"The Creature from the Black Lagoon" (1954)

"In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form and void..."

These words are an interesting choice to bring us into the world of Jack Arnold's The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), a B-movie produced by Universal which has, of course, reached cult status in the ensuing years.

Released three years after John Huston's The African Queen (1951), Creature, in all of its black and white glory, might seem far removed from Huston's star-studded, Technicolor production, but for me, it's hard to ignore The African Queen when watching Creature.

For one thing, some of the footage in Creature looks like it could have been spare or reused footage from African Queen. But, more broadly, both films make it impossible to ignore the popularity of the 1950's jungle theme trend.

It makes perfect sense that Universal would finance a B-movie that makes use of the fad. After all, The African Queen had been the 11th most popular film released in 1951 (thanks, IMDb!), and was so popular, in fact, that Walt Disney would use the film as inspiration for a certain attraction at the new theme park he was opening a few years later in southern California (The Jungle Cruise ride at Disneyland is still a popular attraction today).

All that was left for Universal to do was to figure out how to make a quick buck off of African Queen's success.

Of course, that isn't to say that Creature doesn't have a lot to offer in its own right.

Creature portends to be a film which deals with science; both of its main characters are scientists, and the voyage to the Black Lagoon to discover what marine life lurks in the unexplored waters is, of course, all for the purposes of scientific discovery (for everyone except for Mark, the third scientist, whose only goal seems to be to kill the Creature).

David, the main character, is the familiar "dedicated scientist" and much of the dialogue throws its lot in with clinical language, hoping that if it sounds the part, no one will question it (welcome to science fiction!).

The film's commitment to science portrays the field as both ground-breaking and flawed. While these are the people who are making the discoveries that are helping us understand the world we live in, our efforts are inevitably human and incomplete.

The Creature's only real monstrosity in the film is his otherness. Though the film is quick to have the Creature needlessly murder two innocent men at the start of the film in the Amazonian jungle, it seems to be in the film purely to have something to blame the creature for. It's unclear whether the Creature has any true understanding of what he is doing or why he would carry out these murders. In fact, many of the murders seem to be self defense.

What makes Creature terrifying is not necessarily the Creature. Watching the fish-man, I couldn't help but think of Marilyn Monroe's line in The Seven Year Itch (1955). Sure, the Creature was "scary-looking, but he wasn't really all bad. He just craved a little affection.... a sense of being loved and needed and wanted."

Maybe I'm sentimental, but really... couldn't the Creature just have felt hunted, felt he had to protect himself? I suppose that excuse would cover over a lot of sins. But surely this Creature, which, as far as we know, had lived for thousands of years in the waters of the Black Lagoon would only have continued living there peacefully if humanity had not interfered.

Whatever the Creature's motives, there's no denying that the film leaves the viewer with an omnious feeling, though not of the typical monster variety. There's no escaping the awareness that the Creature is a man in a suit, so this film does not lead to the simple fear that the Creature will pop out from under your bed. The real fear behind Creature is the way the film suggests unknown terrors that are yet to come.

Maybe this Creature is harmless (when not preyed upon), but what about all of the other creatures that science has not yet discovered?

For me, David's monologue to Mark is the moment of the film that has stayed with me the most:

"We’ve only just begin to learn about the water and its secrets,

just as we’ve only touched on outer space. We don’t entirely rule

out the possibility that there might be some form of life on another

planet. Then why not some entirely different form of life in a world

we already know is inhabited by millions of living creatures?"

This monologue is a refreshingly disturbing moment. Most of the film's writing is not too out of place for a B-movie (which I don't say pejoratively; I think the B-movie's writing tradition is just as valid as any other kind of film's classic form). There's a lot of the beginning writer's mistakes, most noticably the heavy use of character names in dialogue. But these things are not blemishes; they are part of what makes the film great.

The B-movie, in itself, is the bare bones of cinema, the back-to-basics, the appeal to the essential thrill we seek from stories. Like many other kinds of films which embrace the fundamental - from simplistic to raw to outrageously unapologetic - these are the kinds of films which reveal our ridiculous capacity to invent and imagine, even when it doesn't make sense.

The fact that Creature was so popular that it spawned two sequels, Revenge of the Creature (1955) and The Creature Walks Among Us (1956), also puts the concept of the B-movie franchise on the table. Now that we live in a culture which is overpopulated with big-budget sequels, prequels and the like (see my post on this topic here), it's a completely foreign idea to make a series of films for as little money as possible.

Creature seems to be written to allow for sequel possibilities. The fate of the Creature is left uncertain at the end. At one point, David's girlfriend and fellow scientist, Kay, asks "Do you suppose it remembers Mark's attack and seeks revenge?" This line seems to be the inspiration for the second film in the series, Revenge of the Creature.

The B-movie could deliver a series for cheap and in as little time as one decided was necessary. The decline of Universal's monster pictures, like Creature, as well as the other studio B films would logically come with the advent of television, where viewers could get more (or less) complex stories in a wider variety from the comfort of their own home.

And though it is obvious, Creature demonstrates that what was expected from sequels and studio-funded films has drastically changed in sixty years. Though television didn't put the movies out of business, as they originally feared it would, watching B-movies really reminds me of the major ways that studio practices had to (and have to) adapt, and how films like Creature would eventually lose their power and proliferation at the box office because of this.

Summary: The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) shares similarities in theme with The African Queen (1951), but offers its own considerations of science, monstrosity, and the changing idea of the franchise.