MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological, metaphysical, cosmological*
CREATURE begins by quoting the
origin of the universe a la Genesis, yet afterward immediately shifts into a
straight scientific account of life being born from the oceans rather than from
the Garden of Eden. Did the producers
have the Biblical reference thrown in to placate audiences who might’ve taken a
dim view of a purely materialistic account of the evolution of life? It’s possible, but in any case the injection
of the numinous supports the script’s assertion that before man arose, there
might have been many other “experiments” that God and/or Nature
perpetrated. The opening sequence ends
with the sight of the petrified hand of some dead humanoid—a hand like that of
a human, except that this dessicated relic sports claws. When a living exemplar of this
almost-vanished species makes his first appearance on camera, he too does so by
putting forth a clawed hand—to the accompaniment of a loud “dah dah DAH”
musical sting—suggesting that in this world, the essence of the alien is
symbolized by the interface of the human hand— the tool with which man builds
things—with the destructive claw of the beast.
The claw beckons the audience to
follow the adventures of the scientists who find it buried in rock in some
Latin American country. One of those
scientists, Doctor Maia, invites a team of scientists from the U.S. to mount an
expedition in the same territory, a territory enclosing the ominous-sounding
“Black Lagoon.” Three Americans—Doctor
David Reed, his fiancés Kay, and Doctor Williams, who arranges the expedition’s
financial affairs—elect to hire a boat and accompany Maia down the Amazon River
to find more fossils. But even before
the expedition proper begins, it’s clear that Reed and Williams represent
opposed aspects of man’s quest for science.
Reed speaks altruistically about wanting to learn more about the origins
of life in order to gather knowledge that will help mankind explore outer
space. Williams merely wants to garner
financial rewards in the here and now.
Before the boat-trip even begins,
the film shows an Amazonian native attacked by a modern-day descendant of the
claw’s owner, though the film naturally does not disclose the creature’s full
appearance so early. Some time later the
expedition arrives on the scene to find the body. Some time later the heroes will learn about
local legends of a “Gill Man” who can breathe underwater, but though they don’t
yet suspect his existence, the creature begins to follow these new intruders
into his domain.
When the boat enters the Black
Lagoon, prior to any sightings of the Gill Man, Kay displays her fascination
with raw nature by speaking of “the beautiful lagoon.” It’s not clear as to how long the Gill Man’s
been around, but since he doesn’t seem to have any Gill Women around, one has
to assume that he must have been spawned long, long ago. But one look at Kay and the Gill Man
apparently remembers the joys of spawning.
Following the famous “water ballet” scene in which Kay goes swimming and
the Gill Man swims beneath her, mimicking her movements in a quasi-erotic
manner, the monster decides to attack the boat, shredding one of its nets. When the scientists are finally convinced of
this anomaly’s existence, Reed wants to capture it for scientific study, while
Williams seems more interested in killing it with his handy spear-gun. “Dead or alive,” Williams asks Reed, “what’s
the difference?” In a sense Williams speaks for that part of science that cares
only about dissecting living things for the sake of sterile curiosity, while
Reed implicitly respects the ecology of living things, though in 1954 the
modern philosophy of ecological science had yet to get off the ground.
The Gill Man kills another crewmen
and maims another man in the party. With
the help of the boat’s Latino captain (who has a nice moment when he shows
Williams that the doctor’s money doesn’t put him in charge), the scientists
manage to drug the Gill Man. However,
their success is short-lived. The
creature escapes and blocks the ship’s exit from the lagoon, forcing Williams
and Reed to contend with it. Callous
Williams meets his maker at the clawed hands of his distant ancestor, and Kay
is abducted into the creature’s subterranean boudoir. Reed and his fellow adventurers arrive in
time to keep Kay from becoming the mother of a new race of fish-people. The Gill Man appears to perish, but as most
fantasy-film fans know well, he returns in two more films. Both of these will be covered separately, but
arguably the “Black Lagoon” films present the decade’s most empathetic
treatment of a science-fictional creature, and make him the fit heir to the
Universal tradition of great monsters.
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