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A group of scientists go to the Everglades to do some Creature-fishing.
Among the scientists is lovely Marcia Barton (Leigh Snowden), her violent
and overly jealous husband (Jeff Morrow), Morgan (Rex Reason), the good
and sensible guy, and guide Grant (Gregg Palmer), the young hotshot. All
three men have of course the hots for Marcia - which is of course an
explosive combination, even if it's easy to guess who will get her in the
end ...
Eventually, our group of scientists find the Creature (played in water
by Ricou Browning, on land by Don Megowan) ... and the first thing is they
burn it half to death. When our heroes later perform surgery on the
creature they realize his gills are fatally damaged, but he also has a set
of unused lungs, so if they could make him breath through his lungs, he
would be saved - of course they succeed too.
The Creature of course does not know that without gills he can no
longer survive under water for any longer period of time, and he makes an
escape before long, almost drowning in the process, only to be saved by
Morgan who dives after him with an oxygen-hose.
Having been saved by Morgan, the Creature shows no more resistance and
lets himself be captured and brought to a nearby zoo. Morgan now comes up
with some stupid psychological explanations about the creature only being
violent when he's seeing violence first ... and really, in the zoo the
only time the Creature shows violent behaviour is when he sees a mountain
lion attacking the goats from next door - and the only one he attacks is
the mountain lion.
Then though, Barton and Grant have a showdown over Barton's wife, and
Barton beats Grant to a pulp, then leaves him inside the Creatures cage to
divert suspicion. The creature though quickly learns this behavious,
breaks out of his cage, destroys Barton's house - which is right next to
the cave - and kills him. Then he heads off to the sea - and wouldn't you
know it, with Barton and Grant gone, good guy Morgan gets Marcia ...
The third and most certainly the weakest part of the Creature
from the Black Lagoon films: This one is not so much a sci
fi-horror-adventure story but a soap opera (and not a good one) with some
very superficial and grossly misunderstood psychology thrown in - and the
Creature has been demoted to supporting character in his own film, is not
at all spooky anymore, and insome scenes towards the end he even wears
cloths. That the film is actually quite competently directed and features
decent production values actually works against the movie here, as it
distracts from the story's inherent trash factor and makes it nothing more
than a boring and pointless film that seems to accidently have a monster
in it.
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