TrueHello
Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.
Zandra
The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.
Staci Frederick
Blistering performances.
Martin Bradley
Ok, it's not "Citizen Kane" but it is iconic with a pedigree going back to "Beauty and the Beast". "King Kong" told the same story but with a bigger creature and recently "The Shape of Water" paid it sufficient homage to pick up the Best Picture Oscar. We're talking about "Creature from the Black Lagoon" of course, just one of a handful of 'creature features' that Jack Arnold made in the fifties and which became classics of their kind.This is the one in which a man in a scaly wet-suit defends his little corner of the Amazon from marauding scientists before falling head over heels for the most glamourous one, (Jule Adams, cast as someone with a brain). The problem is the Creature wants her brain and every other inch of her too, not to chew up but to make Mrs Creature.The film was a huge success, particularly at drive-ins, and spawned two sequels, neither of which are remembered today. This is the genuine article with superb underwater photography and one of the most sympathetic monsters in the movies. It's a sub-genre that has captured the imagination since the earliest days of cinema and before and it still holds up today.
a_chinn
Proto-underwater horror film is enjoyable if not really all that great of a movie. A group of great white hunters/scientists and a lone bathing beauty are exploring the Amazon when they discover the titular creature, a half-man, half-fish of sorts who is bent upon stealing the woman and killing the men after they try to capture him. The creature is great and it's fun to see early underwater suspense scenes (characters swimming and not knowing what lurks in the shadows behind them or characters desperately swimming to a boat and trying to get their legs out of the water just in the nick of time) which would later be perfected by much better of films such as Steven Spielberg's "Jaws." Originally shown in 3-D, I do remember watching a special 3-D showing of the film on TV as a kid, but the version I just re-watched was a standard 2-D version. Overall, the Creature from the Black Lagoon is a iconic monster, even if it's not classic monster movie on parr with James Whale's "Frankenstein" or Tod Browning's "Dracula." FUN FACTS! Look fast for an uncredited Perry Lopez getting killed off in an early scene. Also, Ingmar Bergman watched this film every year on his birthday and Jean Renoir was an uncredited script doctor on the film.
Ian Brown
Director Jack Arnold saved an otherwise monotonous B-horror with a few imaginative touches. An amphibious man-monster is discovered in an Amazonian lagoon by explorer Richard Carlson and covets Julia Adams.The characterisation is two-dimensional, the story plodding. But you forgive all of that for that single scene where the Creature swims underneath Adams, unaware of what's stalking her, in a surreal aquatic sexual ballet. It's quite uniquely Freudian. Elsewhere, the story only gets slightly more exciting when the hero confronts it in a hauntingly dank grotto.The film spawned two rudimentary sequels. By now Universal was branching more into science fiction - alien invaders and atomic mutations - and Arnold became the film-maker most sympathetic to this sub-genre.
skybrick736
Creature from the Black Lagoon, the last great classic monster film produced by Universal films. Set in Brazil, the filming locations were really well done, making the area look like it could actually be the amazon. The creature itself is what makes the film so special. The monster suit, dead fish eyes, and underwater movement of the creature is fantastically well done. The swimming scenes are absolutely incredible and life like, especially when it ducks in the weeds and stares at its prey. It's a behavior that is completely realistic for what the viewer sees as a primitive creature. The story itself is rather simple and the film goes by quite fast. The lead actress, Julie Adams also was a bright spot in the film, having great screen talent and an incredible body to say the least. The film lacks in originality having the typical beauty and the beast theme but it still manages to entertain as a film from the 1950's, a time period not necessarily known for great horror films. Check out Creature from the Black Lagoon, certainly worth the watch if you can sit through a black and white classic.
