The Creature from the Black Lagoon

Following the end of World War II, there was a boom in science fiction, both in literature and film. Writers like Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and Robert Heinlein wrote novels about space colonies, time travel, robots, and rocket ships. Movies from the serious to the silly also dealt with our relationship to the future and technology. There was the heavy-handed and didactic The Day the Earth Stood Still right along with the ridiculous Abbot and Costello Go To Mars and Cat-Women of the Moon. Science fiction has always been a way for us to explore the utopian or dystopian possibilities of our future as well as a method for us to deal with our anxieties about our present.

With the introduction of the atomic age and the Cold War, Americans had plenty to be optimistic about and plenty to fear. The American economy was roaring, and new scientific discoveries were being made regularly, but at the same time, uncertainty about the effects of atomic power and its influence on world politics underscored all of the country’s success with a shot of fear. Many sci fi movies from the era centered around invasions of some kind, an echo of worries about the Red Scare, and others focused on the ramifications of science gone wrong, which is often seen as a metaphor for concerns about the bomb. 

 In the case of one of the great B-movies of all time, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, it’s more a matter of being afraid of what science might discover. Released in 1954, the film’s iconography is among the most influential in monster movie history. Everyone knows the sight of the monster, the scaly, bug-eyed thing known as The Gill Man, and the phrase “from the Black Lagoon” is everywhere, including a series of kids’ books my daughter loves – The Teacher from the Black Lagoon, the Lunch Lady from the Black Lagoon, etc.  But what I find is that, even though people recognize the images, they generally haven’t seen the actual movie – which is a shame.

It is the epitome of mid-1950s B-movie sci fi. It begins with a geological expedition in the Amazon that discovers a fossilized hand of some kind humanoid fish creature. The geologist takes it to some colleagues and together they mount an expedition into unexplored regions of the Amazon River to find where it came from. Part of the team includes a scientist who simply wants to increase the world’s knowledge and his boss, who is driven almost exclusively by the financial gain a big discovery will earn. It’s like the two dueling voices of science and capitalism in crew-cuts and swim fins. Another scientist, Kay Lawrence played by Julie Adams, is on the team to serve as a voice of reason and not a small amount of 1950s era eye candy.

The team arrives at the Black Lagoon, the place where they think the fossil originated. Of course, the problems begin as they figure out that maybe not everything is as fossilized as they thought. The gill-man, an amphibious missing link, lurks in the dark waters and has no problem killing intruders as he finds them. However, in a stunning underwater sequence, the gill-man also encounters Kay as she swims around the lagoon in her iconic, blisteringly white bathing suit. Beast falls for the beauty, and the conflict between nature and science, reason and mystery commences. 

The cinematography is gorgeous, and the underwater sequences are borderline poetic. The gill-man suit is a marvel of movie making technology, especially for its time. As the creature advances on its victims, you can see its gills moving as he breathes. It’s high tech stuff for a rubber suit in 1954.

It’s silly and schlocky in many ways but as you watch it you see one thing after another that has been imitated, stolen, or riffed on. B-movie that it is, The Creature from the Black Lagoon still has a buzzy, atmospheric power that packs a punch today.