![]() ![]() #THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON FULL#It’s unclear if anyone ever took him up on that.īut a full decade after first hearing it, that Amazonian fishman story was still sitting there in the back of his head, nagging at him. The other guests got a chuckle out of that, but the cinematographer insisted it was absolutely true, even offering to provide photographic evidence. In 1941, Alland was at a dinner party at Welles’ home when one of the guests, a South American cinematographer, told the story of an amphibious humanoid creature who emerged from the Amazon once a year, grabbed a young woman from a local village, and then disappeared again. William Alland was a close friend of Orson Welles, a member of the Mercury Theater troupe, and the man who played the faceless reporter in Citizen Kane. Even if this aquatic fish face would go on to become the most iconic and influential cinematic monster of the 1950s, his isolation within the Universal pantheon is somehow fitting, given the storyline that plays out onscreen. #THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON SERIES#In that way, the Gill Man was like the Mummy, forced to carry his series alone. Of course, given the three-film franchise’s contemporary time frame and American setting, it would’ve been a stretch anyway to find some reason to have him mix it up with the Wolf Man. ![]() Arriving six years after the golden age of Universal Horror was capped with Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, 1954’s The Creature from the Black Lagoon was never able to clumsily shuffle his way into the expanded universe shared by Dracula, The Wolf Man, Frankenstein’s Monster, and, if briefly, The Invisible Man. ![]() Kay is rescued and the creature is riddled with bullets before he retreats to the lagoon where his body sinks in the watery depths, presumably dead.The poor Gill Man never had a chance. David, Lucas, and Carl give chase to save her. The creature then abducts Kay and takes her to his cavern lair. While the others attempt to remove the logs, Mark is mauled to death trying to capture the creature single-handedly underwater. Following this incident, David decides they should return to civilization, but as the Rita tries to leave, they find the entrance blocked by fallen logs, courtesy of the escaped Gill-man. Kay hits the beast with a lantern driving it off before it can kill Edwin. It escapes during the night and attacks Edwin, who was guarding it. Subsequent encounters with the Gill-man claim the lives of two of Lucas's crew members, before the Gill-man is captured and locked in a cage on board the Rita. Although it escapes, it leaves behind a claw in the net, revealing its existence to the scientists. After they return, Kay goes swimming and is stalked underwater by the creature, who then gets briefly caught in one of the ship's draglines. Once the expedition arrives, David and Mark go diving to collect fossils from the lagoon floor. Taking notice of the beautiful Kay, it follows the Rita all the way downriver to the Black Lagoon. The scientists decide to risk it, unaware that the amphibious "Gill-man" that killed Carl's assistants earlier has been watching them. Lucas says that the tributary empties into a lagoon known as the "Black Lagoon", a paradise from which no one has ever returned. Mark is ready to give up the search, but David suggests that perhaps thousands of years ago the part of the embankment containing the rest of the skeleton fell into the water and was washed downriver. The excavation of the area where Carl found the hand turns up nothing. The creature, curious upon seeing the expedition, investigates the camp site, but when its sudden appearance frightens the members, they attack it, and in response, the enraged creature kills them. In fact, the camp was attacked by a piscine amphibious humanoid, a living member of the same species from which the fossil originated. Lucas suggests it was done by a jaguar, but the others are unsure. When they arrive at the camp, they discover that Maia's entire research team has been mysteriously killed while he was away. The expedition consists of David, Carl and Mark, as well as Reed's girlfriend, Kay Lawrence (Julie Adams), and another scientist, Dr. They go aboard a tramp steamer, the Rita, which is captained by a crusty old codger named Lucas (Nestor Paiva). Mark Williams (Richard Denning), to fund a return expedition to the Amazon to look for the remainder of the skeleton. Reed persuades the institute's financial backer, Dr. David Reed (Richard Carlson), an ichthyologist who works at a marine biology institute. Carl Maia (Antonio Moreno) visits his friend, Dr. A geology expedition in the Amazon uncovers fossilized evidence from the Devonian period of a link between land and sea animals in the form of a skeletal hand with webbed fingers. ![]()
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