I remembered the movie, "The Creature of the Black Lagoon". But I didn't know about the sequel. Once I saw it, I liked it very much. Who would know that scaly creature would be given a second chance to cause terror. In the first movie, it was thought that it has perished. Then suddenly, it was living out on the Amazon river. When a professor takes a boat out and discover that the Gill Man was living in the Amazon, he and a crew have managed to bring it back to Florida to study it further. Once it was captured, they would slowly nurse it back to health. After it gains consciousness, it would attack anyone. When it escapes capture, the creature would attack again, killing anything in its path. I liked this movie. A "B" movie classic that has made its mark on the horror franchise. The only main star I know is Clint Eastwood playing a lab assistant who finds a rat in his pocket. He was doing "Rawhide" around the time. I would recommend this gem to the collection. It's great! 4 out of 5 stars

Revenge of the Creature (1955)*** (out of 4) Sequel to CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON has a new group of explorers heading to the Amazon to capture the Gill Man. They're able to do so and they take him back to a Sea World like center where they plan to put him on display. Once there a scientist (John Agar) and a grad student (Lori Nelson) try to determine how intelligent the creature is and sure enough he begins to have feelings for the woman and finally breaks free.REVENGE OF THE CREATURE is an exceptional sequence that actually manages to match the first film in terms of quality. I've never found the original to be among the studio's all-time greats like FRANKENSTEIN, BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN or THE WOLF MAN but there's no doubt that it deserves its classic label and I'd say this film also deserves to be called a classic monster movie. The story obviously takes elements from the first film and mixes them with elements from KING KONG and for the most part the entire film is quite successful.I think one of the best things that they carry over from the original movie is the sympathy angle towards the Gill Man. Here this element is really laid on because the movie manages to make you feel really bad for the creature who is chained up as an attraction and he's unable to do anything or that get electrical shocks as the scientist tries to teach him the meaning of "stop." There's no question that the movie manages to work so well because of the Gill Man and the way director Jack Arnold makes you sympathize with him but there's also scenes showing how dangerous he is so you still wouldn't want to run into him no matter how bad you felt for him.The actors are also quite good here with Agar and Nelson filling their roles nicely and they manage to work extremely well together. Another major plus is the underwater photography, which is quite excellent and a major step up from the first film. I'd also argue that the kill scenes here are a lot more effective. There are some faults to be found and especially with some of the stuff that is copied from the original movie (like him falling for the woman) but overall REVENGE OF THE CREATURE is a success.

I am a giant Universal monster nerd (you should see my toy collection) and my favorite of the monsters has always been the Gill Man. Not necessarily my favorite of the movies, mind you, but there has always been something really special about this creature to me. Part of it is the impressive creature effects in the design of the monster. It still really holds up today, in my opinion, more so than any other Universal monster. In fact, I would argue that it still looks better than some creature designs I see in modern b-horror movies. I think the other part of the creature's appeal is his tragic nature. This is a monster that I have always felt more sympathy than fear. Let's face it, the poor thing was living content in its' own little private lagoon, when along comes some scientists to study it and try to capture it, eventually trying to kill it. Now it gets dragged away from its' home and put in a tiny little aquarium for all to see. It's no wonder the thing goes violent.As the creators have admitted to in the past, a large part of the inspiration of this series comes from KING KONG. You have the idea of an exotic monster from a foreign land falling in love with a beautiful woman that ultimately leads to its' demise. In the first movie, this idea plays out in theme. In the sequel here, we get the rest of the KING KONG plot as the monster is brought to the states to become an attraction.Sadly, this sequel is just nowhere near the quality of the original movie and mostly doesn't even make for a mediocre sequel. We begin with a repeat of things that happened in the first movie. Scientists go to the lagoon to capture the monster, only this time they are successful. We get one small "fright" scene, but there is very little tension or buildup to the moment of capture.Once brought to Ocean Harbor park, the movie drags on for a good hour. At this point, very little happens. We get a boring, clichéd 50s movie romance between our two scientists. We get the prerequisite sci-fi mumbo jumbo as our scientist perform experiments and discuss theories, part of which involves torturing our monster to get him to learn the word "stop" (a plot device that goes nowhere because the monster simply chooses to ignore anyways). The most exciting part of this segment of the movie may be the extended MarineLand commercials where we watch the park animals perform. Mercifully, the monster finally escapes which only goes further to ruining this movie. We've already seen too much of the monster, taking away some of the mystery. The creature moving on land makes it look awkward and further serves to take away any fear of the creature. Naturally, he's after the object of his affection, which leads to pretty much an exact repeat of the final moments in the original, only this time played out with police involved.I will give some credit for one moment. Two teens discover our leading lady lying onshore in need of rescue, but the monster is not far behind. He kills one of them by throwing him a good 15 feet against a tree. The body flies through the air (obviously on wires) and smashes into a tree. It's slightly laughable effects to a modern audience, but it just might be the most violent death I've seen in any Universal monster movie (and trust me, I've seen them all).There is still some fun here in the sense of a movie to be watched at Midnight on a Saturday with popcorn and beer, but the original is one of the best monster movies ever made and this sequel is just an obvious cash grab.

. . . from my granny's original review of a CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, which appeared in the Spinal Column in the 1950s, and which I tweaked and reposted here yesterday, after viewing CFBL for the first time and finding that I agreed with her about the potential wasting of a prime tourist attraction on the part of the expedition team of the original Gill Man flick. In this first sequel, Gill Man soon is captured and turned into another roadside attraction. If I have a bone to pick with the sequel, it has to do with Florida's geography vis a vis the plot of this movie. Toward the end, when the as yet UNNAMED Gill Man (which is strange in itself, since the first things zoos do when they get a new animal is to give it a name; granny told me Gill Man looks like a Dobie Gillis-type) escapes his chains at the "oceanarium," he swims for a few minutes trailing Helen on day five of his freedom. By dark they're in Jacksonville, FL, hundreds of miles from the implied site of the oceanarium. How is it that Gill Man is so much faster than Michael Phelps? Is he on steroids or something? Plus, did the Devonian Period really just end 250,000 years ago, as one of the scientists here says early on? Obviously, if this movie were released today, the Creationists would be picketing in the street. But anytime they put my hometown on the big screen, I'm rating the flick as at least a "7," even if it is something like PIRANHA GIRLS GONE WILD 3DD.