Tag: 1950s

Mini-Reflections: Film Classics

~ Not Alison ~ Leave a comment

The film shelf (not yet complete)

photo of a not-full shelf showing the spines of blu-rays of several movies, from The Gold Rush to The Sound of Music; there is also one DVD, for The Inspector General
The title that’s too dark to read is Rebecca.

I watched most of these discs before I was in the habit of writing comments to post here, and I’ve got a mountain of other movies to go through before I’ll be rewatching these (although I surely will rewatch them). So I won’t be doing a full post on them any time soon, but I will make a few quick comments from memory even though the material isn’t fresh on my mind.

More of the shelf has filled in since I took this photo, but those films already have their own entries.

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The Gold Rush (1925/1942)

A decent DVD/blu-ray of The Gold Rush will include both the original silent version and the later rerelease with voiceover. Both are legitimate versions of the film; Charlie Chaplin not only supplied the voice narrating the rerelease, he also carefully decided on and placed all the music used (maybe wrote some of the score himself? I can’t fully recall what those bonus features said). But for me the original is the one to turn to. I for one am much more entertained by a silent movie left silent than a silent movie with narration laid on top of it where it wasn’t meant to have any.

The voiceover version is still a pleasure, though, because the essence of the original is still there. Chaplin updated the silent film without ruining it, because he knew the film and what made it wonderful, and in any case the rerelease kept the movie (and Chaplin’s renown) in the public imagination and is probably why we can still see the original at all.

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Metropolis (1927)

Metropolis was pretty long when first released but was trimmed considerably for wider distribution, and the cut scenes were long believed to be lost; much of the cut material has been rediscovered in some degree of watchability. The film is a milestone not only in special effects but also in the history of film preservation, one of the early occasions when people realized there was a need to preserve.

I’ve seen this film in three different renditions: two or three times in the shortened once-standard edit; a version with some bits restored; and now the most-scenes-restored-sorta version. The material (re-)added for the longest version makes the story much more coherent, notably providing a reason for the scientist to make his robot look like this woman. I’d have to watch it again to recall whether any particular restored bits slow things down too much, but my recollection is that the plot is greatly improved.

The movie in any of the available cuts has an obvious socialist message of “it’s bad for callous rich people to exploit the working class,” but the solution given is not “revolt and take over” (we see how a careless revolution can endanger workers’ own families), the answer is “you need understanding and feeling between the classes.” Still it’s mainly the upper class that needs to do the work of looking and listening and adapting.

The film is German, but the scenes of rich people partying while the world is more or less ending remind me of what I know of the U.S. during the Roaring Twenties and the Stock Market Crash.

By today’s standards Metropolis can seem simplistic or naive—or, let’s say, unsubtle—but it was a thundering groundbreaker of science fiction and cultural commentary in the movies.

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King Kong—remarks here

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Rebecca (1940)

It’s my understanding that Hitchcock didn’t want to follow the novel faithfully, but the producers forced him to—except in one critical point which the morals office would not have tolerated (but Hitchcock probably would have preferred).

I might not even know who Daphne du Maurier was if not for this movie. Because the film is so good I read the novel, and was rather surprised by that important difference.

I think the constraints on Hitchcock in this case resulted in a much better film than he would’ve given us if left to his own devices.

The female lead of the story is hard to cast and play. If she’s too mousy we won’t believe she would catch Maxim’s notice or dare to go around with him at the resort, but if she’s too lively we won’t believe she’ll be so intimidated by Mrs. Danvers.

Maxim is kind of a jerk. It’s true that the man of the estate is not going to have a lot of in-depth interaction with the housekeeper, certainly compared to his wife; and as a product of his class he will take it for granted that you simply give orders to servants and they carry them out. But he can’t be this oblivious to what’s happening or this unaware of his housekeeper’s personal character. Surely on some level he knows his new wife is being bullied. He even sees first-hand in the broken-figurine incident that she’s afraid of Danvers. He consciously chose someone the opposite of the imposing, self-assertive, rule-making Rebecca, which means at the very least he should be aware she’s unprepared for her new position. Is Maxim enjoying the situation, perhaps amused by his inept wife’s childish insecurity? Does he like seeing her flounder? It’s hard to think ill of anyone played by Laurence Olivier, but still.

This film is laden with nonverbal signals, dripping with meaning in looks and gestures and silent interactions between people.

As an aside, we also see a proper response to blackmail.

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The Philadelphia Story (1940)

“Shall we flip a coin?”

“Why didn’t you sell tickets?!?”

In addition to smart, sharp one-liners, three Hollywood greats colliding, a plot richer than you’d think a “screwball comedy” would have, a sassy younger sister eager to see trouble, and overall fun expertly dancing with overall drama, it always strikes me that in an era when drunkenness was often a source of cheap humor, this film treats Dex’s alcoholism quite seriously. He himself delivers the occasional remark about his “glorious thirst,” but it’s unmistakably sarcasm from a place of his own hard experience. Other characters might be treated lightly when they indulge too much, but Dex’s drinking is a problem and he knows it and he explicitly turns down every bit of alcohol offered to him, because it’s essential to his future that he stays sober, no exceptions.

Also, from multiple angles: two wrongs don’t make a right, and being partly right doesn’t make you wholly right. 

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Cat People (1942)

As I understand it, the director, Jacques Tourneur, did not want this film to have a visible monster at all, but the higher-ups (studio or producers) insisted on having a cat onscreen in the office-room attack scene, and would’ve preferred a lot more of the same. In this case I don’t think the movie is harmed by that profit-conscious interference. For me Cat People has exactly the right balance: plenty of suspense, lots left to the imagination, a focus on the psychological effects of thinking you might be a killer whether you really are or not, and a higher standard of storytelling than repeatedly having people scream while a costume-creature attacks them, and it does all this without sitting on the fence of “Is she or isn’t she, make your own interpretation!” To me there is just the right amount of monster, taking a position but showing enormous restraint.

(That can’t be said of the 1982 remake, which shrugs aside story in favor of the attack gimmick and laughable levels of nudity. Although the pool sequence is still extremely effective.)

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Curse of the Cat People (1944)

This film refuses to be distracted by the pull of the title monster. It is definitely a sequel to Cat People but has nothing to do with people turning into cats. Curse knows what it means to do and it does it, no matter what the studio executives undoubtedly wanted it to do. I’m glad the original had a touch of cat monster in it, and also glad the filmmakers didn’t allow anyone to force monsters into the sequel. (Yes, there is the question of a ghost, but it isn’t here to threaten or frighten, and there are no human-feline transformations.)

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Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)

Good songs, an enjoyable story, the importance of family, childhood mischief, Judy Garland.

At a glance, this movie might be seen as “well-to-do white families having wholesome fun,” but the parts about the younger daughters are based on a real person’s autobiography and add a certain layer of complexity regarding children’s lives. Traffic-accident injuries, morbid games with dolls, kids running loose on the streets Halloween night playing pranks—still nothing shocking, but showing more rough edges to childhood than Hollywood musicals would usually acknowledge.

The film’s origin in an autobiography is also why you seem to have two main characters—Tootie comes from the book and lives out those adventures, while Esther was created to pull in audiences and let Judy Garland do what she could do so well.

From the bonus features I learned there was a scene cut following the trolley song showing Judy Garland’s character and her love interest at the fair, and I suspect it would’ve made better sense of a few little snippets elsewhere in the film if they’d left that in. But, so be it.

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The Inspector General (1949)

Basically Danny Kaye plays somebody who wanders into town and is mistaken for an important dignitary. This gains him a lot of perks but also means certain people want to kill him. I remember poison, assassins, corrupt local officials, and people locked in boxes.

In college a friend and I had a great time watching this movie. Apart from that association I’m not sure a physical copy would have a place on my shelf, though it is fun and worth a watch. After all, it’s Danny Kaye.

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All About Eve (1950)

Bette Davis, willing to play an actress unwilling to admit she can no longer play young women.

We see a skilled manipulator who does quite well using other women but makes critical misjudgements of two men.

The story is driven by the fact that Margo is too old to play twenty-year-olds, and yet that story is largely about Margo growing up and becoming an adult. She has to find her maturity in order to relate to herself, her career, and her would-be husband.

It’s a time when a columnist had the power to create or end careers.

Addison DeWitt is a truly awful person. He appears calm, cool, and sophisticated throughout—until someone looks down on him, and his violent reaction shows how insecure and fragile he really is. He’s a bully who exercises power over people to prove to himself he’s important. Of course he writes about The Stage and not The Screen, but I’ve always associated the character with gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, who could ruin a Hollywood career with a few paragraphs, in addition to Walter Winchell. (The movie was released in 1950, so McCarthyism was barely getting underway and wasn’t the issue here.)

Oh yeah, Marilyn Monroe has a brief part here too, and she’s pretty funny.

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Singin in the Rain (1952)

This film is so, so, so, much fun. Singing! Dancing! Laughing! Hijinks! Satire of the movie business! Romance! Charm! Charisma! Toeses! Everything about it is just about perfect, except—sorry, Gene Kelly devotees—the long, long, long dance sequence of Kelly’s character-within-a-character-outside-a-character looking for a job in New York. Yes, yes, I know it’s a Gene Kelly movie so people wanted to see him dance, but this is still a movie and it has a plot and a story which skids to a complete and jarring halt when this sequence intrudes with a premise that makes no sense. (This saves The Duelling Cavalier how exactly? Really?) I love this movie dearly and when I watch it I fast-forward through the whole nine(?) minutes of the hoofer doing “Gotta Dance” at cardboard talent agencies.

But oh the rest of it makes me happy.

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Roman Holiday (1953)

Audrey Hepburn, ah. A timeless tale—meaning you’ve seen the premise elsewhere—but timelessly charming and moving. She thinks she’s fooling them, playing normal young woman, but she isn’t, although she is winning them over. Some things can’t be, and she has to give things up and they choose to give things up, and without saying all the words they all understand. She’s perfect for the role—European but of undefinable nationality; looking young enough to try something stupid but old enough she’s been weighted with responsibility; luminously beautiful as a princess “should” be, yet not so glamorous or stately she couldn’t walk through Rome unidentified; innocent and sophisticated at the same time, believable in welcoming dignitaries and in eating gelato on the street.

And I can’t forget to note the glories of having this filmed on location: real Rome, tall and ancient all around the actors, nearly tangible as you watch.

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Creature From the Black Lagoon—remarks here

Oklahoma—remarks here

West Side Story—remarks here

The Music Man—remarks here

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Charade (1963)

You’ll hear it called “the greatest Hitchcock movie Hitchcock never made,” which sounds about right except it isn’t really fair to the actual director, Stanley Donen.

I love the theme music by Henry Mancini and find myself clicking it out with my tongue probably once a week or more (TOK-tok-tok t’tok-tok-t’tok-tok).

Audrey Hepburn is a delight as always. Cary Grant is wonderful as usual (even if he needs to be twenty/thirty years younger for this role).

Mystery, suspense, humor, one-liners, danger, lies, double-crosses, a missing fortune, Hepburn playing a character stretched and strained until she doesn’t know which end is up, and naturally that infectious theme: it gets almost everything right.

In some bonus feature somewhere I heard Audrey Hepburn complain that one of the funniest lines in the movie—one of hers—is stepped on by the instrumentation at the very, very, very end, and I have to agree with her. If only they’d waited two more seconds and let her words come through cleanly!

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The Sound of Music—remarks here

Reflections: Oklahoma (1955)

~ Not Alison ~ Leave a comment
cover of the blu-ray for the 1955 film Oklahoma
Not quite as high as a elephant’s eye, here.

My first exposure to the musical Oklahoma was to the soundtrack, which I’m sure is hardly unusual. The songs “Oh What a Beautiful Mornin” and “O-o-o-o-o-klahoma” were planted into my consciousness sometime before I was aware of it, just part of the atmosphere of growing up in U.S. culture (I was born in the mid-1970s; the songs are surely less omnipresent now).

I was in college (mid-1990s) before I became acquainted with any more of Oklahoma. A good friend of mine played the movie soundtrack on a long car trip, and I enjoyed most of it. I was kind of horrified, though, at “Pore Jud Is Daid.” Without knowing the storyline, I could only suppose they were singing at a funeral for someone who had died, and it just seemed monstrous to mock the deceased this way.

Of course, when I finally watched the movie (on VHS tape) I discovered Jud was not dead, he was just being sung to by his mortal enemy/rival, and was even one of the two voices singing the lyrics. It’s still pretty macabre, though, in context, and quite vicious in its humor.

Rewatching the movie on Blu-ray I was struck by how relentless the songs are in the first half of the film. They just keep hitting one after another, with barely any breathing room between, and each one could easily be a favorite because they’re all so well written and performed. (Well, okay, the five-minute instrumental overture might not be a favorite, but it’s still an enjoyable piece if you know the songs and aren’t impatient for the film to begin.)

The movie is two and a half hours long, and I kind of planned on watching until the intermission and saving the rest till the next night, but I couldn’t. I had to get to the end, despite having watched the film three times over the years. I knew what was coming, but I needed to see it to be at ease the rest of the night.

