Monster On The Campus

Coelacampus

Monster On The Campus
USA 1958
Directed by Jack Arnold
Universal/Eureka Masters Of Cinema 
Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Primitive spoilers lurching your way.

So the third and final film presented in the Eureka Masters Of Cinema Blu Ray set Three Monster Tales Of Sci-Fi Terror, in as amazing a transfer as you could possibly want, is the great Jack Arnold’s last sci-fi/horror movie, Monster On The Campus... an attempt to cash in on the phenomenal success of AIP’s I Was A Teenage Werewolf. In this one though, it’s the authority figure Professor Donald Blake, played by the always likeable Arthur Franz, who is the victim of inadvertent transformations while the teenage contingent of the movie, as represented by the likes of future teen star Troy Donahue as Jimmy, no less, are on the sidelines as observers to the monster shenanigans in this one. 

So the film starts off with the delivery of a coelacanth being brought in a van to the Dunsfield University, specifically to the lab/classroom combination used by Professor Blake (yeah, I know, I’ll get to that character name in a little while, true believers). Blake is dating Madeline, played by Joanna Moore, the daughter of the principal of the university. However, the bloody water washed off by this creature, which we find out later has been treated with gamma radiation to help keep it fresh, drips down form the van and Jimmy’s German Shepherd, Samson, has a drink. It’s only a matter of minutes before the dog goes berserk and attacks people, its canine teeth grown to twice their size. After a while the dog returns to its normal, docile self but, before then, lots of other things have happened.

Professor Blake must be the unluckiest scientist in the world. Not only does he accidentally snag his hand on the tooth of the coelacanth when he’s moving it, he also accidentally dunks his wound in the same bloody water. It’s not long before the professor transforms into a ‘badly masked up’ ape man (courtesy of Bud Westmore, demonstrating here that he obviously didn’t have much of a hand in the great Millicent Patrick’s Creature From The Black Lagoon design... read my review of the book The Lady From The Black Lagoon for further information on that right here) and he kills a girl before waking up, transformed back into a man with no memory of the incident, just as concerned as the police with catching the vile killer who did such a thing. It turns out later that, you are only affected once by the blood but, like I said, unluckiest scientist in the world because, after shooing away a dragon fly which had been feeding off the coelacanth, it returns in a two foot long giant form and the professor has to kill it with a dagger before it eats itself out of the net he’s tried to capture it with. However, when he’s moving its body, infected blood from it drips into the bulb of his pipe and, it’s not long before he’s inhaling coelacanth blood fumes and turns into the ape man again... killing his police bodyguard (assigned to him should ‘the killer’ return). 

And so on and so it goes. This is not remembered as much as some of the other famous ‘atomic era’ Universal monster movies of the 1950s and, it was their penultimate grab at this kind of movie for the decade, but it’s entertaining enough even though some of it, such as the awful mask used to create the ape creature, signifying man’s transformation back to a primitive state, is quite laughable. But the giant dragonfly, even though it’s obviously a mechanical creature with the only moving parts being the flapping wings, is actually pretty good, I thought and I would love to have seen more done with a movie just about these things. 

As usual for the time, the acting is all good stuff and everyone is taking it all very seriously, including the great Whit Bissell, playing a doctor in this one (of the many creature movies in which you can see him in). There are also some nice in-jokes in this one too, all taken in deadly earnest of course, such as when somebody rings a Dr Moreau in Madagascar to get some information about how the coelacanth was packaged and shipped. This is, of course, a reference to the title character from H. G. Wells ‘man to creature’ novel, The Island Of Dr, Moreau. Stuff like this will always keep me watching... as will the music with it’s bold stingers and sinister noodling. 

What’s not a joke and what hit me straight away on this viewing (I obviously didn’t remember this film from the last time I watched it over a decade ago but, it all came back to me as I was looking at it on this wonderful new presentation), was the main protagonist/antagonist’s lead character, Dr. Donald Blake. Now I’ve said on a fair few of these 1950s Universal B movie monster reviews that certain elements seem to have inspired the creators of the early 1960s Marvel comics, such as Stan Lee, Steve Ditko and Jack ‘King’ Kirby and... this one is no exception...

