This Hong Kong horror-adventure is directed by Lam Ngai Kai (aka Nam Lai Choi, aka Simon Nam) and stars Chow Yun-Fat, Maggie Cheung, Dick Wei and Sibelle Hu.
Chow likes to smoke a pipe in this movie
Oh no! It’s ‘Little Ghost’!
Things don’t end well for this professor (Ken Boyle)
Adventurer Yuan must return to North Thailand and confront the chief of the Worm Tribe in order to look for the cure to a spell which is slowly killing him. Tagging along with him is pushy reporter Tsai-Hung and, later, his mentor Mr. Wei (Chow Yun-Fat).
Japanese B2 poster
After a shoot ’em up/kung fu punch-up/police siege start, the film soon settles down to the proper tale it intends to tell. This means lots of cave sets, guttering torches, masses of mad tribesmen, fighting and slimy monsters.
The weird creature known as Little Ghost
Transformation time!
Blu-ray cover
Though it’s not a fighting-oriented film to the extent that, for instance, WE’RE GOING TO EAT YOU is, THE SEVENTH CURSE does boast very good choreography when a scrap starts.
The Seventh Curse has decent action moments
The wire work is really over the top: whenever someone is kicked, or shot, they fly about a quarter of a mile backwards! In one amazing scene Yuan blasts a guy with his gun at the same time as his partner Heh Lung shoots the same tribesman with an arrow in slow motion.
DVD cover
When Yuan finds out that he needs the stone eyeball from a Buddha statue to prevent the onset of the Seventh Curse that will kill him, it gives the filmmakers a fine excuse to have some neat stunts on top of an impressively large statue. Rope-swinging, saffron-robed assailants, booby traps and crumbling chunks of stone confront our heroes as they ascend the Buddha. The sequence becomes more outrageous once the stone eyeballs have been removed from the statue. Blood spurts from the Buddha’s sockets as the head falls off and rolls after Yuan à la RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK!
Trouble on the huge Buddha statue!
The two critters featured in this Far East weird-fest are Old Ancestor and Little Ghost.
Little Ghost is the product of a spell utilising the blood of a hundred children. It has a strange head (resembling the Mekon from the British Eagle comic strip), which is attached to a slimy tail. It also has a pair of little arms. This odd ‘ghost’ is captured with the aid of a pregnant cow’s placenta! This could only happen in a Hong Kong film, eh?
Little Ghost!
Black magic!
Old Ancestor dwells in his stone coffin in a cave and, when he originally appears, is in the form of a glowing-eyed, clacking-jawed skeleton covered in dry skin. Operated, I assume, as a full-scale marionette, Old Ancestor closely resembles the Japanese skeleton in 1986’s THE GHOST SNATCHERS (also directed by Lam Ngai Kai).
Old Ancestor is initially a reanimated skeleton monster!
Old Ancestor’s eyes start to glow!
Once it drinks the blood of a victim, Old Ancestor does a bit of transforming, to become a huge beastie with an elongated head. Unlike the really nifty ‘split head’ monster in 1988’s PEACOCK KING (also directed by Lam Ngai Kai), which looked good in both long shots and close-ups, Old Ancestor only really impresses during the close-up shots of the head and hands distorting.
Old Ancestor’s toothy maw!
As soon as we see the complete creature, with its webbed wings, the man-in-a-suit monstrosity is reminiscent of a cross between a Mahar from AT THE EARTH’S CORE (1976) and the rubbery Dagoth god-monster from the finale of CONAN THE DESTROYER (1984). In other words… Old Ancestor looks chintzy, but is fun to watch as it whirls about the cavern! The first person we see get killed by Old Ancestor does what probably many victims confronted by a monster would do: he voids his bladder!
Old Ancestor opens up his wings
You don’t mess with Chow Yun-Fat when he gets hold of a rocket launcher, right?
Finally, it is left to Chow Yun-Fat to deal with the toothy adversary… by blowing the critter away with a rocket launcher! Way to go Chow!
Chow Yun-Fat blasts the monster to smithereens with a rocket launcher. Well, of course he does: he’s Chow Yun-Fat!
All in all, THE SEVENTH CURSE is a fine ripping yarn. (Oh yeah, look out for the action scene where Yuan crashes his jeep through a Worm Tribe hut in slow motion: one unfortunate stuntman fails to get out of the way and is hit! I’m sure it was an accident and was not intended that way, but… ouch!)
Hercules attacks the huge, tree-wrecking Erymanthian Boar!
Hercules (Dwayne Johnson) and his small, loyal warrior team earn gold as roaming mercenaries for hire. But when he accepts the offer of Lord Cotys (John Hurt) of Thrace to train an army in order to protect the kingdom from a ruthless warlord called Rhesus (Tobias Santelmann), Hercules must finally make a choice between making money and making a difference.
Dwayne Johnson wears the lion headgear well!
Based on Steve Moore’s comic ‘Hercules: The Thracian Wars’, the screenplay, written by Ryan Condal and Evan Spiliotopoulos, goes in a very interesting direction, presenting Hercules’ legendary labours as merely exaggerated stories used to boost his claim to be an unbeatable demigod. His band of mercs, made up of knife-wielding Spartan Autolycus, Amazon archer Atalanta, berserker warrior Tydeus, the philosophical spearman Amphiaraus and storyteller Iolaus, all do their best to help overstate their leader’s prowess as much as possible.
Aksel Hennie, Ingrid Bolsø Berdal, Dwayne Johnson, Reece Ritchie and Rufus Sewell
Ian McShane is wonderful, of course, as Amphiaraus, who can see visions of what is to come (but keeps getting his time of death wrong!)
Director Brett Ratner handles the movie really well, orchestrating some impressive big scale battles, most notably the clash with the bald, savage Bessi tribesmen, and he inserts twists and revelations into the story at exactly the right points. This plotting skilfully builds up to the scene that makes HERCULES a favourite fantasy action movie of mine… when, during the film’s desperate, all-is-lost moment, Hercules draws on all his willpower and belief to actually tap into the godlike strength required to break his chains.
It’s such a highpoint when Dwayne roars “I am Hercules!” and leaps into action. Love it!
This. Scene. Rocks.
What helps make this scene work so well is that, up until this point, the movie has worked hard to strip away the legend and demystify Hercules’ feats, revealing that his fights with the likes of the Hydra and the Nemean Lion were all fabricated or overly embellished. ‘Centaurs’ are revealed to merely be inaccurately observed mounted warriors and Cerberus proves to be a misremembered hallucination. So, by the time Hercules is shackled in the dungeon, seemingly powerless to prevent Cotys’ daughter Ergenia (Rebecca Ferguson) from being executed, you really don’t think he will be able to draw upon the superhuman might needed to save the day.
The Nemean Lion
The Lernean Hydra!
Dwayne Johnson makes for a perfect, very physical Hercules, Ian McShane stands out as Amphiaraus, who amusingly keeps mistakenly thinking he can foresee his own imminent death, and Rufus Sewell imbues Autolycus with a cynical charm.
Autolycus in action during the battle with the green-painted Bessi tribesmen
Though all of the monsters are ultimately revealed to be bogus, the CGI utilised to bring them to the screen is top-notch, especially the huge, tree-splintering Erymanthian Boar. The three huge, black wolves that Hercules combats in the dungeon are well executed too by the visual effects team, with one of the critters getting its jaws snapped in the vicious skirmish with the Greek strongman.
The hellish three-headed hound Cerberus…
…is revealed to be three feral, snarling wolves owned by King Eurystheus (Joseph Fiennes)
HERCULES is a handsome, well-mounted yarn with good production design and cinematography, which deftly balances humour and seriousness to produce a movie that rewards repeated viewings.
Here are some posters…
US teaser poster
Swedish poster
Japanese poster
Finally, here’s the awesome Erymanthian Boar in action…
A group of potential investors visit a stretch of Florida coastline to check out plots of land being offered to them by a bogus land developer (Joan Collins), but they soon find themselves under attack from masses of giant ants, which have mutated after coming into contact with a leaking barrel of radioactive waste.
Don’t buy any land from this woman!
A wonderful US 1 sheet poster boasting Drew Struzan artwork
Giant ants! I repeat: giant ants!
EMPIRE OF THE ANTS tends to be looked down upon by many critics and horror/sci-fi fans, but I think it is a very enjoyable creature feature!
An ant’s eye view of a victim
Ants attack the boat that the characters used to reach the beach, so everyone must head through the swamp to escape
The story starts like a 70s disaster movie, with the various quickly-sketched characters being introduced in a series of scenes. This bunch includes a kindly couple, a callous, self-serving, sexual predator dude (Robert Pine), an initially misanthropic boat captain (Robert Lansing), a disillusioned, recently divorced heroic guy (John David Carson) and a sparky young woman out to start over again after finishing an affair with a married man (Pamela Susan Shoop).
John David Carson, Pamela Susan Shoop and some ants
Everyone rapidly gets wet and dirty in this movie
These people aren’t the most in-depth personalities ever committed to film but, by the time they’ve battled their way through miles of mega-ant-festooned swampland, I got to like the handful of characters that survive long enough to reach the relative safety of a local town.
And it’s here at the town, in the third act of the movie, that the plot nicely twists: it stops being a survival horror monster movie and becomes a people-being-taken-over sci-fi story, as the protagonists discover that the giant ants have purposefully herded them here to be mentally controlled, like the rest of the townsfolk, by the huge queen ant lurking in the nearby sugar factory.
I love this story development! The local sheriff (Albert Salmi) and everybody else are compelled to do the ants’ bidding, forcing victims to be subjected to regular doses of pheromones, sprayed into their faces by the queen ant. But our mud-smeared heroes won’t be subjected to mind-control without a fight!
The queen ant prepares to spray a husband and wife with a cloud of pheromones to keep them under her control
There’s also an interesting scene where the characters witness a fight between the giant black ants and another type of not-so-big, lighter-coloured ants. This is a cool idea (different creatures grow in size but continue to feed on each other), though this story development isn’t delved into, because the protagonists must continue their escape through the muddy swampland and we never see this other species of ant again.
After the success of his previous creature feature, THE FOOD OF THE GODS (1976), Bert I. Gordon moved onto this movie, which also claimed to be based on the work of H.G. Wells, though it doesn’t bear any resemblance to the original short story at all. But who really cares? So long as using Wells’ name gave Mr B.I.G the opportunity to unleash more optically-enlarged critters for us to enjoy… I’m happy!
Gordon, the man behind such low budget, black and white 50s sc-fi monster movies as THE CYCLOPS, EARTH VS THE SPIDER, KING DINOSAUR and THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN, famously created his own special effects for his films. These efforts are often derided, such as BEGINNING OF THE END’s shot of grasshoppers crawling over a photograph of a building, but I have always found his productions to be lively and watchable. Anyway, Bert, as usual, provided the special effects for this film too.
The characters try to escape danger in a small rowboat, but the ants are everywhere!
EMPIRE OF THE ANTS was shot in the autumn of 1976 and the swamp locations look overcast, rather than sunny, despite this being in Florida, and this helps the look of the movie, I think. The dark tones add a gloomy, grim quality to the proceedings and also maybe helps the live action footage merge better with the ant photography: brighter, sunnier photography would probably have made the composited images look much more obvious.
An old couple find out that the shack they’ve been hiding in is surrounded by the massive ants!
I’m not saying the special effects are the best I’ve ever seen (this movie came out the same year as STAR WARS), but within the constraints of Bert’s budget and technical abilities, I think the use of a combination of large model ants for close-ups and magnified shots of real ants for the rest of the scenes works well enough.
Bert also jiggles the camera around a lot during scenes featuring the prop ants, giving the shots more energy and hiding the immobility of the models.
A big prop ant in action
Joan Collins, in fine uber-bitch form, is fun to watch as heartless con artist Marilyn Fryser, but I think the best performance comes from Robert Lansing, playing the boat captain Dan Stokely, who goes from unsociable, dour observer to tough, heroic ant-fighter!
Jacqueline Scott, Robert Lansing and Joan Collins
The ‘Bitch’ meets the queen…
Ants march into the sugar factory for a sweet snack
Despite the shortcomings of some of Bert’s FX (there’s a scene, later on in the film, where the ants are shown lining-up to enter the large sugar storage shed… and a couple of the insects look like they are crawling off the building and walking vertically into the sky), I think this is a solid 70s monster flick that manages to draw you into the story. You soon find yourself hoping that some of the characters will survive their monstrous ordeal… although I admit I was very pleased when the selfish, despicable Larry Graham (Robert Pine) finally runs out of luck and is savaged by a killer ant! Never was a character more deserving of being scrunched between giant mandibles!
Larry gets what he deserves! Yay!
Here are some very, very nice posters for the movie…
UK quad poster. This is a good ‘un!
German A1 poster
French grande poster. Another fine poster!
Italian poster – which includes ‘ant’s eye view’ imagery!
US half sheet
Australian poster
Italian poster… suggesting that the ants attack a city!
Here’s a painting by Rick Melton…
Niiiiiiice…
ANTS IN HER PANTS A short, sharp interview with Joan Collins!
Publicity shot of Joan posing with a couple of the giant ant props
On Saturday 10th November 1990 Joan Collins attended a book-signing event for her new novel at a store in High Street Kensington, London.
Greg Lamb, an intrepid contributor to my fanzine ‘IMAGINATOR’, decided to join the queue and ask her about EMPIRE OF THE ANTS, a film she had called the worst moment and film project of her career.
Joan doesn’t seem to mind being in the company of a huge insect in this publicity still!
Joan, as this interview will show, had not changed her opinion concerning Bert I. Gordon’s giant ant opus… and she becomes quite irritated with Greg!
This is the interview, which was printed in issue #7 of IMAGINATOR….
Greg: ‘Ms Collins – here you are signing your new book, you have a successful play in the West End, and DYNASTY is behind you. I wonder if you could tell me about this…’
(Greg hands Joan a video sleeve for EMPIRE OF THE ANTS)
UK VHS sleeve for Empire of the Ants
Joan:‘Oh my God! Oh no!’
(Joan turns the video sleeve over and views the whole cover)
Joan: ‘It’s disgusting’
Greg: ‘You once said that it was the lowest point in your whole career – why was that?’
(Joan gives Greg one of her most bitchy looks)
Joan: ‘Apart from being neck-high in a swamp full of leeches, and covered in mud, as well as being killed at the end by a 12ft papier-mâché ant, nothing, I suppose.’
Joan suffers from a giant ant flashback…
Greg: ‘So, you didn’t like filming it?’
Joan (snapping): ‘No, I did not!’
Joan didn’t enjoy the filming, it seems…
Greg: ‘If you could say anything to Bert I. Gordon, the director, what would it be?’
Joan: ‘I wouldn’t want to say anything in front of these people.’
(Greg points to the video cover she’s still holding…)
Greg: ‘Could you sign the video sleeve for me, please?’
Joan:‘No, I will not. That is not my scene, love.’
(Joan hands the cover back to Greg and turns to a very tall, very wide man standing next to her…)
Joan: ‘Can you please show the young man out.’
Greg: ‘Thanks, bye…’
(Greg is grabbed by the right arm, led to the door of the store, and pushed into Kensington High Street by the security goon!)
End of interview!
Here’s the final comment from Greg Lamb, after his brief chat was over: ‘I’ve always liked Joan Collins for her balls and down-to-earth attitude, as well as the image that she puts across on screen. But I can say that, seeing her from two feet away, she looked only about 5ft tall. She should really learn to love EMPIRE OF THE ANTS!’
After a person is killed and burnt at a farmhouse, a small group of characters become trapped in a hospital… where they have to deal with hooded cultists and horrible, slimy, mutated creatures .
Cultists!
