Review of Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) by Veronique K — 10 Nov 2007

"the creature" is the horror moster legend for the 50s audience....a prehistoric amphilain man obssessed with a beautiful swimmer while he tries to symbolically make love to her by imitating her poses in the water. another innovative archetype of "beauty and beast"....mostly the credit goes to the art department which creates such an amazing look of legendary "the creature".....

Simply, the plotline goes that a group of scientists and crew explore into the perilous jungle to seek the sample of a new specy they just discover. one day the female scientist swims in the lake that catches the sight of the love-struck creature, then the shipmen and the creature ensue a hide-and-seek killing game to prevent "the beast" from snatching "the beauty" away. just like the mythical fable, beauty vanquishes the beast. righteously speaking, it's the fault of human to intrude creature' home and take it for granted.

The creature series had been made into a trilogy of socially satiric metaphor which reflects people's cruel discrimination to "the otherness"....consequently the universal studio made other two creature flicks...then creature gets captured in an aquarium as exhibited money-sucking object, gets abused by human for experiements...in the last one, scientists even attempt to transform him into human, then he's disenfranchised for good in the margin since he cannot return to the swamp nor melt into humans as one of them....a metaphor to blast men's violatile mercilessness toward the other living thing, whether it's human or not.