There are two main reservations I have about the movie. Both are problems you see in many musicals from the 1950s and 60s.

First, the seemingly endless, wordless dance sequence: fifteen minutes where the story screeches to a halt for a scene designed primarily to showcase the dancing itself. This time around, I actually found the first two or three minutes captivating, seeing how graceful and elegant the ballerina’s movements were, but again, it lasts fifteen minutes, not three. Oklahoma makes some effort to make this dance portion relevant—grudgingly I can admit that it shows the extent of Laurey’s feelings about Jud, and there is a need for that. But the sequence goes on and on and on. . . .

Second, true to its time, there is no inclusivity. Positive portrayal of divergence in sexual orientation or gender identity was unimaginable then; showing someone who had a disability was possible but doesn’t happen here; including a few ordinary people of other races should have been possible but again doesn’t happen. (Historically, by the way, there were African American and Latino cowboys.) The cast is entirely and utterly white. The most you can say about such musicals is that by not including anyone else, they avoid spreading demeaning stereotypes.

In Oklahoma there is a wrinkle: the character who calls himself Ali Hakim (pronounced “hack-um”). He’s a traveling salesman peddling things out of his horse-drawn cart who says he’s from Persia. This could be seen as yet another time some white guy plays somebody of non-European ancestry, denying a role to someone from that ancestry, made worse by the film-maker not even bothering to find a name that’s Persian . . . but this character is a con man. I’m pretty sure the audience is not supposed to believe for a second that he’s actually Persian, even if the other characters never mention any doubts. That means we’re expected to find this practice low and disreputable, the act of a huckster lying to make himself “exotic” and more memorable to his unsophisticated customers.

And there’s plenty of unsophistication around. The song “Kansas City” in particular takes delight in poking fun at the characters singing it. It has this marvelous aspect of suggesting that the awe expressed over the existence of 7-story buildings and “gas buggies goin by theirselves” is naive and provincial not just to the modern audience but also to people of the story’s time period who lived in cities. Poor Will is convinced progress has gone as far as it can go. Obviously we know better, but I’m pretty sure the folks he saw in Kansas City on his trip knew better too, even then.

There are three main female characters in the story: Laurey, Aunt Ella/Eller, and Annie. (There’s a fourth named woman, a man-stealer with a horrendous laugh, but she only has a few scenes.) 

Ado Annie is not exactly a positive portrayal of womanhood. You could look at her and see a flighty airhead easily swayed by sweet words and maybe too free with her affections. You could also look at her and see a woman unashamed of her own sexuality and desire, seeing nothing wrong with enjoying kisses (or more) as opportunities come her way. But it would be quite a stretch to make her a champion of female sexual liberation, because that kind of requires more intelligence in choosing your partners than she’s shown as having. “I will love who I want to, no matter what people think!” is not the same as “I’ll kiss anybody who asks prettily!”

The movie isn’t explicit about how far Annie goes with these multiple men she’s apparently diverted by. Is it only kissing she’s “guilty” of? Within her context, kissing around would be blameworthy, but perhaps not scandalous enough to make her socially unacceptable. And she still moves in polite circles and nobody blinks at her donating a food basket for the auction. Will, who wants to marry her, doesn’t act like he believes she’s sleeping around. It’s more like he’s mad at her for flirting when they’re just short of engaged.

And yet, maybe it’s significant that she isn’t inside the house with 98% of the other young women on their way to the social. And then there are rumors about her losing her bloomers. And she “cain’t say no.” It seems like the story wants to have things two ways at once, just as much as the character does.

Next, Aunt Eller. She’s resilient, determined, full of both good sense and endurance, and ready to have plenty of fun on the proper occasions. She might say “two women can’t run a farm by themselves,” but according to what we know about her life in the film, two women can make sure their farm gets run, without selling it or letting a man take over. If she and Laurey need a hired man to keep it going, well, they’re still the ones in charge and plainly doing well. (“It’s a good year for corn and there’s money in the bank,” Aunt Eller notes.)

Then Laurey, the female lead. When we first see her, her verbal sparring with Curly is delightful. It’s just fun to listen to them go back and forth. But . . . they go too far. It’s debatable whose teasing is to blame, but Laurey is the one who actually takes a step she can’t easily undo and has to regret it. But it’s not because she’s foolish or ditzy or trying to use some “feminine” trick calculated to make her man jealous; it looks for all the world like she’s just mad, and human, and she doesn’t need any time at all to realize the mistake. 

