Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

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General		Extras
Category	Horror	Menu Audio Featurette-Back To The Black Lagoon Audio Commentary-Tom Weaver (Film Historian) Theatrical Trailer Gallery-Photo-Production Photographs
Rating
Year Of Production	1954
Running Time	75:59
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Jack Arnold
Studio Distributor	Universal Pictures Home Video	Starring	Richard Carlson Julia Adams Richard Denning Antonio Moreno Nestor Paiva Whit Bissell Bernie Gozier Henry Escalante
Case	?
RPI	$19.95	Music	Robert Emmett Dolan Henry Mancini Milton Rosen

    The Creature From The Black Lagoon was originally released in 1954, right in the middle of the 3-D craze. It was during this time that the studios needed to move the audience away from television and back into the cinema, and 3-D was the most popular way to accomplish this. Here we have the 2-D version of what was originally the world’s first underwater 3-D film. For those of you who saw Jaws III in 3-D, just imagine what it would have been like to see a cube of water floating in front of your face all those years ago. No, don’t try and remember the plot of that dismal movie, just the visual impact of the 3-dimensional cube of water, OK?

    Watery locations have always been a perfect place for scary stories and this movie continues a tradition that began with a silent movie called The Lost World based on Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel. Universal Studio’s producer William Alland combined this concept a supposedly true story he heard at a dinner party, which involved a half-man - half-fish creature that was said to live in the Amazon River. The screenwriters Arthur Ross and Harry Essex developed a script simply called Black Lagoon, which remained the films working title right through production.

    As for the story, Dr Carl Mia (Antonio Moreno) heads an expedition that is searching for fossils deep in the Amazon. During his current tour the team find the remains of a hand embedded in a cliff face near the water's edge. The peculiar webbing between the fingers of the skeleton is so peculiar that Mia decides to take his find to the local Marine Institute. It is here that he hopes to spur interest in other specialists, and return with a more scientific team and additional funding. Mia’s find certainly raises curiosity, particularly in Dr David Reed (Richard Carlson), who pushes the institute until they offer to completely fund an additional expedition, and supply the necessary experts to aid in cataloguing any further findings.

    The team returns to the original site, only to find that the staff who stayed behind have all been killed. They soon learn that the water-breathing creature is not extinct after all. When the team tries to capture it for study they only seem to enrage it further to the point that no one may make it out of the Amazon alive.

Video

    The transfer is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.33:1, not16x9 enhanced. Unfortunately the original 3-D version was not included here too.

    The cast must have worn predominately white or light colours. Whilst fitting attire for the tropics, it also lets the actors stand out from the deep contrasts of the black lagoon and surrounding backdrops. The movie is entirely black-and-white, so these differentiations between the light and dark ends of the spectrum give the image more depth that other B&W movies I have seen. The cave shots do show some limitations in shadow detail, but this also adds a level of mystery to these particular scenes. There is no low-level noise.

    There were artefacts scattered throughout the feature with the most obvious at 11:30. Thankfully, the others were milder and less obvious. There was a smudge on the camera lens at 22:53 in the centre of the screen, just above the diver's fin. It is gone by 23:17, when we are returned to the same scene. Aliasing is very rare, and very mild when it does occur. Macro blocking did make an appearance at times but was mild and usually confined to the top left or right of the screen out of the main focus of the action. Film artefacts are also apparent throughout the film, but are so well controlled that there are no specific instances that were distracting to this viewer at least.

    This disc is an RSDL disc with a seamless layer change on my equipment.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The audio on this disc is the digital version of the original mono soundtrack.

    The dialogue was clear and easy to understand at all times.

    Audio sync was not a problem at all with this transfer, and was completely spot on.

    The music was provided by the following five (uncredited) people: Robert Emmett Dolan, Henry Mancini, Milton Rosen, Hans J. Salter and Herman Stein. The music plays a big part into sucking the viewer into believing that this particular creature is real, and the events are somewhat plausible. The writers can only take us so far, and the music in this particular case sends us on the rest of the journey. It was very typical of light horror movies from the 50s and suited this production to a T.

    The surround channels were not used but keep in mind the film's age and you will enjoy it anyway.

    The subwoofer was not used by this track, but its absence was not a problem.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

Back To The Black Lagoon (39:38)

    The host David J. Skal takes us on a 39 minute nostalgic journey back to the Black Lagoon. There is an incredible amount of information about the production provided by the cast and crew. The technical problems presented by the suit and the different filming locations make this a very interesting bonus to watch.

Feature Commentary with film historian Tom Weaver

Theatrical Trailer (3:35)

Production Photographs (11:28)

    The Region 4 version of this disc misses out on:

• Nothing

• Nothing

    We are presented here with the same content as its Region 1 counterpart. Yet another plus for this classic production.

    This is a classic movie that is presented here wonderfully on DVD with obvious tenderness.

    The video quality is surprisingly clean and easy to watch.

    The audio quality is confined to the centre channel, but I was so caught up in watching this classic, with its focus on dialogue, that I never really missed additional speaker activity. I fear that any drastic changes to the audio mix might actually detract from the feature.

    The extras are extremely valuable and it was an honest pleasure to see that our disc retained the Region 1 material. All extras were very detailed and definitely added value to the movie.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall