"Creature From The Black Lagoon" -1954.

Tagline: "Creature from a million years ago!... every man his mortal enemy... and a woman's beauty his prey!"
Or: "Centuries of passion pent up in his savage heart!"

Let's talk poster. Like a few other posters I have seen this one is fairly true to the movie. The girl looks exactly like the girl in the movie, the Gill Man really does scoop her up and there really are divers with spear guns. My only complaint: why is Gill Man wearing Covergirl Lip Perfection (TM)?

Okay look, Universal Studios, your math is faulty. First you get the period wrong. Doctor Reed says the lagoon appears as it was "150 million years ago, during the Devonian Age." He is off by at least 200 million years. The Devonian period began about 400 million years ago and ran to about 350 million years ago. Duh! Everybody knows that. Second, The scientists in this movie keep misusing terms for the geologic time scale. They refer to the Devonian as an "age" and as an "era". Wrong. The Devonian is a period, which is shorter than an age and longer than an era. Geologic time is divided from longest to shortest, Eon > Era > Period > Epoch > Age. So there! Nyah! I feel better.

Plot: Doctor Maia discovers the hand of an unknown amphibian in layers of sediment while on an expedition deep in the Amazon.

He gets more money and scientists to dig up the rest of the fossil in the form of our main cast.

 From left to right we have Dr. David Reed, his fiancee Dr. Kay Lawrence, Head Jerk Dr. Mark Williams, and, because crap runs downhill, junior scientist Dr. Edwin Thompson. He's mainly there to bite his tongue while Mark makes an ass of himself. And smoke his pipe, because apparently at least one scientist per B-movie has to smoke a pipe.
They hire a grungy man, Lucas,

and his equally grungy boat, Rita, to take them up the Amazon river (why does no one ever go "down" the Amazon?) to the discovery site. There they find Dr. Maia's helpers all dead.

Lucas explains the wounds look like a jaguar. Well, the wounds don't make a picture that looks like a jaguar. He means the attack looks like it was done by a jaguar. Although that would be pretty cool, in a horrific way. Anyway, we the audience know that it was not a jaguar. (Face palm!)
Eventually, the Gill Man (that's a trademark, people!) reveals himself to any and all.

Luckily he has no genitalia, or this film would have never made it past the censors. Not too sure how the Gill Man would procreate, given he hasn't any junk. He is an amphibian, so maybe there are little Gill-Tadpoles somewhere in the lagoon. Mrs Gill Man in her plaid apron, whipping up some Yankee pot roast for her hard-working monster....Wow! I am way off topic. Where was I? Oh yes.
Once the various doctors see there is a living version of the fossil they were so keen to find, Head Jerk Mark

orders the rest to help him capture or kill the Gill Man. Not surprisingly, Gill Man isn't thrilled with that idea and starts killing people.

To complicate things, Gill Man also gets a hankerin' for Kay.
And despite her prominent eyebrows, I can't say I blame him.  Kay has that 50's pin-up style that had a lot of Air Force personnel painting girls on their planes.

Gill Man eventually takes the offensive, blocking off the exit from the lagoon and kidnapping Kay.

With fewer and fewer doctors around, someone has to step up and save everyone's collective butt! And that someone is not going to be Head Jerk Mark!

Things I learned from this movie: 1- there were two people in two different suits playing Gill Man, Ricou Browning wore the lighter coloured suit in the water and Ben Chapman wore the darker green suit on land, 2- Browning, a professional diver and stuntman, held his breath for up to four minutes (!) at a time so air bubbles wouldn't emanate from the mask,

3- Head Jerk Mark is Richard Denning from "Day The World Ended"...apparently he liked to work in films that dropped the first "The" in their titles, 4- rather than running for your life, just stand there and say "No" over and over again while a hideous monster attacks you, 5- you could say things like "I don't like the idea of going into unexplored territory with a woman" in 1954 and not get pimp-slapped, 6- one of the few B-movies that has music that heightens the mood instead of distracting you with how poor it is, 7- I guess they couldn't afford the "big" underwater camera,

8- when David defends the Creature as only protecting itself against attack all I could think of was Sean Connery in "The Untouchables": "He shoots one of yours with a spear gun, you put one of his in the lagoon! That's the Amazon way and that's how you get to Gill Man!", 9- the three most ineffective words in cinematic history: "You wait here"....you might as well say "Screw it, c'mon.", 10- a gigantic amphibian monster can nearly capsize a boat while ripping a net to shreds but can be held in a makeshift bamboo cage,

11- there is a really dangerous looking fire stunt towards the end that made me wonder how they did it without killing someone,

12- people's general lack of respect for weapons in these movies always makes me cringe,

13- "High five, buddy!",

14- "Oh! My achin' back!"

15- "I can't talk right now, Honey.....because I'm working!.....okay....okay!...I'll...I'll call you later....okay, bye"

"The Monster That Challenged The World" -1957.

Tagline: "Crawling up from the depths...to terrify and torture!" Now, in the Monster's defence, he is essentially a mollusk. I don't think he put a lot of thought into the torturing part.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen! After pouring through all one of the suggestions received, I put that single slip of paper into my "I'm With Stupid" hat, shook it thoroughly and removed that same slip of paper. I read it aloud, which made my cats look at me funny since there was no one there, and dashed to the television to carry out the wishes of my reader (no "s").

