Friday, October 9, 2009

Monster Movies I Just Saw for the First Time

Creature from the Black Lagoon (three and a half stars total) The scariest episode I remember from The X-Files TV show was "The Host" (1994). It featured a half-man/half-tapeworm monster and took the old alligators-in-the-sewers urban legend to a whole new level. I don't think it was a rip-off of The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) but both share an affinity for evolutionary possiblities and the monsters look like cousins. If anything, the latter is the rip-off, combining the story from King Kong (1933) with the underwater ballet fad of the the period - actress/swimmer Esther Williams had just released Dangerous When Wet (1953) and Million Dollar Mermaid (1952). And the rip-offs just keep coming - a part of the John Williams' Jaws (1975) score sounds identical to one of the themes in Creature from the Black Lagoon. I wouldn't hold these comparisons against anyone. They're more like homages or updates to timeless ideas. The Gill-man (an affectionate name for the creature) was a great idea. He was the last of the Universal monsters and he saved the brand from bland sequels and a six-year stretch of Abbot and Costello parodies. He spawned two sequels, one marking the debut of Clint Eastwood. In the Gill-man's first movie, he may have had a greater percentage of screen time than any of the other Universal monsters in their first movies. That's counting the repetitive claws-coming-out-of-the-water shots though. So it's not a perfect movie, but it IS a perfect drive-in B-movie.

Godzilla/Gojira (two and a half stars total) Speaking of Universal monsters, did you know that there were two Dracula movies filmed simultaneously? DrĂ¡cula (1931), the Spanish language version, used the same costumes, script and sets at night but had the advantage of being twelve hours behind in schedule so its crew could "improve" on the experience of the English version's. If only the American re-release, Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956) was as good as the Japanese original, Gojira (1954). The two versions are as different as watching a movie is from reading a plot summary online. They're also as similar. In the original, the monster appears sooner, there's a message about peace and learning in the wake of destruction and last but not least, there's a love story. In the edited version, you get bug-eyed Raymond Burr (Perry Mason) reporting on the monster, the destruction and the love triangle, although I'm sure that last one falls out of the scope of his foreign correspondence. His character is primer for The Ugly American political novel released a couple of years later (1958). Gill-man from The Creature from the Black Lagoon and Toho Company's Big Five (Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah, Mechagodzilla, and Rodan) all wear rubber suits and move slowly, but only Gill-man steals the ladies away to his secret cave, so he gets my vote for best giant animal whose prehistoric habitat/hibernation is disturbed by capitalist human civilization.

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