I saw The Creature From the Black Lagoon in 3D at an all night horror marathon last year, and I have to say it was great fun indeed.
Remember, when the first Creature was made back in 1954, 3D was brand new technology, so it was remarkable to see how well it still works in the film. However you watch it, 3D or flat, Creature holds up after all this time, and now it’s is finally available to watch in 3D at home as part of the Universal Classic Monsters Blu-ray collection.
When I was researching Creature for Reel Terror, I discovered that the movie was actually one of the first environmentally conscious horror films, and it had a strong message against pollution – a message that is still clearly important today. As such, it doesn’t come as much of a surprise that the Creature may indeed return in modern times.
A remake of Creature has been in the works for a long time, since the eighties actually, and now another attempt at bringing him back has been launched. This is just one of many attempts by Universal at rebooting their classic monsters. As we’ve reported previously, the studio has remakes of The Mummy and Van Helsing lined up, and there’s also several competing Frankenstein remakes out there as well.
As The Hollywood Reporter tells us, screenwriter Dave Kajganich is writing the new Creature, and he’s also been working on reboots of the Stephen King classics Pet Sematary, It and The Stand. Onboard as a producer on the film is Gary Ross, writer / director of The Hunger Games, and Ross’s father, Arthur, was co-writer of the original Creature, along with Harry Essex and Maurice Zimm.
I’m curious if this current attempt at reviving the Creature, as well as the Stephen King reboots, will ever make it to the finish line. The original Creature is a great classic, and it’s great to have it back in 3D. The message about taking care of mother earth wasn’t heavy handed, and who knows if the next edition is going to try to have anything educational in it, or just try to be fun horror flick.
Like every remake of a horror classic, it’s going to be very tough to improve on the original. Like Guillermo Del Toro said in Reel Terror, the scene where the creature is gazing up at Julie Adams swimming above him is his favorite horror film moment. “Everything is perfect,” Del Toro continues. “The white bathing suit, the composition, the hypnotic, ballet like coordination of Beauty and the Beast. The image is a perfect metaphor for their impossible coupling…Separated only by a few feet, but so very far apart.”
