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.

Director Jack Arnold and company took great care in this one to make the 3-D effects look more natural. While there are no chairs or spears thrown at the camera, there are still plenty of thrilling moments when the creature advances into view and even a couple of false frights, as when a threatening shadow turns out to be no more dangerous than Lori Nelson's hand.

Admittedly the screenplay has its weak links. Depending largely on unlikely co-incidences, the storyline pays scant regard to consistency or logic, while the dialogue is not only trite and banal but seems to go out of its way to provide a persistent assault on the viewer's intelligence by explaining what we can actually see for ourselves. No-one can walk to the bathroom in this film without someone providing a running commentary. Worse, the characters prove little more than pasteboard figures which indifferent actors like Agar and Nelson struggle to bring to life. Miss Nelson is further handicapped by the large amount of make-up she was forced to wear for the 3-D cameras. True, the effect seemed not only attractive but perfectly natural when the original film was projected through a 3-D filter and then viewed through polaroid glasses. She still looks great when framed through a Marineland window, but in bright sunlight the effect now looks ridiculous.

Of course, the Creature himself seems far less menacing (and far more obviously a stuntman in an ill-fitting rubber suit) when exposed to the glare of flat, over-bright 2-D scrutiny.

Nonetheless, the skill of Jack Arnold's direction, particularly in his efforts to disguise obvious 3-D tricks and use depth to produce shock in a seemingly more realistic way, gives the movie sufficient interest and vigor to overcome all script and histrionic short-comings.

Production values benefit from location filming and it's good to see Scotty Welbourne handling all the photographic chores on this one, both underwater and main unit. Of course, in 2-D the picture looks over-lit as it was lensed with 3-D's 20% light reduction firmly in mind.

After the success of "Creature from the Black Lagoon", Universal Studios figured audiences would want to take another dip with the Gill Man and they were right. This time, marine biologist Bromfield hires the same boat captain that took the first set of scientists to the lagoon and sets out to capture the creature. After bombing the place (and killing all the fish....apparently ecology was but a thing of the future!), he captures the comatose creature and ships him to Florida to be an attraction and an experiment at an aqua park. He is joined by researcher Agar and student Nelson (looking and sounding far more mature than her 22 years!) who attempt to train the creature to respond to human commands. When the Gill Man has had enough of being chained to the floor of a huge aquarium and being prodded and tormented by his captors, he breaks loose, nabs Nelson and leads the police on a massive chase along the Florida coastline. This second entry (with one more sequel to come) doesn't have the same creepy atmosphere of the original, but it more than makes up for it in campy, unintentionally humorous ways. Agar gives a very routine performance, smiling idiotically at various points, then reverting to stoicism. Nelson runs hot and cold, too. In her first scene, when she witnesses a man being attacked by the creature, her expression is along the same lines as discovering that her soufflé fell while she was gabbing on the phone. She improves as it goes along, but is given some goofy things to say and do. She is hardly a match for the divine Julie Adams in the original, though her dress at the end is lovely and she gets to do what had to be a partial inspiration for Alfred Hitchcock's shower scene in "Psycho". Bromfield, not long after having frolicked with Esther Williams in "Easy to Love", has a more difficult swimming partner this time as he continuously wrangles the Gill Man. His tan, beefy looks fill out his teeny swim trunks beautifully, though his role eventually becomes a bit of a throwaway. (Fortunately, the baggy shorts the men wore in the first movie have been replaced by dinky, tight speedo-like ones here.) Future stars Eastwood and Halsey appear in bit parts. Eastwood has the most lamentable role as a sort of backward lab technician who can't keep track of the four mice he's been placed in charge of. Halsey has it better as a college student who has a run-in with the creature. The film is chock full of dry, now-hilarious moments of drama and bizarre plot details that make little or no sense. Nelson befriends a dog that roams into the aqua park and then has it living in her hotel room? The creature can track Nelson on land from the ocean? A police dispatcher feels it necessary to announce that she's a "pretty" student when detailing her kidnapping. When the monster goes on his rampage, a woman blithely lets go of her daughter who then falls at the feet of the creature. Miraculously, though he has mauled and killed men beforehand, he lets the mother kneel down and protect the child. In this film, more than in the original, audience sympathy leans towards the creature. After all, he was dragged form his home and then placed on display. The "training" sequences are remarkably cruel. Nelson places a box of food near him and as he reaches for it, Agar stabs him with a bull prod! Nice! Then she does the same thing with a ball. She entices him to play with it and then here comes the prod again! (Incidentally, the whole prod issue seems unlikely to work the way it is shown.) It does, however, turn a bit funny when the Gill Man retreats and sits on a rusty anchor. As in the original, there's an underwater swimming sequence, this time with Agar and Nelson canoodling while the creature lurks. Gill Man could have easily snatched her and gone off, but then there'd be no film. Even amongst all the goofiness, a modicum of suspense makes its way into the movie. Again, the monster gets some surprising mobility and speed underwater and is pretty threatening. This film draws from past classics ("King Kong"), yet inspired future movies as well ("Jaws 3-D", "Orca".) Far from a true classic, it entertains in spite of itself.

MORD39 RATING: ** out of ****

This first sequel to CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON is pretty standard stuff, although I've always preferred the look of the monster in this film even over the original. He appears darker and somehow that strikes me as better.

Other than that, it's pretty much run-of-the-mill as the Creature is captured and then escapes from a Marineland attraction. I suppose that the idea of the Creature becoming a major attraction as a sideshow exhibit is interesting, but it becomes tedious at times as we watch John Agar and Lori Nelson try to train and feed him in his new environment. Lori Nelson has some pretty dumb dialogue at times, too.

This film is not beyond enjoyment, though. When you consider that JAWS 3D (also from Universal) copied the idea of this film with disastrous results, REVENGE OF THE CREATURE looks pretty decent indeed.

"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