The Stranglers of Bombay (1959)

Posted on October 25, 2013 at 6:45 am by Jeff Kuykendall

This post is part of the Hammer Halloween Blogathon hosted by the Classic Film & TV Café. Go to www.classicfilmtvcafe.com to view the complete blogathon schedule.

Terence Fisher was a busy man when he churned out The Stranglers of Bombay (1959) for Hammer Films. He had quickly become the go-to director for Hammer’s new wave of revisionist monster movies, having launched the Hammer horror cycle with The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) only two years before, and quickly following with Dracula (aka Horror of Dracula, 1958) and The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958). The same year that would see the release of Stranglers also produced Fisher’s The Mummy, The Hound of the Baskervilles, and The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959); at least two of those are now considered classics of the studio’s output. Undoubtedly, this is Fisher’s peak period, though he would continue his association with the studio – in particular, with Peter Cushing’s Dr. Frankenstein – until his final film, Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, in 1974. So it’s understandable that The Stranglers of Bombay has a tendency to be overlooked: it’s not one of his more resonant films, neither Cushing nor Christopher Lee are in it, and it’s not part of one of Hammer’s popular horror series. Basically, this was just an assignment. But Fisher, at the top of his game, could not help but apply a layer of quality to the production. There is clear, concise storytelling in his compositions and edits; the film moves at a brisk pace, managing another low-budget Hammer epic in its 80 minutes. And though it is not strictly a horror film, Fisher achieves a nightmarish, almost claustrophobic effect. Regardless of how much of the film is historically accurate or British Colonialist fantasy, Fisher creates a world in which the Thuggee cult is all-pervasive, conspiring and inescapable; a world where even a crowded, well-armed caravan traveling through the jungle can be easily slaughtered in a single night.

Captain Henry Lewis (Guy Rolfe) questions the locals to find out why so many have gone missing.

The script, originally titled The Horror of Thuggee, was by the American playwright David Zelag Goodman, whose later screenwriting credits include Straw Dogs (with Sam Peckinpah, 1971), Logan’s Run (1976), and Eyes of Laura Mars (with John Carpenter, 1978). It went into production under the title The Stranglers of Bengal, and the marquee name would be Guy Rolfe, the prolific British actor who had appeared in Ivanhoe (1952) and Hammer’s Yesterday’s Enemy (1959); he would go on to play the villainous Mr. Sardonicus (1961) for William Castle, and take the late-career role of Toulon in the Puppet Master films of the 90’s. Here, as Captain Henry Lewis of the British East India Company, he plays the usual hero of these Colonialist adventures: righteous, possessed of wisdom, able to handle himself in a scuffle. He’d be a thoroughly uninteresting character if he weren’t set up against enemies on both sides: the Thug gangsters in the jungle (responsible, we learn, for upwards of a thousand missing persons a year), and the corrupt British officers around him. That latter point is important. What qualities we project upon Lewis are in part by contrast to his peers, who are portrayed as aloof and arrogant: Colonel Henderson (Andrew Cruickshank, El Cid) brings in the young, underqualified, but well-connected Captain Connaught-Smith (Allan Cuthbertson, Room at the Top) to investigate the disappearances, and the new appointee casually dismisses Lewis’s work on the case. It’s Lewis, of course, who bothers to go out among the locals to attempt to gain their confidence, instead of remaining behind his desk in a stuffy office; it’s Lewis who attempts to interact with the culture and the country surrounding them, though this sometimes involves hunting tigers with his white-hunter friend Sidney (Michael Nightingale). Ultimately, Lewis uncovers mass graves, but even this barely concerns Connaught-Smith, and it’s up to Lewis to single-handedly dismantle the cult, which has already infiltrated the East India offices in the guise of Thug spy Lieutenant Silver (Paul Stassino, Thunderball). Scenes of ritualistic torture and occult fetishism (humorously, there’s a 1930’s voodoo-movie quality to this Kali-worshiping cult) trade with surprisingly engrossing scenes of Lewis attempting to solve the mystery and convince those around him that there really is a sinister conspiracy at work.

Karim (Marie Devereux) watches while Lewis prepares for death by cobra.

