La vendetta del mostro

The Creature from the Black Lagoon is back! This time he's captured by scientists and transported to an aquarium in south Florida...

Jack Arnold returns as director, and he has brought Ricou Browning back as the creature. 1950s science fiction lead John Agar is also here, making this a pretty solid sequel. (And who can be opposed to a film with Clint Eastwood in it?)

I guess a lot of people harp on this film. Mike Mayo calls it "insipid" and "a joke." Howard Maxford calls it "run-down". Well, I like it better than the original. I really, truly do. I feel more happens and the plot is more developed. I would have to watch both again to make a definitive statement, but I watched them both back to back and was bored by the first compared to the second.

In all fairness this movie should be judged for what it is .... a 1950's B Monster movie flick. I give it high marks in this area. It may not have the shock and scare value as it predecessor "The Creature of the Black Lagoon" but I find it to be a good representative of it's genre. A lot of this film was shot at Marineland in Florida at a time before there ever was a Sea World. As a kid I was amazed at some of the scenes in the film such as "The Creature" over turning a car as he was escaping the Aqua Park, and jumping out of a huge aquatic tank to attack the audience. Recently I talked with Ricou Browning (who played "The Creature") and determined that Universal Studios used wires to turn over the car that was supposedly thrown by the Creature. Wires were once again used to pull the Creature out of the large tank at Marineland as the Creature attacked actor, John Bromfeld. Seconds later he was attacking the Marineland crowd. As a young theater goer I found this fascinating. This film has been taking a lot of heat from some of your web site critics. I think it is well worth watching to see how the old Hollywood crowd use to scare us at the Drive-In. If nothing else it serves as a pleasant stroll down "memory lane".

Yep, the gill-man from "Creature from the Black Lagoon" is back! This time, they capture him and put him in a Florida aquarium. But sure enough, the poor sucker has the hots for a beautiful young woman.

"Revenge of the Creature" is simply a fun movie to watch. Admittedly, a lot of it is VERY dated, but we can understand that. To be certain, a specific shot of Lori Nelson must have given millions of boys their first carnal experience. Of course, one of the most significant things about this movie is the appearance of Clint Eastwood in his debut: he plays the lab technician who can't find his mouse. Dirty Harry isn't feeling so lucky in that scene after all! Anyway, it's the sort of movie that you just watch to enjoy. They must have had fun making it. Also starring John Agar (Shirley Temple's first husband).

Like I said: millions of boys must have LOVED that one shot of Lori Nelson!

Okay, this sequel is miles away from having the taut tension, creepy atmosphere, wonderful character acting, and decent script the original The Creature From the Black Lagoon had. No argument here. But, this film does have its moments, and at the very least is an adequate sequel. It has little of the suspense of the first film, especially in the first 45 minutes where very little of note occurs. Two fellows and the wonderful Nestor Paivia are back on the Rita in search of the missing link creature. They capture him, and the creature is transported to a Sea World type of place for housing, experimentation, and to be gawked at. The creature shows the scientists there, the male lead is John Agar with his hokey yet enjoyable acting style and the female is Lori Nelson who can at the very least fill out a swimsuit very nicely, that he can think and is very closely related to man. Eventually he escapes and falls in love with the beautiful Nelson and abducts her and moves along the waterways....leaving her on the land while he gets back in the water. It's a romance that will bring tears to your eyes. The script is probably the weakest link in the film as we are asked to believe that the creature knows where and when Nelson will be when he crashes a party at a bar and steals her away...literally! The acting is pretty standard here. No one in particular stands out except good old Nestor. Clint Eastwood has a brief and silly cameo in the beginning of the film. What about the creature? He is impressive. The underwater shots are handled nicely by director Jack Arnold. The film also says something about man's nature to toy with nature for his own pleasure...whether that pleasure takes the form of clinical scientific research or in just spending a day at an aquarium staring at some kind of natural freak.

"Revenge Of The Creature" is at best a sequel that pales in comparison to the original, and pretty well done, "Creature From The Black Lagoon." A lot of what made the original movie work is missing here. The performances aren't as good, Lori Nelson (while attractive) isn't as head turning beautiful as Julie Adams was in the original, and, being set mostly (except for the first few minutes) in Florida rather than the Amazon, the sequel lacks some of the mystery of the original.

In "Revenge," the gill-man is captured by scientists and brought to some sort of public aquarium to be studied and to serve as a big attraction for the tourists. Admittedly, one thing this movie had that I didn't find in the original was a bit of sympathy for the creature. You can't help but feel a bit sorry for him chained in the tank and jolted with cattle prods on a regular basis as the tourists gawk at him. The creature is much more the focus of this movie, and the violence he commits is shown much more graphically (although all within the acceptable tastes of 1955, of course.) Where the creature isn't the focus, the movie weakens dramatically. The romance between Clete and Helen was a sort of "ho-hum, who really cares" experience, and why in the world we needed to be introduced to so many cutesy animals doing tricks (the porpoise, the chimpanzee) was beyond me. One thing I couldn't figure out was - even given his obsession with her - how the creature kept managing to find Helen in a variety of places.

Admittedly, the creature is a fun monster to watch; the movie unfortunately is less so. 5/10