Poster
THE VOID was written and directed by Jeremy Gillespie and Steven Kostanski (who is also a prosthetic make-up effects artist). The Canadian movie stars Aaron Poole, Kenneth Welsh, Ellen Wong & Kathleen Munroe, and it was mainly funded via normal channels, though the creature effects were actually crowdfunded on Indiegogo.
A nurse’s body becomes enveloped by a tumorous mass and tentacles
THE VOID is an effective, low budget horror film that juggles such disparate elements as surgical horror, Lovecraftian cosmic eeriness & mysterious cults.
Mutating flesh…
Channeling the likes of Carpenter, Fulci & Clive Barker, this movie boasts decent shock moments, some effective practical creature effects, a fairly unpredictable plot, plentiful gore and mysterious symbolism… just what does that triangle represent?
Beware the triangle
It’s that triangle again…
…and here’s the triangle once more… a portalThe cultists lurk outside
Maybe the story gets a little too convoluted, and some things just don’t get explained, but I think this adds to the obscureness of the whole production, which is a brutal, grim slice of 80s throwback horror/creature feature cinema. Great stuff.
That shot in the operating room looks grimly cool, so here it is again……and here it is yet again, in close-up
Finally, here are some cool posters/artwork for the film…
Kali: one of Ray Harryhausen’s greatest creations!
Sinbad (John Phillip Law), his crew, a Vizier (Douglas Wilmer) and a slave girl called Margiana (Caroline Munro) undertake a voyage to find the legendary Fountain of Destiny in Lemuria, but a master of black arts, Koura (Tom Baker), is also set on acquiring the Fountain’s gifts to conquer the land of Marabia.
UK quad poster
Directed by Gordon (SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN) Hessler, this movie was the second of three Ray Harryhausen Sinbad films released by Columbia Pictures (the other two were THE 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD and SINBAD AND THE EYE OF THE TIGER) and it’s my personal favourite.
Margiana is offered up to the God of the Single Eye… a centaur!
For me THE GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD has the best ‘feel’ of the three Harryhausen Sinbad productions: the lighting is great, the sets are marvellous, it has the best dialogue, and the general atmosphere is a satisfying mix of seriousness, fantasy, adventure and humour.
Sinbad fights for his life in a moody Lemurian temple set
The score by composer Miklós Rózsa is wonderful, especially during the exciting sword fight between Sinbad’s crew and a statue of Kali. Rózsa had provided the music for THE THIEF OF BAGDAD (1940), a favourite film of Ray’s. THE THIEF OF BAGDAD had also featured green-skinned men and this Sinbad adventure has similar green tribesmen.
The main selling point of any Ray Harryhausen production is the chance to enjoy Ray’s stop-motion effects and THE GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD has a fine selection of animated adversaries, including the aforementioned many-armed Kali. Along with the Kali fight scene, the initial sequence that introduces Kali is also very well-done: the fact that Ray, through his stop-motion skills, imbues the six-armed statue with ‘life’ and then proceeds to show her dancing too is just amazing.
Kali throws some shapes
Other stop-motion creations include a wooden ship’s figurehead and winged homunculi. The scene in which Koura creates the second small homunculus from a jar of leaves and chemicals is effectively done, with the tiny creature acting as if it has just been born.
‘Birth’ of the homunculusKoura uses his dark magic to animate the figurehead on Sinbad’s ship
There is also an impressive cyclopean centaur, which kidnaps Margiana, then does battle with a griffin!
Griffin versus centaur!
Some folks moan that the griffin just kind of strolls into the story to have a fight with the centaur and then gets killed. But this winged creature is performing a role set out in a prophecy told to Sinbad by the Oracle of All Knowledge (played by an uncredited Robert Shaw in striking makeup) and so, for me, the sudden appearance works fine because the griffin is functioning as part of the prophecy (which states “Destiny is a place where both good and evil wait” – the griffin obviously personifies the good) and when we see it get wounded by Koura so that the centaur can gain the upper hand in the battle, the griffin is again playing its part in the prophecy (“for it is the deeds of weak and mortal men that may tip the scales one way or the other.”)
