Sam Panico The first movie in the series, The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), opens on an Amazon expedition. A fossilized hand that shows webbed fingers points to a missing link between land and sea animals, so Dr. Carl Maia (Antonio Moreno, one-time rival to Rudolph Valentino during the Silent Era) leads an expedition to find a complete skeleton, which includes Dr. David Reed (Richard Carlson, It Came from Outer Space, Hold That Ghost) and financial backer Dr. Mark Williams (Richard Denning, An Affair to Remember).The first appearance of the Gill-man, as he frightens two assistants who then attack him, is startling. Even more so is how quickly he dispatches both men.Soon, the expedition on the tramp steamer Rita is underway, with Lucas (Nestor Paiva, who also appears in the sequel) as the stereotypically coarse sea captain, joined by the aforementioned crew plus Dr. Edwin Thompson (Whit Bissell, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Time Machine and many more) and Kay Lawrence (Julie Adams in an iconic role), the girlfriend of Dr. Reed. Despite the fact that no one has ever returned from the paradise the natives call the Black Lagoon, the crew decides to go deeper into the Amazon. They're stalked by the Gill-man, who takes notices of Kay and is caught in a dragline, escaping but leaving a claw behind.Like Jason Vorhees with gills, our antagonist wipes out the members of the crew. Only fire seems to harm the creature, who is smart enough to block the exit of the ship with fallen logs. Mark becomes obsessed with capturing or killing it, leading to him trying to fight the creature barehanded and getting his money having ass handed to him. The creature then takes Kay to his underwater lair, where David, Lucas and Carl hunt him down and shoot him multiple times.The movie ends with the creature slowly sinking, possibly dead. This will not be the last depressing close in this series, trust me. There's a real undercurrent of longing from the monster in this film, of which Adams said, "There always is that feeling of compassion for the monster. I think maybe it touches something in ourselves, maybe the darker parts of ourselves, that long to be loved and think they really can't ever be loved. It strikes a chord within us." This same emotional tie to the creature was expressed by Marilyn Monroe's character in The Seven Year Itch, who remarks that the Gill-man "just wanted to be loved."While we value today's props and love horror, to show you exactly how much Universal Pictures cared for their real stars, Forrest J. Ackerman bought the mask and claws of the Creature's costume from a young man. And how did that man get them? It turns out that after production wrapped on the three films in this series, they threw everything away. A janitor - the boy's father - rescued the claws and mask, as he felt that they would make a great Halloween costume for his son. thought the ensemble would make a good Halloween costume for his son. Other costume pieces were recently sold at auction by Bud, who was an assistant to Milicent Patrick, the original designer of the costume.

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.

Michael Ledo This review is for the Classic Monster Collection.I must say I was stunned at how well restored the production was done. It looked clearer than when I saw the film on TV in the sixties. The monster wasn't that scary from modern standards. I liked the opening as an elderly man in white asks an unmarried couple to help him with his prehistoric problem.This product is also in French. There are also English subscripts. There is a commentary by an historian who reads off of the director's notes for most part. The riverboat looked like the "African Queen" with the captain as dowdy as Charlie Allnut. What I liked about the film is that it didn't try to insult the intellect of the audience, bring in real science and characters that acted reasonably except for Mark (Richard Denning) who provided an additional antagonist.

Eric Stevenson I always feel bad when I don't give a movie the same rating as everyone else, but I really didn't care much for this movie. I had heard a lot of things about it, so I was eager to watch it. It just...didn't seem like anything special. It was by no means bad. The best parts are probably how good some of the conversations are. We get some interesting discussions about discovering new species and creating legends. Honestly, a lot of this was just boring. We do get some good scenes like when the creature is on fire. That was cool! I didn't know the whole movie was going to take place in the lagoon. It just seemed too small. Maybe I was expecting something like "King Kong" where we'd get everything on an epic scale. I do like the monster costume and the monster does have a fair amount of personality. The acting is fine. Maybe it's that I've seen so many movies that I couldn't find anything unique about this. I swear I can actually see the strings in the scene where the seagull is flying towards a guy! It's hard for me to like something with that in it. I apologize for not enjoying this like most people. I just thought it was mediocre. **1/2