Donald Blake would, of course, in a few years, be the alter ego of The Mighty Thor, back in the days when the frail human would bang his cane into the ground and (without even saying the magic word Shazam, which was obviously another inspiration from Fawcett’s original Captain Marvel comics) suddenly transform by a lightning bolt into Thor (although Blake does get a brief mention in the 2011 Thor movie... but as an entirely different character). Also, one of the ‘plaster of Paris’ masks of man’s faces throughout the process of evolution, displayed in Blake’s classroom, looks amazingly similar to the original Jack Kirby artwork of The Incredible Hulk. I’m not sure if that is a coincidence or not but, given the evidence of other obvious ‘cinematic influences’, there’s a chance that we might be looking at the prototype of Hulk right there, especially if a shot from the film including that prop was ever used in any publicity photos of the time. 

And, yeah, I don’t have much more to say about Monster On The Canpus. It’s actually, despite the bad mask worn by the title campus dweller, quite an entertaining and quirky picture. Definitely one which is worth screening alongside the other similar movies of this period and, frankly, I can’t imagine it looking any better than it does here. As I said, both the print and the transfer are absolutely excellent... like it was shot just last week. Definitely a must purchase for fans of the genre of this period, for sure. 

Tarantula

Firefox VS Spider

Tarantula
USA 1955
Directed by Jack Arnold
Universal/101 Films 
Blu Ray Zone B/DVD Region 2

Warning: Small, eight legged spoilers coming your way. 

“I’d say you were the biggest liar since Baron Munchhausen”
quote from Tarantula

Well Tarantula is a film I wasn’t that impressed with when I first saw it, although I absolutely adore 1950s, atomic age B-movies and... revisiting it now on a very good Blu Ray transfer put out by 101 Films as part of a dual edition (yeah, some companies are still putting both the Blu Ray and DVD in the same set combinations)... I’d have to say I’m still not all that swayed over by it. Jack Arnold was an absolute master of these kinds of films with things like the first two Creature From The Black Lagoon films, The Incredible Shrinking Man and, even uncredited work on the classic This Island Earth. This one falls fairly flat though, especially when you compare it to, say, the absolute masterpiece that was THEM! (reviewed by me here). It does have a couple of things going for it though...

One is that some (but not quite all) of the special effects and make up effects in this one are handled pretty well, for the most part. The other thing is that the script does nothing to make light of the ridiculous plot (although the make up in one scene may well make you laugh) and the actors are all very good at projecting a certain amount of gravitas around the story. These actors include monster movie regular John Agar as the perpetually smiley, heroic Dr. Matt Hastings, Leo G. Carrol as the resident mad scientist Prof. Gerald Deemer and the sensuous Mara Corday as the professor’s new work experience student (as we’d express it these days) and love interest for Agar, Stephanie 'Steve' Clayton (who would go on to play a few supporting roles for her friend Clint Eastwood in The Gauntlet, Sudden Impact, Pink Cadillac and The Rookie but, I’m getting ahead of myself... I’ll get to Clint in a little while). 

Also in the cast, as the sherif of the small town of Desert Rock and friend to Agar’s Hastings, is Nestor Paiva. Regular readers may remember Paiva as the boat captain in both Creature From The Black Lagoon (reviewed here) and Revenge Of The Creature (reviewed here)... and also for his role in The Falcon In Mexico (reviewed here). I almost didn’t recognise him at first because, although he was born in California, I always associate him with playing roles with a strong, sometimes Mexican accent and, also, his almost bald head here is prominently displayed, rather than covered with a hat. Hearing him speak perfect American English was a bit of a shock, to be honest. 

The film opens quite starkly and effectively. A camera pans around the bleak desert landscape until it fixes on a man wandering through and then collapsing. He dies but by then we can see he has deformed features. This is because, as we later find out, the serum Professor Deemer is working on to make animals grow to giant sizes in order to solve the world’s food shortage problems, causes an unnaturally quick manifestation of the rare disease acromegaly when injected into a human. Acromegaly, is of course, the famous rare condition contracted by famous character actor Rondo Hatton, which pushes the bones and muscles around the face to give everything a warped look (something which gave him good work in various villainous roles in his short, painful life... the Rondo Awards are named after him).  

Anyway, the professor buries another of his initially willing human victims, after being attacked by him and... the laboratory is partially burned down. What he doesn’t realise is that, while he was rendered unconscious in the fight, the dying human lab rat injected him with the formula as well... not to mention the fact that the professor’s already unnaturally huge tarantula has escaped and, of course, it roams the desert killing cattle, horses and humans until everybody can put two and two together... mostly as a not bad special effect superimposition of a real tarantula interacting with miniature sets and being projected against real life actors in some sequences. I think there’s probably some puppet work here too but, in regards to the big spider’s many on screen appearances, the puppetry is kept to a minimum.