The horned Oracle of All Knowledge is consulted
Lobby card shows Sinbad taking on the centaur
Tom Baker, as Koura, ageing every time he uses his magic, is the best villain in the Sinbad trilogy of films, I think. John Phillip Law is a fine Sinbad (the best!) and the lovely Caroline Munro adds glamour as slave girl Margiana, dripping sex appeal in all her scenes. Douglas (JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS) Wilmer, as the badly burned Vizier, is hidden by a mask for most of the running time, but his voice is a great contribution to the film.
Tom Baker as Koura, surrounded by green tribesmenJohn Phillip Law and Caroline MunroDouglas Wilmer as the Vizier reveals his scarred face to act as a distraction, so that the protagonists can escape the green men.Sinbad offers the Vizier a crown of untold richesSinbad and Rachid (Martin Shaw)
Ultimately, I think this Sinbad film stands out because its story uses the overarching theme of Destiny very well, in a script written by Brian Clemens that includes lots of chat peppered with praise to Allah, humour and colourful aphorisms: “My heart is filled with courage! But I have very cowardly legs.”
“Trust in Allah, but tie up your camel!”
Kali is a real handful!
Some posters for the film…
Belgian poster
Australian daybill poster
US one sheet poster
East German poster
US half sheet
West German poster
Japanese poster
US one sheet
1977 Czech A3 Poster
US insert poster
Polish poster
1973 Czech A3 Poster
Ghanaian hand-painted poster
Lobby cards…
Lobby cardLobby cardLobby card
VHS, DVD and Blu-ray covers…
US VHS cover
Finnish VHS cover
Brazilian DVD cover
UK Blu-ray cover
Spanish blu-ray cover
Spanish Blu-ray sleeve
Marvel Comics did an adaptation of the movie…
Issue 7 of Worlds Unknown
Issue 8 of Worlds Unknown
Publicity photo…
Caroline Munro
Finally, here’s a Ray Harryhausen concept drawing that shows a proposed fight between the centaur and a giant Neanderthal Man…
The Neanderthal Man was replaced with the griffin in GOLDEN VOYAGE, but a big Troglodyte would feature in SINBAD AND THE EYE OF THE TIGER
Sheriff Franklin Hunt (Kurt Russell) leads a small posse into a desolate region to rescue some people who have been abducted by a cannibalistic clan of troglodytes.
Poster
I like horror westerns, such as DEAD BIRDS, RAVENOUS and THE BURROWERS, and this one is a really good example of the sub-genre.
First of all, this film stars Kurt Russell, who is always worth watching, and it has good characterisations, with Patrick Wilson, Richard Jenkins and Matthew Fox shining in their roles. Fox’s character, for instance, could’ve come across as quite unlikeable, but much of what he does and says is practical and is actually the right thing to do.
Kurt Russell with epic moustacheMatthew FoxA closer look at Russell’s very manly facial hair
Skulls…
The troglodyte burial ground (inspired more by a Native American medicine wheel, rather than a burial ground)
A large chunk of the running time focuses on the leads trekking across the desert, and I think these scenes work well, driving home how dangerous and arduous such an undertaking like that would actually be.
Dutch artwork
The action is brutal
With Sid (SPIDER BABY) Haig in a cameo role, well-written dialogue throughout and Kurt Russell sporting a truly awesome moustache, this film also boasts some very disturbing, monstrous antagonists…
Sid Haig
A nice lookin’ poster
The cave-dwelling tribe of cannibals featured in this movie are a truly nasty group of cinematic bad guys: they are covered in dry mud, have weird throat pipes that produce an eerie wail and they are utterly pitiless. The violent action at the end of this movie is jaw-droppingly savage, especially the scene where they scalp and upend a character, then start hacking him between the legs, bisecting him! This is something you don’t easily forget! My eyes are watering as I write about this moment!
Scalped
Cutting around the bone throat pipes…
…and pulling them out of a troglodyte’s neck to inspect
These guys are nasty!Sheriff Hunt has his belly sliced open……and then one of the savages rams a red-hot metal hip flask into his wound. Ouch!
