Jack Arnold, “Creature from the Black Lagoon” (1954)
For a film of its vintage, made over 70 years ago with a straightforward story and an unremarkable cast of actors, and expressing attitudes and stereotypes now derided as outdated, this film continues to fascinate generations of film audiences even now. A geological expedition in the Amazon uncovers fossil evidence from the Devonian period some 400 million years ago suggesting a direct link between land and marine animals. Leaving camp and two assistants there, expedition leader Dr Carl Maia returns to his marine biology institute to inform ichthyologist Dr David Reed, a friend and former student of his, and Reed persuades his boss Dr Mark Williams to fund a return expedition to the Amazon to find more fossil evidence. (While Maia is away, the assistants left at the camp are killed by a mystery intruder.) Maia, Reed and Williams travel to the camp on board a steamer, the Rita, captained by Lucas, and bringing with them Dr Thompson and Reed’s girlfriend and colleague Kay Lawrence. Reaching the camp, the group discovers the dead assistants and Lucas suggests they were killed by a jaguar. (Watching the group from afar is the mystery intruder who killed Maia’s assistants.)
The expedition searches for more fossil clues but find nothing. The scientists travel upstream the Amazon and enter a tributary that takes the Rita to a lagoon, where Reed and Williams go diving to collect rock samples. After Reed and Williams return, Lawrence goes swimming, unaware she is being stalked by the mystery intruder. The intruder snags a claw in an underwater net, and it is this claw that later alerts the group to the existence of a strange creature of the same species as the Devonian-period fossil.
From then on, subsequent encounters between the creature – an amphibious humanoid, seemingly the last of its kind – and the expedition and Rita crew end badly and fatally for several of the humans, culminating in the creature attempting to block the Rita‘s path and abducting Lawrence and taking her to its cave lair.
Apart from the film’s plot and cast, the most notable aspects of the film are the underwater scenes which are filmed well and feature the more thrilling action-oriented moments. The creature is introduced fairly late in the film (about 25 minutes into the film) which plot feature adds to a sense of escalating drama. The creature’s later fascination with Lawrence provides more thrill, in a film targeting a mostly teenage audience.
What has cemented the film’s status as a cult movie is the various ways in which its plot and characters can be read, thanks in part to the uncomplicated nature of the plot. The plot can be seen as a metaphor for past Western imperialism, the encroachment of Europeans in lands inhabited by and belonging to indigenous peoples, and the resistance these peoples put up against European attempts to steal their resources and artefacts or treat them as primitives. The creature’s obsession with Lawrence can be read as an attempt on its part to connect with a living being who understands its loneliness as the last of its species. This sub-plot can be seen also as pandering to American fears about black and other non-white men coveting white women, and thus the film reveals part of the dark underbelly of white mainstream Western society in the mid-20th century (and beyond) that even today we are loath to acknowledge. The rescue of Lawrence becomes a metaphor for white Western men to restore the hierarchical status quo of a racist, sexist Anglocentric colonial settler society. As long as the creature itself represents marginalised and isolated peoples and individuals, the film named after it is likely to continue to resonate with audiences responding to the plot with their own original and creative interpretations.