So that’s the set up and, it’s not a terrible film to be sure (fourth biggest box office hit of the year) but, I have to say, the storyline and lack of any real twists and turns leaves me a little cold when compared to other movies like this. However, some of the make up effects, such as when Leo G. Carrol first shows signs of acromegaly, are put together extremely well. Alas, on the last time you see him, just before he is injected with venom by the tarantula so it can eat him, the make up is so over the top that he appears to have one eyeball that has melted all the way down the side of his face. If this sounds silly, it is.

What also sounds silly but, really isn’t, is the way the live footage of a real tarantula is scaled up and inserted into the shots. This kind of approach rarely looks good but, in Tarantula, Jack Arnold just about gets away with it... it looks quite acceptable and decent. I say almost because, on one tell tale shot where the big guy is one again clambering over a small mountain, some of its legs disappear behind the sky so, you can definitely see where the live action and the miniature were badly lined up, in that instance. 

And, big spoiler here, the Tarantula is finally put down in the final reel by a jet fighter pilot firing rockets or napalm or some such. The close up shots of the pilots eyes (pretty much the only thing visible of his face) combined with his voice, made me sit up straight. I looked it up and this is, indeed, the second uncredited screen role in a Jack Arnold film for a young Clint Eastwood, seen here piloting a jet long before his stint in Firefox. And, of course, this film’s leading lady would, as I said earlier, play a supporting part in four of Clint’s movies too. I wonder if this film is the first time they met... or even if they did meet as, I don’t think Clint shares a screen with anyone in this film... just sits in the cockpit, talking into his radio. 

And that’s me pretty much done with the quite entertaining but, really not great, Tarantula. The score is a mix of original and old rerecorded and tracked in pieces, from the sound of it... the opening Universal logo was the tip off for me on that front, which begins with the same opening bars as Creature From The Black Lagoon. It’s all quite effective though and very much of its time. Let’s face it, though, while Tarantula may not have the thrills and spills of certain other, more thoughtful atomic age monster movies, it’s still quite watchable and, if you have a hankering for spending time with this kind of thing (and who doesn’t?), then you’ll certainly want to be adding Tarantula to your list, if you’ve not seen it before. 

Universal Terrors 1951-1955

Terror Forming

Universal Terrors 1951-1955
By Tom Weaver with David Schecter,
Robert J. Kiss and Steve Kronenberg
McFarland Books
ISBN 9780786436149

A quick shout out to a great book which is actually so dense in content and information that, with my lack of amount of free time these days, it took me a fair amount of time to read and absorb. Subtitled Eight Classic Horror and Sci-Fi Films, Tom Weaver’s Universal Terrors 1951 - 1955 is an exhaustive tome written by the same team (with one addition) behind The Creature Chronicles (reviewed by me here).

This one is pretty much a ‘making of’ style book about the production (plus pre and post) and making of eight specific movies, most of which I knew fairly well. These include three which I wouldn’t necessarily myself had counted as being typical of the films Universal were churning out to their horror fan base in the 50s... those being The Strange Door, The Black Castle and Cult Of The Cobra. The other five are all ones which I would instantly associate with that decade’s predilection for atomic aged monsters... either rediscovered, mutated or out of this world... namely It Came From Outer Space, Creature From The Black Lagoon, This Island Earth, Revenge Of The Creature and Tarantula.

The lion’s share of the volume is written by Weaver with his usual doses of humourous writing and the occasional judgemental eye at the behaviour and credibility of cast and crew, many of whom he has interviewed in his many years over his career as a film historian specialising in such B-movie gems... for instance, you can tell how he feels about director Jack Arnold and the stories he’d spun throughout his life (and perhaps he’s right to make that judgement call). Other writers also have their own specialist sections within the chapters, with the layout of the book being an introduction (including a great, hand drawn map of the Universal International front lot at the time) followed by eight big chapters with sub sections by Weaver, followed by the great David Schecter (who I have a lot of respect for in his coverage of the music, considering how many of those film scores he’s rerecorded and raised from the dead on his CD label Monstorus Movie Music), Robert J. Kiss and Steve Kronenberg.

Each chapter is split into sections being Full Credit Information, then Weaver’s big chunks following Production History, which includes sub sections on Synopsis, Cast Biographies, Production and Marginalia (with some wonderful doses of interesting trivia)... before going onto the other writers’ sections exploring The Release (including Critics Corner which quotes various quotes from reviews from the films’ initial releases), The Music Score (very detailed breakdowns including many notes on who wrote what and which bits were tracked in from other identified movies) and a final Analysis section.

