its regular visage designed by Millicent Patrick that audiences had grown to love, looks pretty rubbish in comparison to it’s original, beautiful look. It looks ugly and I’d take a bet and say that I reckon the costume design on this version is probably closer to one of the rejected concepts for the first movie. Either way, it’s like promising the audience a Superman movie, taking him away after a half an hour and then replacing him with some other guy in a dodgy cape. It doesn’t really work and, although I love the idea that he wears clothes in this... when the scientists realise his overly sensitive, evolving to human skin needs protection... it would have been great to see the original Gill Man walking around like this... not some ‘creature wannabe’ stand in. I mean, the make up isn’t terrible and certainly you still feel a lot of compassion for the creature, who is actually shown to be non-violent to those not threatening him... but I’m sure, like me, most people miss the original version of the monster after his few quick scenes in this film, before the fiery accident.

The film is put together well, the acting is good and Jeff Morrow makes for a genuinely unsympathetic character who wants to control his uninterested wife... he even plays him very well in a scene where he gets a little tipsy. However, he’s definitely the ‘human villain’ of the piece and, when he murders an ‘admirer’ of his wife and tries to put the body in the creature’s cage (the creature witnesses the murder) in order to blame the death on the titular beast... I’m sure most people feel no regret when the gill man breaks out and gives Barton his deadly ‘just dessert’.

The music in this is interesting. There’s definitely some re-use from the previous films and the uncredited team of Irvin Girtz, Henry Mancini and Heinz Roemheld have a good musical presence but, I’m pretty sure there’s at least a cue or two which have been changed and re-recorded for this film because one of them has what sounds like a slow tempo, slightly more sinister version of the famous three note Creature statement as part of its musical DNA. So, I reckon somebody was actually properly working on the music for this sequel rather than the studio just retracking the music for the entire thing. And, yes, that bass line reminiscent of what would later be associated with John Williams' famous Jaws theme is again prevalent in this one.

Other than all that though, I don’t really have a whole lot else to say about The Creature Walks Among Us. It’s certainly quite watchable but I still feel the pain of that original creature costume being absent from a lot of the running time. It certainly gives what seems like a definitive ending to the three films, with the creature wandering back to the sea where he will presumably drown... and that’s certainly a moving moment at the end. It’s just not a direction I would have liked the writers to go in and I think the fact that this was the last one in the series probably means I’m not the only one who felt like that. If you are into the title character then, of course, it’s a ‘must watch’ movie but, as a 1950s B-movie horror picture... well it’s interesting in the direction it goes but far from essential. It just doesn’t live up to the promise of the previous two pictures, I’m afraid.