Back to the Black Lagoon: A Creature Chronicle

This is a documentary about the classic science fiction horror film Creature from the Black Lagoon which was made in 1954. Fans of the original film will find it pretty fascinating. It came as a special feature on the DVD version. This documentary interviews lead actress Julie (Julia) Adams, and both actors that played the creature (in water and out) and more. It also has an appearance by Black Lagoon fan and screenwriter David J. Schow (the screenwriter behind "The Crow"). He was too young to work on this film, but he brings some good insight into the writing and making of it.

It covers everything from the actors being cast, early concept drawings and how the foam creature functioned on the actor. The only downside is that it only runs for about forty minutes, so while it covers everything it sort of skims over areas you wished it went deeper into - pardon the pun. I mainly wish it had spent more time talking about the score which was composed by legendary composer Henry Mancini. In the last one third of the show, it also talks about the two sequels including an interview with Lori Nelson, the focus of the amorous creature in the second film.

Another one of David J. Skal's (author of "Hollywood Gothic") short video documentaries that are featured as extras on home video collections of Universal's monster movies, this one concerns the creature feature "Creature from the Black Lagoon" (1954) and, to a lesser extent, its two sequels "Revenge of the Creature" (1955) and "The Creature Walks Among Us" (1956). It had at least a couple informative parts for me and a few other interesting observations. The description of the design of the Gillman by a team of artists was interesting and a reprieve from having listened to the same stories about Jack P. Pierce's solitary makeup work on earlier Universal horror films. One of the talking heads, David Schecter provides a good overview of the musical score. It's also nice that, unlike the docs for earlier films, this one is able to include interviews with a few of the surviving cast and crew.

As for the film analysis, it's mostly generic story and character summaries, with the usual passing references to similarities with "Jaws" (1975), "King Kong" (1933), as well as "The Lost World" (1925). The analogy of the creature and the woman swimming scene as sex is apt, but the "burgeoning environmentalism" supposedly found in the woman's tossing a cigarette in the lagoon is a stretch.

This featurette is found on the DVD of Creature From the Black Lagoon. It consists of interviews with cast members, collectors and experts, clips from the trilogy, production and concept stills and narration. They talk about the entire series(although the third seems to get rather little time... was there not much to say about it? All they seem to go into about it, other than the plot, is how the title being becomes more human, which it has been to an extent from the first one. In general, the original seems to be the main focus of this, but it most likely is by far the best one; I can't say, as it's the only of them that I've watched), the 3D(with a solid explanation of how it worked), the actors, the designs(the ones that were used and the one that wasn't), and the legacy of these films. I have to admit, I had no idea they had such extensive an assortment of merchandise for this "monster". Everyone in this has something to say, albeit it does do the love-fest thing, and not all of the information is interesting. It's put together nicely, very smoothly; I can only think of one spot where an anecdote came out of nowhere and had nothing to do with what was being talked about. There is a little violence and a discussion of the sexual undertones of that particular swimming sequence in this. I recommend it to any fan of the franchise. 7/10

Back to the Black Lagoon: A Creature Chronicle (2000)

**** (out of 4)

Terrific documentary covering the making of Universal's CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON as well as its two sequels. This was originally released with that film's DVD release back in 2000 but what makes this one stand out so much from many of the others in the series is that many of the original cast members are on hand to discuss the making of the film. Julie Adams, Ricou Browning and Ben Chapman are all on hand discussing the making of the film and the stories told include stuff like accidents on the set, the original look of the monster and of course how many of the stunts were done. Bob Burns, Skal, Bob Furmanek and Paul Jensen are also on hand to discuss their thoughts on the film and we even get Lori Nelson discussing the sequel. I think having many of the original cast members was a big plus here but you can't really blame those earlier docs for not containing this since those films were made back in the 30s. Overall I think the documentary gives you a great idea of what all happened while making the film and certain decisions that were made in regards to the sequels. Another major plus is hearing from those who actually saw the film in its original release. Hearing their stories of seeing it in 3D was great but also hearing about the hidden sexuality in the film was another interesting thing.