Creature from the Black Lagoon
Creature from the Black Lagoon is a 1954 American black-and-white 3D monster horror film produced by William Alland and directed by Jack Arnold, from a screenplay by Harry Essex and Arthur Ross and a story by Maurice Zimm. It stars Richard Carlson, Julia Adams, Richard Denning, Antonio Moreno, Nestor Paiva, and Whit Bissell. The film's plot follows a group of scientists who encounter a piscine amphibious humanoid in the waters of the Amazon; the Creature, also known as the Gill-man, was played by Ben Chapman on land and by Ricou Browning underwater. Produced and distributed by Universal-International, Creature from the Black Lagoon premiered in Detroit on February 12, 1954, and was released on a regional basis, opening on various dates.
This article is about the film. For the eponymous character, see Gill-man.Creature from the Black Lagoon
Creature from the Black Lagoon was filmed in three dimensions (3D) and originally projected by the polarized light method. The audience wore viewers with gray polarizing filters, similar to the viewers most commonly used today. Because the brief 1950s 3D film fad had peaked in mid-1953 and was fading fast in early 1954, many audiences actually saw the film "flat", in two dimensions (2D). Typically, the film was shown in 3D in large downtown theaters and flat in smaller neighborhood theaters. In 1975, Creature from the Black Lagoon was released to theaters in the red-and-blue-glasses anaglyph 3D format, which was also used for a 1980 home video release on Beta and VHS videocassettes.[1]
Production[edit]
Producer William Alland was attending a 1941 dinner party during the filming of Citizen Kane (in which he played the reporter Thompson) when Mexican cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa told him about the myth of a race of half-fish, half-human creatures in the Amazon River. Alland wrote story notes titled "The Sea Monster" 10 years later, using Beauty and the Beast as inspiration. In December 1952, Maurice Zimm expanded this into a treatment, which Harry Essex and Arthur Ross rewrote as The Black Lagoon. Following the success of the 3D film House of Wax in 1953, Jack Arnold was hired to direct the film in the same format.[3]
The designer of the approved Gill-man was Disney animator Milicent Patrick, though her role was deliberately downplayed by make-up artist Bud Westmore, who for half a century received sole credit for the creature's conception.[4] Jack Kevan, who worked on The Wizard of Oz (1939) and made prosthetics for amputees during World War II, created the bodysuit, while Chris Mueller Jr. sculpted the head.[5]
Ben Chapman portrayed the Gill-man for the majority of the scenes shot at Universal City, California. The on-water scenes were filmed at Park Lake on the Universal back lot. The costume made sitting impossible for Chapman for the 14 hours of each day that he wore it, and it overheated easily. Due to these difficulties, Chapman often stayed in the studio's back-lot lake, frequently requesting to be hosed down. He also could not see very well while wearing the headpiece, which caused him to scrape Julie Adams' head against the wall when carrying her in the grotto scenes.
Ricou Browning played the Gill-man in the underwater shots, which were filmed by the second unit in Wakulla Springs, Florida.[3] While filming underwater, Browning reportedly held his breath for up to four minutes at a time.[6][7] In a 2013 interview, Browning clarified: "If you're not doing anything at all, four minutes is possible, but not if you're moving in the water. If you're swimming fast or fighting, you use up a lot of oxygen, and it cuts it down to, at the most, two minutes".[6]
Leonard Maltin awarded the film three out of four stars, writing: "Archetypal '50s monster movie has been copied so often that some of the edge is gone, but ... is still entertaining, with juicy atmosphere and luminous underwater photography sequences".[8] Film review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reports an approval rating of 80%, based on 44 reviews, with an overall rating average of 7.10/10. The consensus calls it "a solid, atmospheric creature feature that entertains without attempting to be deeper than it needs".[9] The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists: