A Revanche do Monstro

No doubt designed to make a fast buck in the 50s, you still get the Gill Man, one of the coolest of all monster designs ever, and a woman to throw cars for and swim thousands of miles for in beautiful Lori Nelson.

Even in a production without much life, the Gill Man still seems

powerful and mysterious, and his biological drive to mate with Ms. Nelson is interesting considering the long lineage of sympathetic monsters in love with knock-out blondes and brunettes. Sadly, the idea of the monster, the tragic beast longing for what is impossible to him (Wolf Man, King Kong, the Mummy) is a distant memory in filmdom. There was the recent DARK MAN, and Nicholson's WOLF, but these are obvious throw-backs to a time when monsters were more than scurrying guerrillas attacking from the shadows or machine-like mass murderers who cannot be killed. I won't count fluffy-haired vampires, whose allure as suave parasites is not "monstrous". A monster, in classic terms, in love with a beautiful woman, is denied her by the facts of their existence. Either because of grotesqueness or species-differences,

the monster endures pain, capture, and often death in his attempt to carry a Lori Nelson in his arms through a moonlit swamp.

In REVENGE the Gill Man is probed, prodded, and stared at by tourists, definitely the worst fate, though this allows the Creature to establish a magnetic attraction to Lori Nelson. You get a great escape, more Lori Nelson in bathing suits, a big bohunk who has an unhealthy fetish with wrestling the Gill Man hand-to-hand, and lots more Lori Nelson in a bathing suit. What you don't do is watch this movie for any reason but to see the Gill Man thrash in the water and smack

bohunks...and if you're a fan of the Creature and classic monsters, you'll understand the tragic consequences when you're a walking fish-man who's half-man enough to love a human woman, and whose tears probably would never show, in the depths of the deepest lagoons.

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.

More like revenge of the director.

Maybe it's the smug aura of John 'what is it I don't know' Agar, but this one seemed less like a horror flick and more like an inaugural presentation for Sea World. Wouldn't that have been a a great match up: Gill Man vs Shamu! This orca ain't no alligator you can snap in half.

Helen Dobson is a nice distraction from the relenting slow pace quite apparent in the film. Her expertise in ichthyology is most impressive especially in that white swimwear. Can you really blame the Gill Man for trying? Give this movie credit for the creature's special effects. Keeping in mind this was made in 1955, the articulate detail for Gilly adds this other worldy effect and it's so bizarre seeing any scene where his gills flap in and out.

Poor GM, he was just misunderstood. How would you react to repeated cattle prodding?

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.

"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