Creature From the Black Lagoon (Universal Studios Classic Monster Collection)

Scientists drug and capture the creature, who becomes enamored with the head scientist's female assistant (Julie Adams). Chief scientist (Richard Carlson) then launches a crusade to rescue his assistant ans cast the ominous creature back to the depths from where he came. The lonely creature, "a living amphibious missing link," escapes and kidnaps the object of his affection. Well-acted and directed, and with Bud Westmore's brilliantly designed monster, Creature From The Black Lagoon remains an enduring tribute to the imaginative genius of its Hollywood creators.

Arnold turns an effectively B-movie plot--a small expedition up a remote Amazon river captures a prehistoric amphibian man, who escapes to wreak havoc on the team and kidnap his bathing beauty--into a moody, stylish, low-budget feature. Not since King Kong has the "beauty and the beast" theme been portrayed in such sexually charged (though chaste) terms. The jungle exteriors turn from exotic to treacherous when the creature blocks their passage and strands them in the wilds. The film was originally shot in 3-D. As with most of Arnold's '50s genre films, he's saddled with a less than magnetic leading man (in this case the colorless but stalwart Richard Carlson) and a conventional script, but he overcomes such limitations by creating a vivid and sympathetic monster (helped immeasurably by a marvelous suit of scales and fins) and establishing a mood thick with atmosphere. Much of the film is shot underwater, where the murky dark is animated by shimmering shards of sunlight, creating images both lovely and alien (the studio-built sets of the creature's underground lair are far less naturalistic, but serve their purpose). --Sean Axmaker Jack Arnold's horror classic The Creature from the Black Lagoon spawned not one but two iconic images: the web-footed humanoid gill-man with a hankering for women and the leggy, luscious Julia Adams, the object of his desire, swimming the lagoon in a luminous white bathing suit.