Look, this isn’t Pather Panchali. It’s pure British pulp and not to be taken seriously. Search elsewhere for political correctness: the spy Silver, of course, is half-Indian (gasp!), reinforcing an unfortunate suggestion that no one of Indian descent can be trusted, regardless of the fact that Lewis’s crusade is in part on behalf of the people – as indicated when he gives a horse to his servant Ram Das (Tutte Lemkow) so he can go in search of his missing brother. That screenwriter Goodman and the film’s producers probably knew more about India from Rudyard Kipling than anything else is evident in the presence of Lewis’s trusty mongoose, who saves him from a king cobra in a (real) confrontation that would definitely not pass muster with PETA. The Indian characters, as should be expected of a British film from 1959, are played by both Indian extras and non-Indian actors in makeup. Personally, I find Hammer’s The Terror of the Tongs (1961), with its eye-slanting makeup and cartoonish dialect, to be much more offensive. At least Stranglers has some evocative Indian subcontinent texture (of course, it’s shot at Bray and the city of Bombay is limited to a single walled-off set), and perhaps the fact that it’s filmed in black-and-white helps disguise some of the production’s limitations. Text at the end of the film links the story to history, and the quest of Sir William Henry Sleeman (1788-1856) to eliminate the Thugs (the fictionalized character of Lewis is apparently inspired by Sleeman). It should be noted there’s been some controversy in recent years over whether the Thugs were really prevalent in the 19th century – or if they, and Sleeman’s accomplishments, were just part of British Colonialist propaganda. The film’s depiction of the Thuggee as the “children of Kali” is correct, though placing them in a horror-movie context – not much different from the cults on display in The Witches (1966) or The Devil Rides Out (1968) – reminds that this is simply a Hammer genre movie. The climax, involving a high priest (George Pastell, who was an Egyptian in The Mummy), a crowd of cultists, a bonfire, and James Bernard’s pounding music, could be placed at the end of any Hammer horror entry.

A severed hand is delivered to the Lewis house.

Reservations duly noted, this is fun stuff. The story is told in a compelling way; as Lewis becomes increasingly isolated, and his friends are murdered or maimed – in one notable scene, his wife Mary (Jan Holden, The Camp on Blood Island) opens a package containing their servant’s severed hand – the tension builds. It’s easy to hate Connaught-Smith and root for Lewis, particularly as the odds get impossibly stacked against our hero, since it seems that nearly everyone is in on the conspiracy. (How do you recognize a Thug? They’re branded on the arm.) A highlight is the mass murder of the participants in a large caravan; the stranglers, with their “sacred cloth,” emerge suddenly out of the trees and descend upon the sleeping camp, wiping them out in seconds. Fisher adds some nice little touches, such as a transition near the opening of the film: two British officers abusively shout “Wake up then!” to an old Indian man standing beside a window. He pulls on a rope, and Fisher cuts inside the building, to the drapery to which the rope is attached, fanning the British elite inside: a moment that visually illustrates the divide between the Indian poor and their privileged rulers. The discussion that follows is between the Colonel and the displaced Patel (Calcutta-born Marne Maitland, excellent here), who can’t help but keep reminding the officers that his title now is strictly symbolic. (It will be revealed, of course, that he also is part of the Thuggee conspiracy. He’s secretly guiding an insurgency.) Much has been made of the film’s “sadistic” violence – a couple men are tortured, though it’s not graphically depicted by today’s standards; I find this frequent criticism exaggerated and ill-supported by a close review of the film, though I do love the line, “Slit their stomachs so their bodies do not swell!” In truth, The Stranglers of Bombay is an old-fashioned, very enjoyable adventure film with some horror elements, simply overshadowed by the Gothic achievements of Hammer’s, and Fisher’s, other films of the period. Plus, it has pin-up girl Marie Devereux in a small part (and smaller clothing) as a Kali worshiper. For a solid Saturday matinee, Hammer delivers – in “Strangloscope”!

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The Curse of the Werewolf (1961)

Posted on October 19, 2013 at 10:54 am by Jeff Kuykendall

A few observations after watching Hammer’s The Curse of the Werewolf (1961) on the big screen.