Good call, Bellen! I enjoyed this one. It's your better than average monster mayhem movie, complete with people getting ohm-nom-nomed right in front of your eyes!

Call me old fashioned, but I think a movie that doesn't have a mutated monster chawin' on the locals is just dull. I mean, c'mon! At least have a sentient robot with a recently discovered blood lust! That's what's wrong with movies today....too much yakkin'! Get to the action!

Plot: Commander Twillinger is new to the Top Secret Naval scientific research station at the Salton Sea in California.

He's a serious, by-the-books kind of guy and trying to keep the sailors out of trouble is proving to be difficult for him. Plus, a recent earthquake has torn a fissure in the bottom of the Salton Sea and caused prehistoric giant mutated mollusk larvae to begin dining on the fine folks that live and work nearby. Isn't that just the way? You have a nice, quiet little community and then giant mutated monsters move in. Next thing you know, there's beer cans all over and lawns that are not mowed properly and people being devoured alive! And bylaw won't even tell them to pick up the beer cans! Now, back in my day we didn't have hideous mollusk creatures causing problems. And do you know why?....well, I'm not sure. Probably too cold. It is Canada, after all. Anyway...that's pretty much the plot. Twillinger up there discovers first hand that these things (Oh yeah! There's more than one!) are gobbling up his seamen (hee hee!)

and has to destroy all of them before they make their way into the nearby canal system and then out into the world! No prob, Bob! We have the U.S. Navy on the scene!

Well, actually, not as easy as that. There are civilians near this landlocked sea, too, so you can't just blast the ever-loving crapola out of everything. And you can't leave because that would make a crappy movie. So he does what any homely, middle-aged man does in these movies: he falls in love with a lovely 20-something secretary.

Here's the biggest shock in the whole movie: she falls in love with his old, ugly ass too! I smell Oscar! Plus, Gail (the secretary) has a cutie patootie daughter

who has a way of loosening up the Commander. Too bad the monster's probably going to eat her. Luckily there are plenty of other, less significant, characters to slurp on first. Like Jody, here.

Jody's a nice girl who has a habit of dating bad boys, which makes her mother worry. Well, luckily there's a monster on the loose to eat said bad boys. Unfortunately, like most movie monsters, it has problems knowing when to step away from the buffet and ohm nom noms on Jody as well.

Anyway, long story short: through a series of careful checks of the canal locking systems they locate the escaped monsters

and blow their guts to Kingdom come! Yee ha! Oops! I guess they forgot about the egg they put in the lab

right behind the lovely young secretary and her cute-as-a-button daughter. Meh, what's the worst that could happen? I mean, as long as no one touches the unprotected temperature gauge

the egg will be kept cold enough not to mature and wreak havoc. And it's not like cute little bunny rabbits are kept in the lab, too,

so there's nothing to tempt a young girl to go in there. And if the bunnies look cold, it's not like the little girl will turn up the temperature to keep her furry little friends warm. What could possibly go wrong?

Things I learned from this movie: 1- about half the budget went into making various signs so you knew where each location was supposed to be,

2- if you find gross white goo while investigating the disappearance of three men make sure you stick your hand right in it,

3- in these movies whenever someone says the word "radioactive" you invariably get the super-serious reaction shot,

4- coroners keep their lunch in the drawers used for corpses,

5- by God! That is some cutting edge special effects!









6- I'm sorry, Sir, but that hat is clearly too big for you,
                                                   
7- your "egg sac" has a seam on it,

8- this is why Mom always says not to play with sticks,

9- giant mutant mollusks eat people, not ducks,

10- iPhone, circa 1957:

11- I need something to kill this giant monster....I know! I'll grab this fire extinguisher that's right next to the fire axe!,

12- "Heeeeeeere's Buggy!"

13- finally! A monster that can be killed with regular, plain old bullets!

Rating: Four gooshy mollusk thingies out of five.

 

Bonus facts: Tim Holt played the Commander. Holt was the son of an actor named Jack Holt,

famous for playing a tough guy in hundereds of westerns and war movies. Famous in his own right, Tim Holt played opposite Humphrey Bogart in "Treasure Of The Sierra Madre" as well as being in "Stagecoach" with John Wayne.

Tim and The Duke ended up becoming life-long friends. Holt was a real-life war hero, receiving the Purple Heart after being wounded on the very last day of WWII.

Audrey Dalton played Gail, the secretary. The Dublin born actress was famous for being in a lot of westerns, too, but hers were mostly on the television. She is the daughter of Irish war hero turned producer Emmet Dalton. Dalton was 22 at the time of filming "Monster". Her on screen love interest, Tim Holt was 38. Well played, Mr. Holt.....well played.

Hans Conried played the doctor who explained stuff to everyone. Conried is best known by his voice and not so much his face, lending his voice to characters such as Captain Hook in "Peter Pan" and Snidely Whiplash in "The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show".

Mimi Gibson played Sandy, the little girl with the bunny addiction. Gibson amassed a small fortune (taking inflation into consideration) in various roles as a child. Among many, many other projects Gibson was in "World Without End", "The Three Faces of Eve", "The Ten Commandments", "Houseboat" and also voiced the character of Lucky in Disney's "101 Dalmations".

 

Disturbing content: maybe it's just me, but I saw similarities between the regular mollusks shown by the doctor in the informational film and a character called Domo. You be the judge.

And now, random photos: