For this year’s 31 Nights of Horror Challenge, the Night 16 prompt is A-Lister Early Horror. We watched the movie Revenge of the Creature (1955) on Amazon Prime.

Storyline

Men capture the Creature from the Black Lagoon and make him an aquarium attraction, from which he escapes.

‘Revenge of the Creature’ delivers an impressive Gill Man design that remains one of 1950s cinema’s best monsters, with Jack Arnold’s capable direction creating some thrilling underwater moments. However, the sequel disappoints with its weak, unimaginative script filled with implausible plot points and scientific inaccuracies. The derivative storyline borrows heavily from King Kong while recycling elements from the original, resulting in slow pacing and mixed performances that fail to recapture the first film’s magic.

Our thoughts on Revenge of the Creature (1955)

REVENGE OF THE CREATURE is the follow-up to THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, one of the most iconic Universal horrors of all time. This one’s a far lesser film, suffering from weak scripting which feels like the whole story is merely a lower-budgeted riff on KING KONG. Our favourite Gill Man is minding his own business in his lagoon when a bunch of scientists kidnap him and take him back to America. There he’s probed and experimented upon until he finally busts loose and goes on a mini rampage. I found the Creature himself a sympathetic creation this time around, and his romance with the statuesque Lori Nelson good fun. The human characters are pretty bland, although it’s fun to see Clint Eastwood in his film debut and the staging’s slick and to the point.

6 out of 10 stars

Trivia 

A young Clint Eastwood makes his first uncredited screen appearance as lab technician Jennings. He discusses with Professor Ferguson (John Agar) about an experiment involving a cat and four rats sharing the same cage. He points out that one of the rats in the cage is missing and accuses the cat of eating it, but discovers that the missing rat was in his lab coat pocket.

Much of this movie was filmed on-location at the Marineland of Florida oceanarium. The actors and actresses filmed in the water during the tank scenes were required to swim with its real-life underwater inhabitants, including sharks, eels, barracudas, and more. Despite the close proximity to ocean predators, the only incident was that of a sea turtle biting off the prosthetic foot of Ricou Browning’s Creature costume.

At the beginning of Back to the Future Part III (1990), Marty exits a movie theater dressed in his cowboy outfit, and tells Doc, “I’m pretty sure Clint Eastwood wouldn’t wear this.” When he says this, he is standing next to the poster of this movie, which is Eastwood’s screen debut.

In Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), the creature suit was built to hold the air in, so there were no bubbles when the creature was underwater. In order to save money and to provide air for the stuntman in underwater sequences, the suit design was changed to allow a hose to pump air to the actor. As a result, bubbles could be seen coming out of different parts of the suit.