Cut-Rate Black Lagoon

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I stumbled upon Humanoids from the Deep while looking for a different film on Tubi.  I had to make a quick decision (don’t ask) and I saw that Humanoids was a Roger Corman movie and figured I knew what I was getting into.  In a sense I was, but B movies can surprise you sometimes.  As the story unfolded my first thought was “this doesn’t look like a Corman movie.”  Indeed, the direction didn’t come from Corman but from Barbara Peeters.  But that wasn’t the end of the story.  What is said story?  Well, it’s a kind of ecological Creature from the Black Lagoon, but with a bit more of a disjointed plot.  A large cannery wants to open in Noyo, California and the local fishermen all like the idea except the American Indians.  Pollution has been driving off the fish and the cannery will make things worse.  From the beginning humanoid creatures have been stalking the town at night.

The creatures start killing the men and raping the women.  The female scientist brought in speculates that a certain hormone intended to grow larger salmon faster had leaked and coelacanths that had been eating the modified salmon became humanoid and felt the need to reproduce with human women.  The creatures were inspired by the Gill Man but have ridiculous tails that give them a kind of Barney vibe.  During a local festival the creatures attack the town en masse and a real melee breaks out, but the creatures are defeated with a combination of high-powered rifles, gasoline on the water set ablaze, and a kitchen knife.  It’s all a bit of a mess.

Apparently Corman felt the movie wasn’t exploitative enough and hired another director to spice it up a bit, having it edited together without the director’s knowledge.  To complicate things, a second, uncredited director had already been involved, so the film has three.  That might help to explain why the story doesn’t really hold together.  As a cheap creature feature it’s not horrible.  It borrows ideas from Alien, Prophecy, and Jaws (and apparently Piranha, which I’ve never seen).   It turns out to be rather nihilistic when it’s all said and done, but the creatures, apart from the tails, aren’t that bad.  There are a couple of legitimately scary moments.  Those of us who watch Corman movies might know to expect some deficiencies, but I was caught off guard by some of the cinematography and even some of the acting.  Not bad for a movie picked with only a few minutes to decide.

Connecting Many Leagues

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Much of movie viewing life is about making connections.  Many, many films have been made and I’m not the first to suggest that cinema is a form of modern mythology.  But those connections!  Pressed for time one busy weekend, I found the brief, low-budget The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues.  It was included with Amazon Prime and I had an obligation in about 90 minutes.  I could just squeeze it in.  As I’d anticipated, it was another of those poorly written, cheeky teen-magnets from the fifties.  The monster created by radiation, the threat to the world that the government sends only two guys to handle, and lots of lingering shots of men in business suits walking on the beach, it’s about what you’d expect.  It did well at the 1955 box office, though.

My first thought was that it was an attempted marriage between The Creature from the Black Lagoon and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.  Indeed, Black Lagoon had been released the year before, opening the realm of underwater filming for monster movies.  It, however, had a believable monster that wasn’t so monstrous.  The “phantom”—the name is never explained—is obviously a person in a cheap monster suit that can barely open its mouth.  It kills by holding people under water, or getting them into a radioactive beam, or preventing them from getting away from dynamite.  Oops, that last one’s a spoiler, I guess.  The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms came out a year before Black Lagoon.  The title of The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues title was obviously ripped off from it, and the atomic connection and undersea beast are common to both.  Connections.

The Beast had the benefit of a monster by the master, Ray Harryhausen.  And it was based on a story by Ray Bradbury.  That was a winning combination.  The Phantom claims to be based on a story by Dorys Lukather.  This movie is all she’s known for writing, God rest her soul.  Produced by the subtly named American Releasing Corporation, the production company would go on to become the respectable American International Pictures.  Interestingly, given the sexism of the era—reflected fairly clearly in the writing—the monster was played by a woman.  Norma Hanson, like Milicent Patrick, brought a monster to life only to be largely forgotten.  Patrick was rediscovered by Mallory O’Meara, but Hanson—one time a diving world-record holder—seems to have faded.  Had I but more time, I would enjoy diving those 10,000 leagues to bring another forgotten Hollywood monster woman to life.  And if I had the connections.

Hidden Monsters

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I don’t think much about having been born male.  I’m starting to realize that that’s because I don’t have to.  The same is true of being caucasian, although I’ve always objected to the labels of “white” and “black” as being polarizing and wildly inaccurate.  Although I grew up in poverty, my “social markers” put me in a place of privilege, even if others sharing my demographic have locked me out of the club.  These thoughts were raised by Mallory O’Meara’s excellent The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick.  As soon as I saw the book announced, I knew I had to read it.  As O’Meara would doubtlessly not find surprising, I had never heard of Milicent Patrick before.  I’m not surprised that a woman designed the Creature from the Black Lagoon, however, because woman create memorable monsters (can I get a “Frankenstein”?!).

The reason I don’t think about being male is because the crumbling society built by males assumes that it’s the default.  Men have always been shortsighted, I guess.  Having been raised by a “single mother” (she was technically not divorced because a male-made religion said it was sinful), I always believed women to be protectors, capable heads of families, and far more empathetic than the men I met.  I didn’t realize at the time that we lived so close to the brink because men devalue women.  Milicent Patrick grew up in a family where this was much more obvious.  A talented artist, she incurred her family’s lasting wrath by going to Hollywood and doing what was then movie makeup work.  That she designed the beloved Gill Man makes sense to me.

