So last night , after a weekend of science-fiction and horror discussions, I was in the mood for a classic Universal horror film and gravitated instantly towards my all time favorite of those films, Creature From The Black Lagoon. Creature is a marvelous film that still holds up remarkably well today, 56 years after its initial release. (1954) With two enormous chili-dogs I settled in for a pleasant night of chills and entertainment from the classic film.

The story is simple, A scientist find a unique fossil far up the Amazon river. It is incomplete, but suggests a whole new order of amphibian life.He consults with fellow scientists and they launch an expedition to hopefully find the rest of the curious fossil. Of course what they find is so much more than a fossil, a living specimen of the new amphibian order, the Gillman, know to us primarily as The Creature.

So much of this film seems to recall King Kong for me. The isolated locale, the native myths, the somewhat sympathetic portrayal of the monster, the monster’s fascination with a beautiful woman, all echo the themes that we can find on Kong, while exploring them in a different and more personal setting. Continue reading →