We're getting close to the end of our Universal Monster list, and we're onto the Creature!
A guy finds a hand sticking out of a rock wall in the Amazon and just rips it out. Great archaeology technique, but it gets better. He brings back a couple more guys and some girl (for the monster), and they just attack the rocks with pickaxes. Anyway, there's nothing in the rock, so they conclude the rest of the skeleton has broken off in the past and washed into the lagoon. Let's put on our suits and go swimming!
Eventually, they come across the creature and make him mad. Mark shoots it, and now the creature's understandably out for blood. And he wants the woman with the great hair. I don't care how long she's been trapped on this scow, her hair looks great! And she also brought oodles of outfits. The creature gets himself captured eventually, and that's when the creepiest part of the movie happens. When he's just in the water and staring out of the little window in the cage.
If I put that aside, this movie was something of a slog at the beginning. There was a lot of random swimming/fish shots. Then, every time the creature appeared on the screen, the music would go BER BER BEERRRRR! Even if the creature was just chilling in the kelp, the music acted like he was murdering someone.
I want to give a shoutout to the men who played the creature. There were two of them. One for the land shots and one for the water. The land shots required the actor, Ben Chapman, to stand for 14 hours a day, since he couldn't sit in the suit. He also couldn't see, so the pretty lady got her head bopped on the grotto wall. For the underwater shots, Ricou Browning held his breath for up to four minutes at a time (when the creature wasn't moving) to get the movie classic we have today. Good job, guys!
Overall, the people in this movie were stupid. They had the doctor wrapped up like a mummy, next to an open porthole where the creature could just reach in there. Security wasn't something they cared about very much, and they paralyzed a bunch of fish for nothing. Our "hero" was a doofus, and Colonel Sanders was the worst archaeologist ever. Even taking all of this into consideration, this movie was much more enjoyable than most of the ones we've seen lately. It might just be the trash we've been subjected to, but I'm giving this one a Good Movie! review. If for no other reason than the pain the creature actors went through.
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