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.

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. 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.

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 it impossible for Chapman to sit for 14 hours of each day that he wore it, and the suit overheated easily. Due to these difficulties, Chapman often stayed in the studio's back-lot lake, frequently requesting to be hosed down. The headpiece obscured Chapman's vision, which caused him to accidentally 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. While filming underwater, Browning reportedly held his breath for up to four minutes at a time. 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."

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." The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:

  • 2001: AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills – Nominated
  • 2003: AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains:
  • Gill-man – Nominated Villain

Psychoanalyst Barbara Creed provided a feminist reading of classical movie monsters like the Creature or the Phantom of the Opera, arguing that despite their superficially masculine characterizations, their antagonization of a powerful male hero instead positions them as opponents of the patriarchal social order, thus imbuing them with feminine traits and creating a sympathetic connection between them and the women they victimize.

In 2025, The Hollywood Reporter listed Creature from the Black Lagoon as having the best stunts of 1954.

Sequels and remakes

Sequels

Creature from the Black Lagoon spawned two sequels: Revenge of the Creature (1955), which was also filmed and released in 3D in hopes of reviving the format, and The Creature Walks Among Us (1956), filmed in 2D. A comedic appearance with Abbott and Costello on an episode of The Colgate Comedy Hour aired prior to the first film's release. The appearance is commonly known as Abbott and Costello Meet the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Cancelled remakes

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In 1982, John Landis wanted Jack Arnold to direct a remake of the film, and Nigel Kneale was commissioned to write the screenplay. Kneale completed the script, which involved a pair of creatures, one destructive and the other calm and sensitive, being persecuted by the United States Navy. A decision to make the film in 3D led to the remake being canceled by producers at Universal, both for budgetary concerns and to avoid a clash with Jaws 3-D. He originally hired Bill Phillips to write the script, while Rick Baker was hired to create the 3D model of the Creature, but the project never got the green light. Herschel Weingrod and Timothy Harris wrote a new script,

In February 1996, Ivan Reitman was planning to direct the remake, but it never materialized. With the financial success of The Mummy remake in May 1999, the development of the Creature from the Black Lagoon remake was revived. In December 2001, Gary Ross signed on to write and produce the remake with his father, Arthur A. Ross, one of the original's writers. He told The Hollywood Reporter: "The story my father wrote embodies the clash between primitive men and civilized men, and that obviously makes it a fertile area for re-examination".

In August 2002, Guillermo del Toro, a fan of the original feature, was attached to direct a remake. He had hoped to do a story focused more on the Creature's viewpoint while also letting him have a successful romantic liaison. He later went on to turn this idea into the 2017 film The Shape of Water after Universal rejected the concept. Because of these creative clashes and his commitments to many other projects, Universal dropped del Toro and hired Tedi Sarafian (credited on Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines) to write a script in March 2003.

In October 2005, Breck Eisner signed on as director. He said to be a fan of the film: "As a kid, I remember loving Jack Arnold's original version of this film. What I really want to do is update an iconic image from the '50s and bring in more of the sci-fi sensibility of Alien or John Carpenter's The Thing (1982)". Ross said in March 2007 the Gill-man's origin would be reinvented, with him being the result of a pharmaceutical corporation polluting the Amazon.

However, the production was delayed by the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike; as a result, Eisner instead made The Crazies (2010), the number-one project on his priority list. His new goal was to finish The Crazies and then begin filming Creature from the Black Lagoon in Manaus, Brazil, and on the Amazon River in Peru. Eisner was inspired to shoot on location by the film Fitzcarraldo, and the boat set had been built. Eisner continued to rewrite the script, which was to be a summer blockbuster full of "action and excitement, but [still] scary". Eisner spent six months designing the new incarnation of the Gill-man with Mark McCreery (Jurassic Park, and Davy Jones' designer). The director said the new design was "very faithful to the original, but updated" and that the Gill-man would still remain sympathetic. In 2009, it was reported that Carl Erik Rinsch might direct a remake that would be produced by Marc Abraham, Eric Newman, and Gary Ross; however, a project featuring the ensemble had been abandoned by 2011.

In March 2012, Universal announced that a remake was in production and would simply be titled The Black Lagoon rather than Creature from the Black Lagoon to distinguish between the two versions. In October, the studio hired Dave Kajganich to write the film. The film was expected to hit theaters by May 2014 but was ultimately canceled. In 2020, Universal was considering Scarlett Johansson and Chris Evans

for a remake.

Universal Pictures, beginning as early as 2014, began developing a shared universe of rebooted modern-day versions of their classic Universal Monsters, with the studio having various films in different stages of development. The series began with The Mummy (2017) and was intended to be followed by the remake of Bride of Frankenstein in 2019 prior to the critical and commercial failure of The Mummy. The Creature from the Black Lagoon was a remake also intended to be developed within the reboot with a story written by Jeff Pinkner and a script written by Will Beall. In June, Kurtzman revealed that the Gill-man in this film would be from the Amazon, but on November 8, Alex Kurtzman and Chris Morgan moved on to other projects, leaving the future of the Dark Universe even further in doubt. In January 2019, the Dark Universe film series was officially scrapped.

In August 2024, it was announced that James Wan was in talks to direct a remake of Creature from the Black Lagoon. Sean Tretta was reported to be set to write the screenplay based on a treatment by Wan, Rafael Jordan, and Bryan Coyne.

Legacy

  • A 1992 Bally pinball machine, Creature from the Black Lagoon was licensed and loosely based on the film, incorporating a holographic version of Gill-man.
  • The fossil species Eucritta melanolimnetes ("true creature" + "from the black lagoon") is named after the film.

References

Bibliography

  • Ferrari, Andrea. Il Cinema Dei Mostri. Milan, Italy: Mondadori, 2003. .
  • Murray, Andy. Into the Unknown: The Fantastic Life of Nigel Kneale. Stockport, Cheshire, UK: Critical Vision, 2005. .
  • Warren, Bill. Keep Watching the Skies: American Science Fiction Films of the Fifties, 21st Century Edition. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2009, (First edition 1982). .
  • The Reel Gill-man – official site of Ben Chapman, who played the Gill-man
  • Rerecording of Creature from the Black Lagoon soundtrack
  • "Creature from the Black Lagoon" (released 70 years ago today in 1954) - Behind the Scenes—gallery