#1 The Werewolf Weeps

By 1961, Hammer had already placed their indelible stamp upon Frankenstein, Dracula, and the Mummy, updating the familiar tales with dashes of blood and sex. Terence Fisher, who helmed all those films, announces straightaway that The Curse of the Werewolf will be something different. While the terrific score by Benjamin Frankel (The Night of the Iguana) builds frenetically in the fashion of James Bernard’s work, Fisher zooms in close on the eyes of our monster, whose makeup will not be fully revealed until the film’s final scenes. We’re so close, in fact, that we can see the borders of Oliver Reed’s contact lenses, a fact that’s amplified on the big screen. And maybe it’s just the lenses that are causing his eyes to water. But the tears are a deliberate choice, linking this film with Universal’s The Wolf Man (1941) by emphasizing the tragedy of the Lawrence Talbot character, Leon Corledo (Reed). (Curse of the Werewolf was released on the 20th anniversary of the classic Lon Chaney, Jr. film, and was distributed by Universal International.) Corledo, like Talbot, is a good man shackled, through no fault of his own, to an evil beast within. He is forced to confront a horrible choice: either kill others every full moon, or kill himself. This is heavy stuff following Hammer’s previous monster-romps, and Fisher doesn’t hold back on unloading the story’s tragic weight.

Anthony Dawson and Josephine Llewellyn as the Marques and his new bride.

#2 Anti-Conventional Structure

Much has been made of the film’s extended prologue, and the fact that Reed doesn’t even appear until almost exactly halfway through the film; I’ve heard complaints and praise in equal measure. It’s certainly an example of Hammer’s confidence, or more specifically the confidence of Fisher and producer Anthony Hinds, who also wrote the film using his “John Elder” pseudonym. Audiences would flock to the latest Hammer Horror, so why not relax, take your time, and tell a ripping good yarn? To any who think that the film should get to its werewolf quicker, I’d point out a few things. For one, it would make for a more clichéd and conventional film. (It’s human instinct to judge a work against standards of the familiar, but it’s always worth pausing and noting that the unfamiliar is more interesting.) For another, the standard slasher-movie template is one Hinds smartly avoids, because that sort of thing gets repetitive and dull. But most of all, I love how the story unfolds like a fairy tale. A narrator tells us “Some two hundred years ago, a beggar came to the village of Santa Vera in search of charity.” He might as well say, “Once upon a time, there was a beggar.” Fairy tales and folklore often begin at the beginning of the beginning of the beginning. A modern-day reader perusing a book of Grimm’s Fairy Tales might be several pages into one before he realizes, “Oh, this is Sleeping Beauty; I recognize this.” Now imagine that you did not see the opening credits. You may be halfway through the film before you realize, Oh, this is a werewolf story. I recognize this. Frankly, I love that.

The mute jailer's daughter (Yvonne Romain), who cannot call out for help.

#3 Innocence Corrupted by Evil

The structure of the film, though not immediately obvious, becomes more poetic over multiple viewings. Fisher and Hinds are constantly “hammering” upon the same theme of the good and the innocent being corrupted by evil. The innocent beggar (Richard Wordsworth, The Quatermass Xperiment) is first humiliated at the court of the evil Marques (Anthony Dawson, Dr. No), then thrown into a dungeon, where he wastes away, and gradually becomes raving mad. The innocent jailer’s daughter (Yvonne Romain, Circus of Horrors) is raped by the now-evil beggar, who then dies. She takes out her vengeance upon the Marques by violently stabbing him. This history of corrupted innocence leaves its mark upon her bastard child, Leon. The holy water boils before the infant can be baptized in it; lightning flashes out the window and the devilish reflection of a church gargoyle is reflected in the waters. Later, the priest (John Gabriel, Corridors of Blood) will explain to Don Alfredo Corledo (Clifford Evans, SOS Pacific) that Leon has become a werewolf because the influence of the Devil will corrupt those souls who are left “weak,” and the infant Leon was left very weak indeed by his troubled heritage. (Incidentally, the audience I saw it with was surprised by the brutal fate of the jailer’s daughter. Her rape and subsequent revenge – tough stuff for 1961 – foreshadow the more extreme grindhouse films of the 70’s. Note also that the wounds left upon her chest by the beggar resemble the scratches of an animal; Hinds and Fisher originally intended to depict the beggar as becoming part-wolf before he attacks Romain.)

Don Alfredo Corledo (Clifford Evans) and his adopted son, the afflicted Leon (Justin Walters).

#4 Every Old Wives’ Tale is True

“You may think me superstitious, but I’ve seen a great deal more of the world than you have,” says Don Corledo’s servant, Teresa (Hira Talfrey, Witchfinder General). She tells him that the jailer’s daughter will give birth on Christmas day, and “for an unwanted child to be born then is an insult to Heaven, señor. That’s what I was taught. In the village where I come from, the girls stay away from the men in March and April, just in case.” Later, when Leon is old enough to begin changing shape and slaughtering the local goats, the villagers gather in the tavern and begin conjecturing about that wolf that’s on the prowl. (John Landis would later pay tribute to this scene in An American Werewolf in London.) Hammer mainstay Michael Ripper – for once, not playing the bartender – stumbles drunkenly about the tavern floor, mumbling that “Last night was the night of the full moon, and you know what that means!” People start to listen to these tales; they even give him more to drink. The tavernkeep, Pepe (Warren Mitchell, Hell is a City), finally melts down his wife’s silver crucifix to make a bullet. In one of Fisher’s most inspired moments, we see him level his gun at an off-screen wolf, and fire, before we cut to the young Leon (Justin Walters) back at his home – safe, but pulling feverishly at the bars his father placed in the bedroom window; Leon’s teeth are sharp and shining. We return to see Pepe gazing down at his prize: the goat-herder’s innocent dog. (This tragic moment deliberately foreshadows the shooting in the film’s final scene.)

The adult Leon (Oliver Reed), in the bed of Vera (Sheila Brennan), begins to succumb to the full moon.

#5 No Time, No Place

The Spanish village is an impressive set for the penny-pinching Hammer, and that’s because they couldn’t let it go to waste: it was built for a film about the Spanish Inquisition to be called The Inquisitor, but Columbia Pictures, worried they’d invoke the wrath of the Catholic Legion of Decency, withdrew their support for the project, leaving Hammer’s Michael Carreras to cancel the film and scramble for a new story. Hinds had already written a screenplay based on Guy Endore’s 1933 novel The Werewolf of Paris, and it was hastily rewritten to take place in Spain. But neither France nor Spain would explain Hammer’s typically domestic dialogue, such as Pepe’s declaration of “‘Ello! What’s this then?” when he discovers a slaughtered goat. A few scattered señors never quite convince of the setting, but this only adds to the Hammer charm – to a fan, this is pretty much what Transylvania sounds like, too. Potential disorientation abounds. The narrator’s opening declaration that his tale of the beggar and the Marques took place “two hundred years ago” doesn’t quite add up, since twenty minutes later he will introduce himself into the story (“It was here that I found her,” the narrator says, walking onscreen as Clifford Evans). Has Don Alfredo Corledo been alive for two hundred years? (Is he a vampire?) And how did Don Corledo know the story he’s been telling, since the surviving witness was a mute? (And even she would not have known the history of the beggar before she met him.) And how many days does a full moon last, anyway? Hammer made these movies very quickly. Though they distinguished themselves from the competition with an impressive veneer – fine acting, great costumes, terrific music, and color, widescreen cinematography – don’t push too hard or the façade might topple over.

Roy Ashton's werewolf makeup for Reed is a highlight of the film's spectacular climax.

#6 The Beast in Me

The romance between Reed’s Leon and the wealthy, privileged, and betrothed Cristina Fernando (Catherine Feller, Friends and Neighbours) forms the heart of the film’s second half. Yet there is an uncomfortable scene in which Reed accepts the advances of a seductive Spanish redhead (Sheila Brennan) in a nightclub-setting. In a feverish sweat from the full moon above, he follows her up to her bedroom for “a little lie-down.” We expect him to transform and kill her, and he does, but not before enjoying a lustful embrace. It’s the wolfishness coming out of him. And like Dracula, he takes a bite out of her, hungry for blood and leaving a red mark below her neck, before he devours his full meal. But in that moment when he kisses the girl, is he guilty of cheating on Cristina, or is he slave to the evil that was placed inside him before he was born? Regardless, he is overwhelmed with guilt and grief when he finds himself back in his childhood home, blood on his hands, and given the full truth of his “affliction” by Don Corledo and the priest. He knows he must die before he kills others, but at the description of his future – chained up until he’s delivered to a monastery (and perhaps kept in chains there) – he flees back to the village in fear and anger. We’re told that only his love of Cristina can save him, and he believes it and plans to elope; but the local authorities separate him from his true love, and lock him up (foolishly, they don’t believe the old wives’ tales, and think he’s just a common murderer). It’s a prison that’s not strong enough to hold him. Time and again it’s the image of prison bars that become the symbol of man’s cruelty to his fellow man, and what festers inside the cage will give loose to evil in the end. Surprisingly, Hammer never made a sequel, preferring to keep to its Draculas, Frankensteins, and Mummies instead. But with The Curse of the Werewolf they made a film worthy to stand beside Universal’s classic original – by staring its wolf-man in the eyes, unblinking.