And, yeah, it’s pretty thorough. If you want a blow by blow account of which actor or stuntman ‘so and so’ were doing on 3pm on a given day on the shoot, if that was of any interest... you are going to find it all in here. It gets very interesting when the notes from the day’s shooting doesn’t correspond to how people later remembered things from that day.

Among many nuggets which I learned for the first time (except from the two chapters on Creature From The Black Lagoon and Revenge Of The Creature, which are cut down versions of the chapters in the book on the trilogy of movies covered in the aforementioned The Creature Chronicles) are such gems as the fact that long standing Robin Hood actor Richard Greene was actually the grandson of motion picture pioneer William Friese-Greene. Or that Charles Drake (no, not Charlie) was sometimes a drunken mess and once assaulted an actress outside her home for publicity. And I also didn’t know that Jeff Morrow went on to become the face of Suntory Whisky in Japan for a while (just like director Akira Kurosawa was and, fictionally, Bill Murray’s character was in Lost In Translation... from what I remember). There’s also some criticism thrown into the mix on the extent of Ray Bradbury’s involvement on the screenplay for It Came From Out Of Space.

And, like I said, a short review and that’s all I’m going to say about Universal Terrors 1951 - 1955 other than to say that, if you were a ‘monster kid’ as many Americans are fond of labelling a certain kind of horror movie enthusiast (as I guess I was, to the extent that you could be in the UK) then you are probably going to love this book and should maybe try and grab a copy. It’s a long read with many facts and figures (and previously rarely seen photos from the productions) plus it’s entertainingly written and certainly an enlightening experience, for sure. Definitely worth the price of admission.

Revenge Of The Creature

The Giller Memorandum

Revenge Of The Creature
USA 1955
Directed by Jack Arnold
Universal Blu Ray Zone A

After the incredible success of Creature From The Black Lagoon in 1954 (which I reviewed here), a sequel was inevitable and director Jack Arnold returned for the gig. If you’re into your trivia, this one was released (less widely is my understanding) in 3D in selected venues and so this one counts as the very first time a 3D movie had received a sequel shot in the same process.

Now, although this was reportedly the most successful of the three Creature features in terms of box office receipts, Revenge Of The Creature is not nearly as good as the first movie and the quality does tend to go down in terms of the three pictures as they go forward (the posters on the next one in the series promised much but had a huge drawback and is the most disappointing of the series). There are almost no characters joining the returning director from the first movie in this one. We basically have the titular Gill-man, who we last saw floating into the depths of the Black Lagoon as quite possibly a lifeless corpse (played by various actors, at least one of whom was the same as in the first picture) and we have, for about the first 15 minutes but in a much larger role than he had in the first one, Nestor Paiva as Captain Lucas, who takes the two man ‘safari expedition’ into the same area that he previously encountered the creature.

The story line is not nearly as punchy as the original but actually delivers a lot more on the expectations of the original picture. That is to say, this time around it’s more or less a remake of the 1933 classic King Kong (reviewed here). So, man brings creature back to be experimented on, trained and exhibited at Florida’s Marineland (see some of my early Al Adamson reviews for more mention of Marineland) and, even though the scientists are a bit mean to it (giving electric shocks to obey the command of “No” or “Stop”), it develops a kind of fish-man equivalent of Stockholm Syndrome, escapes and then stalks the lead female scientist while she’s out having a good time with her new leading man. Of course, all comes right at the end and we’re left with a conclusion which perfectly mirrors the final shot of the last movie. That’s about all of the story I need to cover right here.

In terms of actors we have the human ‘almost-villain’, who is a much lighter character and is the one responsible for bringing back the creature to civilisation... Joe, played by John Bromfield. We also have the leading lady Helen, played by the charming Lori Nelson and the real leading man, Professor Clete, played by John Agar. These last two, even though they spend a lot of the movie trying to shock condition the creature, thus ensuring the audience are fully sympathetic to the Gill-Man’s plight, are actually pretty sympathetic characters so we can completely root for John Agar as he runs around Florida with the police in a desperate attempt to retrieve his girlfriend from the clutches of the creature.

And, it’s an okay film but, like I said, nowhere near as good as the first movie. I’m not sure if there was any new score written for this one as a lot of it seems to be tracked in from the first movie, including the use of that three note creature theme probably even more often than in the previous installment. It has a certain mood or atmosphere that the first one doesn’t have which, due to the differences in the plot and the stalking of the creature running around Florida with Helen, as he tries to stay close to a water source, takes on an almost ‘slasher film’ atmosphere to it, it seems to me. Like I said, it’s a step down but in mimicking King Kong’s idea of a monster brought to civilisation and then breaking loose, it’s not just a retread of the first one, which I guess we can be thankful for. For that matter, neither is the third in the series but... yeah, I don’t really want to say too much about the third yet. I’ll get there on another review.

