CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON
1954
This one was definitely a 3D film. It shows from the filming. Can you spot 3D elements?
Of all the monsters that came after Universal’s “big four” Dracula, the Frankenstein monster, the mummy and the wolfman, the creature was the only one to develop a real following and a set of sequels. Not until the arrival of Freddie Kruger, Jason and Michael Myers would this really happen again, While the creature was enormously popular, it did not make a “name” out of Ricou Browning or Ben Chapman who played him in the original the way it did for Karloff, Lugosi and Chaney Jr. The men who played Jason and Michael Myers also have not become particularly famous. Only Robert Englund has achieved some vague notoriety.
The Creature from the Black Lagoon was the second 3D monster film dealing with some aspect of evolution. The Maze (1953) also with Richard Carlson was the other. Both are out on DVD
The Creature was of Universal’s more enduring monsters and survived (barely) two sequels The Revenge of the Creature (1956) The Creature Walks Among Us (1956 ). Ricou Browning played the creature in the water in all three films, Ricou, an excellent swimmer has tremendous breath control, and is obvious from the film, the Gill Man suit has no place to hide SCUBA gear. The actor playing the land version of the Gill Man changed in each film. In the first film Tahitian Ben Chapman (born in California) who stands 6’5” as opposed to Browning’s “miniscule” 6’3”! Chapman died earlier this year (2008) at 82 The role was taken in Revenge of the Creature by Tom Hennessy, a stunt man with many films to his credit, Hennessy nearly drowned during the filming when he jumped into the water/ Don Megowan played the “Gill Man” in The Creature Walks Among Us.
Several of the performers in the film were known to (or would become better known to) TV audiences.
The main performers in the film were not well known major stars, although Richard Carlson had appeared in two other films that are possible candidates for monster films – The Maze (1953) (already mentioned) and The Magnetic Monster (1953). He would become famous as Herbert Philbrick in the TV program I Led Three Lives a program seen as an anti-left program riding on the crest of the communist scare of the period. The program dealt with fictionalized adventures of the actual Philbrick who spied on the communist party for the US government. He was able to testify in 1949 that the training he received showed that one of the goals of the Communist party was to overthrow the American government.
Richard Denning was playing in the TV series Mr. and Mrs. North when he made Creature. He would later appear as the governor of Hawaii in Hawaii-50
The information about the stars is significant because the movie going and television watching public was accustomed to performers playing similar roles and expected it. This is a kind of intertextuality. Sometimes movie makers would surprise the audience by having actors play "against type". Carlson had already been seen in films playing a scientists and so it followed that he might do so here.
The ‘50’s (often known as “The Fabulous Fifties”) was a time of economic prosperity mixed with feelings of tension about the cold war. Kruschev’s famous sentence “We will bury you” and the ferreting out of actual spies did much to worry a people whose lives were otherwise relatively pleasant. There was growing “trust in America”, and a growth of religion with church attendance swelling. This led to a strong anti communist movement which result in the excesses of McCarthy and his attempts to ferret out Soviet spies and people with leanings towards “Godless communism”.
The return to “traditional values” but not behaviors led to a growing fundamentalist movement and with it returned the conflict between religion and science. This conflict becomes emblematic of the McCarthy era in Inherit the Wind, for example, a play about the famous Scopes monkey trial in which a teacher was brought to trial for teaching evolution. The play which appeared in 1955 (the film in 1960) was close to the original trial but intended to be a warning against dogmatism and the evils of McCarthyism.
So evolution has some relevance here and it does in this film too, although it is certainly minor. The question becomes what kinds of oppositions does the film set up between STATUSES? Again we have scientists (but no forces of order). The scientists differ among themselves. What positions do they advocate?
What can we say about the creature’s first appearance in the film? How is it handled? How is tension built up?
The hand is seen regularly before the whole of the Creature appears (a part represents the whole is called synecdoche as opposed to metonymy in which something associated with something is used to represent it - "Washington" is used for "The U.S. government").
The creature is called “The Gill Man” in the film. What can you say about his status? Where does he come from? Does he have a personality? Do you feel antagonistic or sympathetic towards him?
What can you say about the end of the film?
The film has been immortalized in paleontology circles. When Jenny Clack of the University of Cambridge discovered a fossil amphibian in what was once a fetid swamp, of the Carboniferous period some 360,000.000 to 300,000,000 years ago. She named it Eucritta melanolimnetes, which is Greek for "the creature from the black lagoon."
AFTER THE FILM
In what way are you aware of the 3D nature of the film? What shots are indicative of its 3D origins?
Do the scientists come to learn about the creature or to capture it for an exhibit?
Science for personal aggrandizement – science for the sake of knowledge
Money and science – knowledge for commercial gain.