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Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

Posted on October 12, 2013 at 10:04 am by Jeff Kuykendall

Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) occupies an odd place in the Universal Monsters canon. It was released in a decade not typically associated with Universal horror’s height: the studio’s franchise had been run into the ground for years, having exhausted itself with cheap (but fun) B-outings like House of Frankenstein (1944) and House of Dracula (1945), which crowded as many of its once-scary monsters as it could into efficient, mercenary productions. Ironically, what many point to as the death knell of the Universal Monsters is also regarded as a classic of its kind: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), which put Bela Lugosi back in the cape as Dracula, initiated a new phase for the monster crew, now as straight men to Lou Costello’s comic hyperventilating. But this new series, which would also run itself dry (Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy, etc.), was not the swan song for the franchise. One last, completely original character would join up, and become every bit as iconic as Boris Karloff’s neck-bolts, Lugosi’s scowl, and the Wolf Man’s impeccable coiffure: the “Gill-Man.” Nonetheless, Creature from the Black Lagoon was the product of a natural evolution, independent of the Gothic horrors of the 30’s and early 40’s.

"Famous Monsters of Filmland" March/April 2013 cover by Sanjulian.

The film sprung from the imagination of William Alland, a former actor (having appeared in Welles’ Citizen Kane, The Lady from Shanghai, and Macbeth) who had taken to producing films. He reportedly got the idea from Gabriel Figueroa, a Mexican cinematographer (Los Olvidados) who told him the folktale of a half-fish, half-human monster living in the Amazon. Alland recalled the legend to his friend Jack Arnold, who had just directed the Alland production It Came from Outer Space (1953), a proto-Invasion of the Body Snatchers filmed in that trendy new process called 3-D. Their new, Amazon-set thriller would offer new opportunities to explore the 3-D process. Previously Arnold had sent a meteor-like spaceship crashing toward the audience. Now he’d use 3-D to provide depth, in his vast, ominous Black Lagoon. For genre fans, the 50’s are commonly associated with science fiction parables of paranoia and gloom (Rocketship X-M, When Worlds Collide, The Thing from Another World, Invaders from Mars, and so on), and the Atom Age’s monsters originate more frequently from the science of man rather than folklore or Gothic literature, including Arnold’s own Tarantula (1955). Creature was different. The Gill-Man was a monster who emerged from the Earth’s misty past, and it’s Man – and encroaching modernity – that threatens him. In spirit, he was much closer to Karloff’s Frankenstein monster, misunderstood and abused by those who seek to exploit him. So it’s easy and natural to group him with Universal’s monsters of the 30’s, and yet his origins in evolution, and his importance as a “missing link” (not to mention the technical sophistication of his innovative costume design), place him firmly in the more science-oriented, forward-thinking 50’s.

Mark Williams (Richard Denning), Kay Lawrence (Julie Adams), and David Reed (Richard Carlson) explore the dangerous depths of the Black Lagoon.

The film is lean and mean, free of unnecessary complications. After the fossilized hand of an apparently amphibian, humanoid creature is discovered in the Amazon, an American scientific expedition is launched, headed by Mark Williams (Richard Denning, Target Earth), and including the handsome David Reed (Richard Carlson, It Came from Outer Space) and his beautiful fiancé Kay Lawrence (Julie Adams, Bend of the River). While David and Kay radiate intelligence and scientific curiosity, Mark seems to fancy himself the Great White Hunter, and when they discover the Creature – and that he’s willing to protect his home with the savage swipes of his oversized claws – Mark is only too eager to go Ahab on this White Whale. I’ve seen this film twice in theaters, and Mark’s bullheadedness always gets some big laughs, particularly when Kay proposes that the Creature desires revenge; Mark: “I welcome it!” But much of the humor is intentional, particularly around the character of the jaded captain, Lucas (Nestor Paiva, of the Zorro TV series ), who, late in the film, happily vetoes Mark’s decision to stay in the Black Lagoon; the moment when he pulls a knife and presses it against Mark’s neck typically generates a cheer or two. Lucas is likable because he always has a smile on his face, no matter what the circumstances; you get the feeling that his boat, the Rita, may have been through worse.

