Creature from the Black Lagoon
Jack Arnold
Initial release: February 12, 1954 (USA)
When we think of Universal Monsters, we think of the classics of the 1930s and 40s: Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolf Man. Sometimes the Mummy, too. If we're particularly savvy we might recall the Hunchback and the Phantom from the 1920s. But despite an iconic status, something that often seems to get overlooked when discussing Universal is the Gill man, the fish-eyed, rubber-lipped fish monster of Universal's last great horror flick, Creature from the Black Lagoon, directed by Jack Arnold of It Came From Outer Space fame.
It's a simple enough story. Paleontologists discover the remains of a fossilized fishman in the Amazon basin; traveling downriver to a legendary lagoon the natives avoid, they search the lagoon for more evidence of the creature's existence, unaware that a very much living specimen lurks the waters and is hunting them.
Fishmen weren't new to the horror scene when Creature premiered in 1954. H.P. Lovecraft had gotten a lot out of the concept in his work, most prominently in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," his grim allegory against miscegenation. And Lovecraft likely got the idea from Robert W. Chambers' "The Harbor-Master," about a fishman terrorizing a local waterfront. Like a lot of horror concepts you can find elements of it in mythology as well. But Creature brought the idea to the popular consciousness: the idea of a prehistoric monster, possibly an off-branch of human evolution, certainly would have been exciting to a scientifically-minded 1950s audience.
In practice, however, the Gill-man isn't particularly interesting. While he's logically at his most graceful in the beautifully-shot underwater scenes, he and his costume are considerably less convincing on land. Arnold wisely chooses to avoid showing the Gill-man walking around too much; instead, we mostly get shots of his clawed hand, groping at the side of the river, murdering the native assistants, or grasping for someone through a porthole. Towards the end, Gill-man reverts to the classic movie monster fixation on women, carrying the female lead through its subterranean grotto (after bonking her head off-camera because the actor in the costume could barely see) only to finally be finished off by the male lead. It's meant to be tragic, but it comes off as hokey.
The real message of the film has little to do with the fishman himself and more to do with Mark, one of the scientists: ambitious, fame-obsessed, and willing to sacrifice anyone to get what he wants, which is undeniable proof of the existence of the Gill-man, even if it means he has to haul its corpse home. In an age where science was seen as both a way to advance society and destroy it, the character of Mark represents a darker side to science: the very human desire to achieve fame and fortune through new discoveries, whatever it may cost. He's less interested in studying the creature than he is putting it on display and charging for tickets. In the end, though, it's the Gill-man who triumphs.
In their own way, each member of the classic Universal Monsters canon represents their era somehow. Dracula and Frankenstein, released as they were at the start of the 1930s, evoked ancient evil and very human hubris at the outset of the Great Depression. The Wolf Man spoke to man's inner violence in the midst of one of the most destructive wars in history. And while Creature from the Black Lagoon has little to do with the nuclear age anxieties that would create Godzilla, giant ants and more, the Gill-man nevertheless suggests a cautionary tale, about messing with things we don't fully understand.
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