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Creature from the Black Lagoon – 1954 Jack Arnold
- B-movie budget 50’s sci-fi—not high production values and the acting, typical of Arnold’s films, is a little wooden—but I thought it was intelligent and, unlike many films in this genre from the era, not overly hokey
- Smartly, the film shows as little as possible of the creature for much of the film—not unlike how they used and showed jaws
- Reasonable explanations and discussions around evaluation and comparisons to recently discovered ancient animals—again- intelligent
- Influential on so many films- not just del Toro and jaws but plenty of bad films like anaconda
- For a few minutes down the amazon it feels a little bit like a trader horn travelogue
- An outright comparison of the sea to outer space on how much it’s unexplored and how little is known about it
- When they do show the creature they largely keep him underwater and those sections (about 20 minutes of the 80) are really well done
- Influenced by 1951’s the day the earth stood still— we are scared and kill what we don’t understand. I actually liked that this film didn’t moralize as much or even end up telling us if the creature would’ve been friendly or not
- Recommend
Drake2018-03-28T18:14:43+00:00
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