La Revanche de la créature

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 (Fortunately, the baggy shorts the men wore in the first movie have been replaced by dinky, tight speedo-like ones here.)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.

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.

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!

"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

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.