O’Meara’s book is sure to make thoughtful readers angry.  Not at the author, but at the behavior of men.  Perhaps due to my unbalanced upbringing, it has taken many years to see what others probably notice much more readily: women have to struggle for that which someone like myself can simply claim.  Bud Westmore, Patrick’s boss at Universal, claimed her creation as his own work.  There are monsters in this book, and I’ll give you one guess as to their gender.  Still, I’m glad to have read it for I know I’ve found another monster fan.  O’Meara’s clearly aware of how those of us who admit this odd passion are marginalized in a world that prefers super heroes and those good with finance over those who see monsters everywhere.  This is an important book; read it and you’ll see them too.

The Lagoon

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My current book project has me watching The Creature of the Black Lagoon again.  One of the Universal monsters—indeed, arguably the last of them—the Gill-man fascinated me as a child.  There was a strange contradiction here.  The creature had evolved in the Devonian Era and remained unchanged into the 1950s.  But the movie opens with a voiceover of Genesis 1.1.  There’s a mixed message here, appropriate for scriptural monsters.  Watching the film again brought back many of the innocent perceptions of youth, as well as the trajectory of my own life.  I don’t often get to the theater to see horror movies anymore, but at the same time the Universal monsters aren’t quite the same thing as modern horror.  As a genre it had to evolve.

Strangely, as a fundamentalist child, the evolution aspect didn’t bother me.  I was after the monster, you see.  The backstory was less important.  Growing up, at least in my experience, means that the backstory becomes more essential.  It has to hold together.  There are, of course, inaccuracies in the story—many of them, in fact.  Still, within the first three minutes Genesis and evolution are thrown together in a happy harmony that belied what I was being taught at church.  The Gill-man is a monster mainly for being a creature out of time.  When modern humans invade his lair, he defends his territory.  The story might’ve ended there, had he not spied Kay.  He doesn’t so much want to kill her as get to know her better.  For a movie posthumously rated G, it has a body count.  Five men die but the Gill-man apparently just wants to evolve.

There’s been a recent resurgence of interest in Creature from the Black Lagoon with both the publication of The Lady from the Black Lagoon and the death of Julie Adams this year.  The Gill-man seldom shows up in the same billing with Dracula or Frankenstein’s monster, or the Wolf-man.  He’s a bit more inaccessible in his watery abode.  Both cold and hot-blooded, he represents how science and Scripture might get along, at least on the silver screen.  The film holds up remarkably well, if a modern viewer can handle the pacing.  Underwater filming was pretty new back in the day, and watching humans swim in many ways suggests the truth of evolution in its own right.  These aren’t the childhood observations of the movie, but rather the reflections of a guy wondering if there might not be some hidden wisdom in the monsters of yesteryear.

Biblical Black Lagoon

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During my summer-term courses I feel it is only fair to break the lecture time up a bit. Rutgers summer courses can run four hours at a stretch, and no matter how valiant the student, no one can pay attention to me for that long. I have long had an interest in the Bible in popular media, so for each class session I show a brief clip of a movie that features the Bible, often in a pivotal role. We then discuss how it is presented. As a personal pork barrel I give the students a multiple choice question on their exams as to which movies we have watched (it also gives them incentive to be in class, I hope). One summer, after sending the exam off to the print office, I realized I’d made a mistake. As usual, my interest in 1950s sci-fi flicks led to trouble. One film I hadn’t shown a clip from, and which I thought was Bible free (I hadn’t seen it in a long time) was The Creature from the Black Lagoon, a perennial favorite for both camp and kitsch.

Of course, The Creature from the Black Lagoon does have the Bible in it. The movie begins with a narrator reading Genesis 1.1. Well, I had to give all the students credit for that question, because there was no wrong answer. Nevertheless, the easy association between beginning the film with the Bible and its evolutionary plot-starter seemed worthy of comment. Back in the 1950s evolution was already a hot-button issue (so I’ve read). Forces lined up on the scientific and biblical fronts faced off like angry hockey players as they swung at that hard black puck of the truth. It does seem odd in a country so heavily reliant on science that the foundation of biology and its benefits (if scientists hadn’t recognized and reacted to the swift evolution among microbes I’d likely not be here typing this sentence) that one particular interpretation of a very small section of the Bible should have the power that it does. I’ve seen carnivorous, chrome-plated bumper Jesus fish eating the peacefully walking Darwin fish! Old metaphorical Moses would be scratching his head, I’m sure.

The Creature was, of course, also a metaphor (if I’m not shoveling out too much credit where it isn’t really due). The sequels to the original film grew progressively worse, but those who have the patience to sit through The Creature Walks Among Us discover that the gill-man is a man after all, under all that green rubber. The beast is us. Not too weighty of a revelation to be sure, but it isn’t too weighty a movie. Like any discriminating Bible reader I choose what to accept and what to explain away. When I watch The Creature from the Black Lagoon, it ruins the story for me to think ahead to the denouement of the gill-man being a real man. It is a passage I simply choose not to accept. (This is, of course, a metaphor.)

What might this be a metaphor for?

What might this be a metaphor for?