Of course, by now, Millicent Patrick, who had designed the original version of the title character, had already had her career ruined by Bud Westmore and was not around to work on the picture. I think where this really falls down for Universal is in the next film where... oh yeah... not talking about that one yet. One person who is around on this is a very young, uncredited Clint Eastwood in his first movie role, as a lab technician in one scene (see pictured above). That always makes me laugh.

So, anyway, this is one short review but it’s really not the movie the first one was and, I’d not recommend seeing Revenge Of The Creature (who has no real revenge issues at all, from what I can make out) without having first watched the glorious Creature From The Black Lagoon. So definitely check out the first one if you’re thinking of watching this one at some point.

Creature From The Black Lagoon in 3D

Creature’s Pet

Creature From The Black Lagoon in 3D
USA 1954 Directed by Jack Arnold  
Universal Blu Ray Zone B

There’s a reason why I took my Universal Blu Ray box set around to a friend’s house and stayed the weekend just so I could watch one of my favourite Universal monster movies on her television. It was pretty much to relive, to a certain extent, a moment from my childhood. I’ve probably blogged this story before somewhere on NUTS4R2 but since this is one of the films in question, I think it’s worth repeating here...

When I was a youngster in the early to mid 1970s, when I was maybe 7 or 8 years old, my parents took me into London to see a very special screening. It was in, I believe, a cinema in Piccadilly which was better known for screening “adult movies” and it definitely wasn’t the kind of place you’d expect to see this happening. The screening was a double bill of two movies projected in their original 3D format... Creature From The Black Lagoon and It Came From Outer Space. Now, you have to remember that this was the 1970s... 3D was a phenomenon pretty much unseen in cinemas since, maybe, the late 1950s? It was a few years before Star Wars would come out and make a splash on the art of cinema and a rare screening of a 3D movie was definitely something which was an education for this mere slip of a boy.

And this wasn’t the polaroid glasses of colour 3D movies or even the red and blue glasses that came out in the 1980s for certain 3D novelties... these were original prints from the 1950s and we had cardboard glasses with red and green surfaces in them. Now I have to say the fact that these were old movies certainly showed somewhat... It Came From Outer Space was pretty crystal clear but the Creature From The Black Lagoon print was kinda faded, from what I can remember. That didn’t necessarily make the movie lose its 3D but it was more of a struggle to watch without giving yourself a massive headache. But it really didn’t matter... I must have been the only kid in school who saw a 3D movie at that age (let alone two) and I’d always loved these kinds of movies anyway. I think it was the first time I’d seen either of these two, perhaps.

And that’s why, when I found out the basic set of Universal monster movies released on Blu Ray had an option to watch this one in 3D... I immediately rang up my friend and invited myself around. Now, I have to say that it’s ten times better here than I ever remember seeing it. Presented in its original widescreen aspect ratio, which means you don’t get to see the telephone poles rearing up above the undergrowth in the uncharted Amazon in certain scenes, the 3D on this one pops out like it’s not done in a long time and gives me a closer experience, I would suspect, to the movie if I’d seen it on it’s original run, some twenty years earlier than the screening I attended in the 1970s (for the record, I wasn’t born until 1968, people!). Certainly, the whole movie on this newish release looked crisper and more vibrant than I’ve ever seen it looking before and the lady I was watching it with was totally blown away by it, judging from her comments. And not, I hasten to add, on the quality of the 3D (although she did specifically mention how good that was compared to recent movies she’d seen in the format) but also the movie itself... which is nice.

So about the movie... I’ve always had a lot of love for the classic Universal monster movies and this one goes in the same niche as all the others... one of my “comfort horror movies” which I like to watch, not to be scared of (they really aren’t that scary these days) but as something I can sit back to and lazily drift along with, without having to think too hard. Being as it’s the first of the Creature From The Black Lagoon trilogy we’re talking about... I guess you could call it my creature comfort.

The film is based on a tall tale/urban myth that producer William Alland heard at a party one night about a ‘real’ half man/half fish creature and thought the concept would make a great horror movie. Alland went on to produce a lot of sci-fi tinted 1950s creature features but, if readers want to put a voice (at least) to the name, then he played the faceless voice of the interviewer who links all the pieces of Orson Welles classic movie Citizen Kane together... the newspaper reporter, hot on the trail to find out what Kane’s dying word meant.

