The Creature Walks Among Us (1956) is the third, and final, film in the Creature from the Black Lagoon franchise. Here a group of the dullest scientists imaginable set off to find and capture the creature in the Florida everglades. after half an hour of nothing happening, they capture him, but burn him severely in the process. The only way to keep the creature alive is to surgically turn him into an air breather, which also somehow turns him from a thin, streamlined looking creature into a big hulking mouth breather. The rest of the movie is taken up by jealous husbands, spurned wives, ridiculous "science" and a now docile, depressed creature longing for the water he can never return to.
In watching this movie for the first time in a long time, I was reminded why I don't watch it much. While there's something to the idea of having the creature disfigured and saved in such a way that he would drown if he ever returned to the water, and continuing on the creature's depression under captivity in Revenge of the Creature, this movie just feels like a clumsy poorly realized cash grab. Several cast members will be familiar to viewers of other genre movies, such as Rex Reason and Jeff Morrow, but they and the others couldn't be less interesting in this film.
The creature itself has gone from being one of the most impressive looking movie monsters of all time to looking like a big thug in a mask. Yes, the creature is incredibly strong when rage gets the best of him, but always looks like a big beefy man wearing pajamas and a Halloween mask. All he wants to do is get the hell out of this movie and call it quits, and given the script, who can blame him.
No comments:
Post a Comment