There is also an opposition set up between natives and outsiders and like Kong, between something primitive and something modern.
Like Kong, the Gill Man has an interest in the main female character, Kay Lawrence (played by Julie(a) Adams, who did a great deal of television work and would become more popular for playing the real estate agent, Eve Simpson, one the long running Murder, She Wrote.
Creature is something dangerous lurking out of sight (like communists)
The creature is also very human in his interest in Kay. (How does this reflect on the interpretation of Kong as African?)
Does the “monster” have a personality? Does he exhibit traits like curiosity? Is his behavior understandable?
Does his contact with Kay awaken some more basic human traits?
The ant monsters of Them!. share a lot in common with American Indians in films, who often have little personality and amount to nothing more than an impending danger like a flood or swarm of locusts (see, for example Stagecoach)
The closest story line to Creature from the Black Lagoon is King Kong. The parallels are many. In both films, a solitary male animal, with surprisingly human like form and emotions lives in a wilderness setting. He is beset by people coming in from outside his world. One of the people is female and the animal develops some attraction to her. His curious pursuit of the woman leads to his downfall.
In King Kong the gorilla seems to represent some almost Id driven prehistoric creature whose attraction to the woman “feminizes/civilizes” him to the point where he is no longer competent to act and dies.
The Creature from the Black Lagoon, while remarkably similar in many ways seems to head off in a different direction. After a quick look at structural analysis, it is possible to examine that direction
STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS
Structural analysis is a kind of analysis associated with Claude Levi-Strauss, a well known anthropologist/folklorist. The basic idea was that the brain thinks in binary oppositions, and that similar oppositions in myths allow people to analyze the underlying meaning of the myth (i.e. its subtext). For example in his analysis of Oedipus he points out that the characters constantly over react and under react to relatives (Oedipus, for example, marries his mother and kills his father). Levi-Strauss also says that the names of the Oedipus family translate as left sided, lame and swollen foot and indicate difficulty in walking. These names are paired with “monsters” like the sphinx which are found in the Oedipus myth. Levi-Strauss claims that autochthonous creatures (those that are self generated – they spring from the earth) usually have trouble walking because their feet are attached to the ground and have to be torn loose to move about. The result is that the damaged feet match up with the names in the Oedipus family tree. Hence Levy-Strauss concludes that over reacting and under reacting to one’s family is a parallel to have no parents and the underlying question of the myth is “How can I have two parents, but only see myself as related to one”. In effect, the ancient Greeks saw their line of descent through the father, hence the mother’s side of the family was more or less ignored and the myth looks at this problem. Analysis is therefore done by setting up a set of “binary opposites” which allow for interpretation. A number of such opposites can be sit up with The Creature from the Black Lagoon The creature sets up a number of binary oppositions overtly in the film, while some others lie outside the film in the culture itself. Overtly the film sets up oppositions between:
On a cultural level from the 50’s is an us/them opposition which can be seen as democracy/communist
In some ways, the visitors are uninvited interlopers into the Creature’s domain. They find the creature scary and attack it. The creature retaliates.
In the first scenes, the creature comes to the tent of the people excavating the skeleton of a long lost ancestor of the creature and is immediately attacked with a lantern and a machete. He kills both attackers.
The film’s dialog indicates that “animals don’t attack unless you attack them” as Kay Lawrence (Julie Adams) points out. David Reed (Richard Carlson) admonishes Mark Williams (Richard Denning) for shooting at the creature which hadn’t attacked them
Mark also points out that we fear things we don’t understand (i.e. the Creature)
The story explains that people have much to learn from studying the creature (relating it even to space travel)
The oppositions suggest that the Gilman, who is not human, but sort of human, as something to offer, and that attacking it will only make it hostile. It implies that mercernary scientist (read capitalists) would destroy something we could learn from for a few dollars. The humanitarian scientist treis to save it and study it to learn about it.
The binary oppositiions lead to a possible interepretation of a political economic sort which favors an initially frightening system (communism) which has becoem dangerous because it has been attacked.
Although the story veers away from the religious, it is possible to see a parallel here betwen both Kong and the Creature with the biblical story of the garden of Eden and Adam. Adam, Kong and the creature are all males with no other of their species around, When a female is ultimately introduced she generates some problems for the males which leads invariably to loss of status (and in most cases death)
Creature can be seen as using this religious story as a metaphor, in effect making the intruders into Eden destoryers of it. The shot of Julie Adams tossing a cigarette into the lagoon which soon becomes the bodies of the drugged fish in indicative of this and the Reed statement in which he expresses worry about the creature being able to live in the water when drugged indicated the potentially lethal impact of the "civilized, techinically advanced" people on the rather pristine Eden.
In efffect, the invaders are indeed the serpent, even though the Creature is referred to by them as a "demon" .