Anyway, the film was scripted out, cast and produced in 3D and it was a fairly modest hit...  at least enough of a hit to spawn two sequels, Revenge Of The Creature (also originally released in 3D and a great follow up to the original) and The Creature Walks Among Us (which I think is the worst of the three, especially in terms of the monster make-up devised for this third outing).

The film starts off with the birth of the planet and explosions... well, it’s a 3D movie after all. They are constantly having to find things to chuck out of the screen at the audience. This is followed up with the discovery of a 3D ‘popping’ fossilised hand, a clawing living creature hand, the death of some explorers at the hands of the unseen creature and a new expedition to find the rest of the fossilised creature. This takes our fish scientist leading man, played by Richard Carlson, his boss played by Richard Denning and the object of both their affections, Carlson’s fiance played by Julie Adams, on a journey that takes them into close contact and unparallelled peril as they first try to catch the creature, who is fixated on Julie Adams’ character in much the same way that the titular giant ape was fixated on Fay Wray in King Kong. And after the reality of their situation becomes somewhat clearer, then they are just trying to escape it as the creature blocks off their exit from the lagoon which he calls his home.

While the film does trade in the whole beauty and the beast angle which set the cinema screens alight over twenty years earlier in King Kong, it doesn’t follow the same template where the creature is brought back to civilisation, escapes and goes on the rampage... they saved that one for the first sequel. That being said, the creature, beautifully designed by Millicent Patrick (mostly), certainly elicits the same kind of sympathy from the human audience that Kong did back in 1933. That’s one of the strengths of Creature From The Black Lagoon.

Another great strength of the movie would be the underwater sequences which are truly amazing and were the first of their kind in 3D. It was groundbreaking stuff and you can’t help but admire the amount of effort that went into these underwater shots... especially for the various actors in the creature suit. It was very much a case of shoot, air hose, shoot, air hose etc. A truly gruelling time from what I understand. However, when you see sequences like the “underwater ballet” as the creature swims below Julia Adams and her stunt double, mimicking the movements of the character just under her... and then gets bolder and touches her ankle... well, it’s totally worth all the effort and its a truly startling film, for its time.

The music in that particular scene is a little reminiscent of the two note motif John Williams used in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws and one wonders if he was aware of that at the time. Certainly the music of this movie is excellent, produced as a patchwork by various composers (as was the norm for these kinds of productions) by the likes of Hans J. Salter, Frank Skinner and even a young Henry Mancini. I was particularly please when I watched it again this time around that my friend actually agreed that the music was pretty good and, seriously, the three note stinger theme for the creature, played over and over throughout the course of the picture, is definitely not going to be something you’re going to forget in a hurry. If you want to get a really faithful rerecording, miked in the right way, then you can grab a beautiful CD of some selected highlights from the score by clicking this link to the record label Monstrous Movie Music here.

The film is an absolute pleasure to watch every time and with character actors like Whit Bissell popping up, it’s one I’m never going to get tired of, especially when the design of the creature itself is so provocative and beautiful. And having this new 3D transfer finally makes it worth having the scene near the end when the terrible, terrible bat special effect pops out of the screen to startle our creature hunting crew... it doesn’t make the effect look any less cheap but, hey, at least now it’s serving its practical function once more.

Honestly, I can’t heap enough praise on this movie and, frankly, nor do I have to. If you like the movie or have enjoyed this review, there’s a big behemoth of a book currently available at the time of writing this review called The Creature Chronicles: Exploring The Black Lagoon Trilogy by Tom Weaver, David Schecter and Steve Kronenberg which can tell you all you’d ever want to know about this particular series of films. The book is available from amazon here (UK) and here (US) and my review of it is here. I’m pleased to say that I had some feedback on that particular review in an email from one of the writers and they seemed pretty pleased with what I had to say about it so, seriously, if you trust me and you like these kinds of movies, go check the book out for yourself.

And that’s all I’ve got to say about Creature From The Black Lagoon. A truly beautiful, black and white movie with a team of rugged scientists, a beautiful woman and a wonderful gill man at the heart of the story... all hanging together pretty well, very entertainingly performed and with a score as ear catching as Julie Adams is eye catching. Definitely a fine moment in horror history and one to watch if you’re into cinema in any way, shape or form. A genuine classic and always a pleasure to watch... in its 3D or 2D version.