“BEAUTY AND THE BEAST,” WATER-BALLET EDITION.
After a strange fossil of a clawed, webbed hand is discovered deep in the Amazon, a follow-up expedition of American marine researchers, led by Dr. David Reed (Richard Carlson) and Dr. Mark Williams (Richard Denning), along with Reed’s coworker and girlfriend, Kay Lawrence (Julie Adams), arrives at the site of the find to search for the rest of the fossilized creature, which seems to be a missing link between sea beasts and land animals. Lurking nearby is an amphibious humanoid, obviously a living example of the fossilized specimen, which begins stalking the group and kills a pair of men from the original discovery team. The creature takes a special interest in Kay, and in the film’s most celebrated scene, it swims beneath her in the river, mirroring her movements in a suggestive underwater pas de deux. Believing that the remainder of the missing fossil skeleton must have been swept downstream, the group follows a tributary to its end, an ominously named basin called the Black Lagoon, where the Gill Man makes his intentions for Kay terrifyingly clear.
Ben Chapman, Julie Adams, and Richard Carlson
Director Jack Arnold was asked by Universal-International to helm Creature from the Black Lagoon after the box-office success of his previous directorial assignment, It Came from Outer Space (1953). Both films were initially released in 3-D, but the process was especially well suited to underwater visuals, wherein swimming figures seemed to float out of the screen and over the audience. Arnold is considered one of Hollywood’s most important auteurs of 1950s science fiction, his 1957 film The Incredible Shrinking Man deemed a masterpiece of its kind.
It’s ironic indeed that some of the clearest freshwater springs in North America were chosen as the settings for a “black lagoon,” primarily Wakulla Springs, near Tallahassee, Florida, with some additional underwater scenes shot at Silver Springs, near Ocala. Rice Creek, near Palatka, Florida, was chosen for several above-water scenes. Production was split between Florida and Universal City, California, where aboveground sets were constructed around the studio’s much-utilized, man-made lake.
Bud Westmore, who succeeded master monster maker Jack Pierce as Universal’s head of makeup, was given official credit for the creature suit, but the de facto designer of the monster’s final look was studio artist Millicent Patrick, who vastly improved an earlier concept that had the smooth appearance of a salamander. Patrick’s sketches were transformed by Wizard of Oz veteran Jack Kevan into a bodysuit molded of sponge rubber. The headpiece was sculpted by Chris Mueller Jr.
Ricou Browning played the swimming Gill Man in three films, seen here in Revenge of the Creature.
Two actors played the Gill Man: Ben Chapman, a former nightclub performer, played the creature on land. Ricou Browning, a producer of underwater and topside water shows at tourist venues throughout Florida, was the swimming creature with the Florida location unit. Chapman appeared in only a handful of other feature films, including Jungle Moon Men (1955), and made occasional television appearances. In his later life he was a regular presence at autograph shows and fan conventions. Browning repeated his scaly swimming duties for the two Creature sequels: Revenge of the Creature (1955) and The Creature Walks Among Us (1956). Further credits include being cocreator of the movie Flipper (1963) and director and associate producer for the follow-up 1964–1967 television series. Browning also directed the underwater sequences for Thunderball (1965). In 2019, he commemorated the sixty-fifth anniversary of Creature’s release at a well-attended special event called Gill-a-Bration, at Silver Springs State Park. Julie Adams, who died that same year at the age of ninety-two, enjoyed a long career in television, and, like Browning and Chapman, was in great demand whenever fans of the Universal monsters gathered.