- My first reaction to Jack Arnold's impressive Creature from the Black Lagoon was that Jaws apparently wasn't as original as I had previously thought. In a film made over twenty years prior to the famed summer of '75, we get a mysterious underwater menace leering up at unsuspecting bathers and turning traps against his hunters. The creature himself isn't shown in full until nearly halfway through the film, and there's even a violently trashing sea net that immediately recalls Spielberg's rapidly moving yellow buoy. I doubt many people would seriously argue that Creature from the Black Lagoon is the better of the two films, but you have to give it some credit for getting there first.
- The story involves one of the standard monster movie setups: scientists stick their noses in where they shouldn't and get punished accordingly. It all starts with the discovery of a fossilized amphibious claw in the Amazon by the esteemed Dr. Maia (Antonio Moreno), who proceeds to consult with his former student David Reed (Richard Carlson) and Reed's colleague/love interest Kay Lawrence (Julia Adams). Backed by their obsessive supervisor (Richard Denning) and assisted by a pipe-smoking researcher (Whit Bissell), the group enlists a saucy local boat captain (Nestor Paiva) and heads downriver. That the two guards left at the excavation site are found mauled is the first clue that maybe this expedition isn't going to be as successful as everyone had hoped.
- The Black Lagoon itself, created from a combination of studio sets and Florida location shots, is an impressive display of untamed natural beauty. The lagoon's placid surface looks peaceful enough, but its seaweed-laden depths contain plenty of tangled spaces where the creature lurks as his pursuers gradually close in. Speaking of the creature, his webbed hands and fishlike countenance make him one of the better "guy in a suit" monsters of his era, and convincing underwater shots of his amphibious exploits go a long way toward helping him appear less corny than his contemporaries. More interesting, however, are the creature's motives. His two goals in life appear to be to explore the unknown and to get his claws on Kay. In these respects, he is no different from the rest of the scientific team, most of whom take the opportunity to hit on the lone female scientist (with varying degrees of success) when they're not stalking the creature. Maybe you don't have to go all the way to an isolated lagoon in the Amazon to encounter savage and prehistoric animal behaviors.
- This film has one of the great "In the beginning..." introductions.
- Apparently Jean Renoir did some uncredited work on the film's script.