1993 Dark Horse Comics adaptation, with art by Art Adams and Terry Austin.

Time and again the Creature threatens the boat, maiming or drowning its crew members. The expedition tries to capture him, and when that fails, sets him on fire, and shoots at him with guns and harpoons. He just keeps coming back – and we can track the emotional progression of this expressionless monster. By the end of the film, he’s not only enraged at these invaders of his peaceful paradise, but cunning and plotting: he forms a barrier of wedged trees in the narrow channel leading out of the lagoon so that he can trap and kill the humans one by one. And yet his first encounter was one of gentle fascination. We first see the Creature in full while he’s spying on Kay, swimming above him in silhouette. Tentatively he joins her, swimming just below, his graceful movements mirroring hers. In the film’s most celebrated moment of poetic eroticism, he hesitantly reaches out toward her, daring himself to make contact. This moment of intimacy will soon be erased by the hostile reaction he receives from the crew of the Rita. He becomes a kind of assassin, striking at the most opportune moments, dwindling their numbers. In the climax of the film, which resembles a pulp Frazetta painting, the Creature kidnaps Kay and takes her to his secret cavern, shrouded in mist, and lays her upon an altar-like rock – he can now worship her female beauty with no interference. Of course, she’s rescued with blazing guns, and when we last see him, he’s floating, seemingly dead, in the waters of the lagoon. It’s an end just ambiguous enough to justify two further sequels: Revenge of the Creature (1956, also directed by Arnold and in 3-D) and The Creature Walks Among Us (1957).

The Gill-Man relaxes on set.

Apart from the subtle eroticism, the film also stands out for how it empathizes with its “monster” and, by extension, his desire to be left alone. The film is almost an environmentalist work – let the wilderness remain wild – though I’m not quite convinced, as some have argued, that scenes such as Kay dropping a cigarette into the water and the invaders polluting the lagoon with rotenone are satirical commentary on Arnold’s part. Yet the film straddles so many different ideas that it’s difficult to pigeonhole. The opening tells us that in the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth, and then proceeds to explain Evolution so it can couch its Gill-Man in the domain of science rather than the supernatural. The film at first sides with David’s level-headed desire to keep the Creature alive, but eventually takes Mark’s position that it must be destroyed, once it becomes a survival-of-the-fittest situation (part of the film’s Darwinian theme). The film is both science fiction and horror. It’s simultaneously an homage to Universal’s past and an inextricable, vital part of its present: widescreen, 3-D, and scientific-minded. Even the score is a collage of different composers (including Henry Mancini), a patchwork quilt of film music that has somehow become iconic in and of itself. One of the aspects I love the most about this film is how perfect a metaphor it creates for the modern world at conflict with its past, divided cleanly by the Black Lagoon’s waterline. Above the water are the rational, evolved humans (who nonetheless bicker with one another and think in terms of capturing and killing); below is the murky, seemingly endless realm of the Creature, a dreamlike world which could be either our Id or our Collective Unconscious: familiar, ancient, primitive, archetypal. (There are even two Creatures, in similar but different suits: the “underwater Creature” is diver Ricou Browning, and the “surface Creature” is Ben Chapman.)  Creature from the Black Lagoon can be whatever you want it to be, but it’s certainly more evocative and arresting than your average 50’s matinee movie.

Julie Adams signs my poster at the September 28th, 2013 screening and signing at Chicago's Patio Theater. Photo by Anne Luebke.

This past September, as the film nears its sixtieth anniversary, Chicago’s Patio Theater was host to a Creature from the Black Lagoon screening, featuring Julie Adams (accompanied by her son, and autobiography co-author, Mitchell Danton), who patiently, cheerfully signed autographs for a very long line of Midwestern fans, and participated in a post-film Q&A with author Foster Hirsch (Film Noir: The Dark Side of the Screen). With Hirsch she discussed the evolution of the Creature’s suit (the original, eel-like design, which was abandoned, looked ridiculous, in her opinion), the remarkable way Arnold shot Universal Studios’ backlot Black Lagoon to look like the most remote part of the Amazon, and speculated on the fate of her famous white one-piece swimsuit (she’s certain its latex has fallen to pieces these sixty years later). Of the erotic overtones of her swim with the Gill-Man, she states she was ignorant – though she opens up a bit more about this in the “Back to the Black Lagoon” documentary. The film was shown in 3-D, but of the unfortunate red/blue anaglyphic variety; it didn’t look terrible, but the original dual-projector stereoscopic presentation would have been far more impressive to witness during the film’s initial theatrical release. (The recent 3-D Blu-Ray is reportedly very well done, though I lack a 3-D TV set to appreciate it.) What was most gratifying was seeing how the film played so many decades on. The respectful audience was enthralled, and applauded appreciatively at the end. The Creature from the Black Lagoon has proven that he can still stand impervious to the march of time.

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