Later, in one of those great songs, Laurey proudly declares that she won’t weep and wail for a man who drops her; then she’s reminded the man she loves is right that moment outside with someone else, and she starts to cry . . . but doesn’t, and reasserts that she won’t. Later still, in a carriage with someone who tries to grab and kiss her against her will, she shoves him away and takes action—perhaps not the best action, since the horses go into a frenzied gallop that might leave the carriage, and her, smashed against a tree; but as soon as she has a chance she literally takes the reins herself and is then in control.

Laurey isn’t perfect or helpless either one. There are things to admire about her and things to shake your head over. She is, in that way, well-rounded and believable. She feels human.

I would like to caution her, though, that if the large, angry man you’re afraid of is heading your direction, the right response is not to walk into the shadows away from the crowd.

Finally, does Oklahoma pass the Bechdel test? I suppose it depends on how strictly you apply it. Near the end Laurey and Aunt Eller have a conversation which is occasioned by concern over a man’s fate, but what’s said is not specifically about men—it’s about bearing up and keeping on, and how life brings good and bad and you’ve got to face both.

Bottom line: Oklahoma has omissions characteristic of its time, it has a female character who’s arguably worrisome, and it includes a grueling ballet sequence, but otherwise it shines and makes me happy.

Reflections: Creature From the Black Lagoon

~ Not Alison ~ Leave a comment

As a child in the 1980s I was fascinated by the Creature from the Black Lagoon. He was creepy and dangerous but still had a kind-of-cute face, he was totally different from vampires, werewolves, and Frankenstein’s monster—and he had a glow-in-the-dark action figure (from Remco). I never saw the movie, however, until I was out of college, when I watched the entire trilogy.

So before starting the Blu-Ray Legacy Collection recently, I already knew the first two movies were good and the third one was a shameful disgrace.

cover of the blu-ray case for Creature From the Black Lagoon: Complete Legacy Collection

The original movie: Yes, you have to overlook the story’s ignorance of proper paleontology, the absurdity of that fossil hand sticking straight out of the cliff, and most obviously the question of why an amphibious fish-man is interested in a flipperless, scaleless, unclawed female mammal. But if you can do that, it’s quite enjoyable and still more sophisticated than most 1950s monster/horror movies. There’s an actual plot here, with the right mix of creature attacks and interpersonal conflicts and suspense, plus characters having understandable reasons for what they do.

But you can view the scene where the Creature watches Kay swimming, and swims along underneath her, in different ways. You could choose to see it as irrational and foolish, because he should have no interest in a human, or you can choose to receive it with the pathos the cinematography suggests, leaving aside the logic of it and taking the emotion instead. We can’t be absolutely certain the Gill-Man is the last of his kind, although the humans suggest this several times; but it does seem plain that he is alone. Could it be that he’s never looked on any female of his own species (if he hatched from an unattended egg, maybe not even his mother), and this is the first time he’s ever seen a human woman—someone roughly his own size, the same basic body plan (bipedal, two-armed, upright posture) and here she is swimming beautifully, much the way he does, performing pirouettes, turns, and twists in his native element. Just suppose for a little while that human hormones are sufficiently like those of his kind that when the water carries traces of her to his animal senses, his biology recognizes her as female, not male, and he is so lonely and isolated that the evidence of his eyes about her external differences does not matter. He might not think of her as outwardly attractive, and that might be irrelevant.

Revenge of the Creature (movie 2): Well . . . not quite as good as I remember.

One, bubbles from the air-hole in the top of the costume are starkly obvious in several scenes, something I didn’t notice in the first film (even though I’ve heard people mock that very thing).

Two, I was bugged by the way they put the Gill-Man in a tank full of saltwater fish (like sharks) and had him swim in the ocean, since the first film was very explicit that a branch of the Amazon River came to a dead end in the Black Lagoon, meaning it was not a saltwater lagoon (the word lagoon can be used of both saltwater and freshwater bodies). Not to mention that the creature was originally seen upstream along the Amazon, and followed the boat into the Black Lagoon.

Three, not only does the Gill-Man become obsessed with a human woman, he only wants this exact woman and inexplicably manages to track her to her hotel after he runs off from the sea-quarium where he’s been in a tank since he arrived unconscious in Florida.

Revenge of the Creature has its problems, but it’s still a legitimate sequel, and again much better than most 1950s monster/horror movies.

Both of the first two movies deserve credit for showing us intelligent, articulate, capable, and (mostly) brave scientist women pursuing more than just romance. (Although Kay’s job plays such a small role in the first movie you might forget it once they’re on the boat.) I’m sure it’s an attempt to appeal to male audiences more than a desire to reject stereotypes, but they effectively shut out any suggestion that being smart and determined and scientific is incompatible with attractiveness—or in any way undesirable.

You can fault the movies for still insisting that women need to be glamorously attractive, and for showing these two in swimsuits at every occasion, and yet the filmmakers could have found some other excuse to wedge them into the storyline, but chose to present them as educated and perfectly qualified for the work at hand.

In the second movie there’s a conversation mid-story where the female lead and her fellow-scientist boyfriend note that men don’t have to choose between family and career, but women do. He says, “I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, it’s just a fact.” And she answers, “It doesn’t seem right to me.” Which is never contradicted.

Also of note in the second movie is that the supporting male character, who is clearly more handsome than the male lead and has a decidedly better physique (you see both of them shirtless in swim trunks, sometimes side-by-side), does not end up with the beautiful woman.

Both movies suffer from overuse of the “Look! A creature!” theme (ba-ba-BAAAA!!!), and if I had complete control of the audio track I would also quietly brush away a certain amount of female screaming.

The Creature Walks Among Us (movie 3): With the first two movies there were things you had to overlook, like certain facts and practices of science. For the third movie you need to overlook even more science, along with . . . whatever you liked about the first two.

All right, yes, there are twenty-five minutes of a Gill-Man movie in there: a dive (including obligatory woman-in-swimsuit), shots of the Creature swimming, a hunt for the Creature, an attack by the Creature, and then . . . we’re into some other kind of movie, with forty minutes left. 

a simple chart showing how the timeline of the movie The Creature Walks Among Us is divided up

And the Gill-Man is gone, changed into something without scales, without claws, without gills, but suddenly bulked up like an NFL player. His face is reminiscent of a peeled Gill-Man, but it’s not really him. If the filmmakers wanted to make me feel sorry for him, they did succeed in that, because the way he’s mutilated in this story is tragic.

I can’t imagine why they would take an iconic look already proven to please audiences and change him so drastically . . . except a desire to milk the title for more sequels without spending so much on makeup and costuming. Which didn’t work, since there were no more Creature From the Black Lagoon movies.

There are no female scientists in Walks Among Us. Instead you’re offered the unhappy wife of a rich man. At the start she appears to be a spoiled, petulant, rebellious wife looking to cozy up to some other man, a woman who married for money and is now bitter about it. Curiously, though, over the course of the movie she becomes increasingly sympathetic as you see what a grade-A jealous swine her husband is, and you begin to realize she’s not on the prowl at all. Then to complicate things a little more, another character goes out of his way to say the husband is not simply jealous but mentally ill (“disturbed” is the word used) and in need of help. So maybe his behavior, foul as it is, is slipping beyond his control, and we can feel some pity for him too—perhaps with the right help he wouldn’t be acting this way anymore and would see how wrong he’s been?

The subplot about this couple is to me much more interesting than the wreck that was made of the monster movie.

All three films deserve high marks for the underwater photography, which was first-rate. In addition, Ricou Browning, the man in the Creature suit underwater (uncredited on screen; other actors, also uncredited, played the Gill-Man on land) deserves particular praise because his swimming was graceful and elegant, and he did it in costume toe to scalp, which must have been horrendously difficult.

And it should not be forgotten that the Gill-Man looks amazing. The visual design, by Milicent Patrick, is intricate, menacing, and decidedly amphibious, while retaining human-ish personality and a face that can be seen as longing, wounded, and enraged, conveying understandable emotions. It’s hard to design a monster face that can carry all that despite having a limited range of actual motion. And then the physical suit was top quality. This was not done on the cheap. The actual costume has the detail and texture of reality, in and out of the water, and is as convincing as a costume can be for a creature you know does not exist. Some air bubbles here, a glimpse of a fold there, the eyes look a little off in some shots? Maybe, but those things last a second or two, and the effect sustained the rest of the time is one of realism. He’s heavy on land and graceful in the water, and the Creature does not look out of place walking around that lagoon or swimming within it.

I’ll always love the character, and I won’t accept the original movie being lumped in with “B-grade” monster movies. I’ve seen plenty of those, and Creature From the Black Lagoon is a considerable step above them.