BONE TOMAHAWK was S. Craig Zahler’s directorial debut and he’s gone on to write and direct two other gritty, violent movies I like a lot: BRAWL IN CELL BLOCK 99 and DRAGGED ACROSS CONCRETE.
Savage headgear
Off with his head!
BONE TOMAHAWK is a well-made, brutal film that is really worth hunting down if you’ve not seen it yet.
Skirmish!Things get barbaric in the third actA cannibal inspects a rifle
Region 2 DVD cover
Cool poster!
Here’s Mauricio Ruiz’s concept design for the look of the troglodytes…
The troglodytes were eventually portrayed in the film with a different look compared to this design
At one point the creature is captured, at least for a while…
An expedition heads into the Amazon jungle after the discovery of a skeletal fossil hand that seems to be an example of a missing link between sea and land creatures…
The webbed claw!
The expedition team, aboard the steamer Rita, speculate that the rest of the fossil skeleton could be located downriver, so they sail along a tributary that leads them to a lagoon…
…the Black Lagoon!
Once they are anchored in this mysterious stretch of water the team go diving and finally realise there is a living, breathing prehistoric, amphibious, humanoid Creature lurking nearby. And now the fun really starts!
The Creature comin’ at ya!
Director Jack Arnold’s creature feature has lots of poking-at-the-lens moments that reflect the fact the film was shot in 3D (I once saw a 3D print of the film at a screening at my college and there were lots of shots of spearguns and claws looming at the screen!)
The gill-man’s claw reaches into a tent… in 3D!
The story is pretty straightforward: scientists go hunting for missing link fossils in the Black Lagoon, the Creature attacks, they capture it, the gill-man escapes and tries to prevent them from leaving by blocking their escape with branches, the heroine gets abducted by the Creature, the rest of the team go to the rescue, etc. The very linear plot is fine, though, because it provides the foundation for a production that gels nicely and is endlessly enjoyable.
Julia Adams screams!
To begin with, the film is great to look at: the underwater photography is really well done, the gorgeous Julia Adams is, well, gorgeous, and the gill-man is a brilliant monster suit design.
Gill-man alert!
The way the Creature ‘gulps’ at the air when it is on land is impressive: it looks like a gasping fish, which is such a cool touch for a movie from this period. The ‘underwater ballet’ sequence, where the Creature shadows Julia Adams as she swims in the lagoon, is rightly considered a standout moment and is unlike pretty much anything else seen in similar 50s creature features.
The superb underwater swimming scene
The score is very bombastic which, added to the 3D-inspired photography, makes the film quite an in-your-face experience. Richard Carlson is a dependable leading man and Richard Denning, as Dr. Mark Williams, is a more interesting character, who vacillates between giving up the search early on when nothing is discovered to becoming overly obsessed with capturing or killing the Creature.
The Creature in motion
The Creature is one of my all-time favourite screen monsters and it was played by Ben Chapman on land and by Ricou Browning for the underwater shots. It really is an amazing man-in-suit creation.
Ben Chapman
Ricou Browning
There’s been a lot of recent interest shown in the origin of the design of the gill-man, with much being made of the fact that Milicent Patrick designed the approved Creature look, but her role was then downplayed by lead makeup artist Bud Westmore. This is a shame, though it’s great that Milicent is receiving her due now, thanks to the book ‘The Lady From the Black Lagoon’.
Milicent Patrick
The gill-man went on to appear in two sequels, REVENGE OF THE CREATURE (1955) and THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US (1956), its influence has extended to the likes of Guillermo del Toro’s Oscar-winning homage THE SHAPE OF WATER (2017) and it really deserves its place in the line-up of classic Universal monsters.
Classic Universal monster line-up!
Pressbook cover
Webbed claw in lobby!
The Creature looms…
Swedish poster
French 1962 re-release poster
Belgian poster
Italian poster
Devoted to every kind of movie and TV monster, from King Kong to Godzilla, from the Blob to Alien. Plus monsters from other media too, including books and comics.
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