Revenge of the Creature (1955)

REVENGE OF THE CREATURE (1955) **1/2
Once upon a time, Universal Studios took more time between sequels: The Bride of Frankenstein four years after Frankenstein, Dracula’s Daughter five after Dracula, The Invisible Man Returns seven after The Invisible Man, and The Mummy’s Hand eight after The Mummy.

Universal threw all that right out the window during the 1940s and churned out four Mummy, three Invisible Man, four Frankenstein, two Dracula, and five Wolf Man pictures, although the studio mashed just about every monster it had for bashes like House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein so my numbers might be a slight bit inaccurate.

Creature from the Black Lagoon premiered Feb. 12, 1954, and it became a box office success. Of course, that meant two sequels, Revenge of the Creature in 1955 and The Creature Walks Among Us in 1956, and the latter sequel closed out a 31-film run of horror movies for Universal that began with 1925’s The Phantom of the Opera and continued through Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, and The Wolf Man.

Revenge of the Creature will seem awful familiar to first time viewers, and not only because it’s a sequel to a legendary horror film. No, when I watched it for the first time, I thought about how much fellow Universal production Jaws 3 (1983) ripped off from Revenge. Both movies were made in 3-D and the later sequel borrowed and updated several plot elements from the earlier one, mainly a monster on the loose in an amusement park.

Revenge proves to be far more enjoyable and memorable than Jaws 3.

Clint Eastwood’s motion picture career had to start somewhere, and that somewhere happens to be Revenge. His one scene occurs somewhere about 10 minutes in. He plays college lab assistant Jennings, intended comic relief. Back to the Future Part III (another Universal sequel) worked in a nod to both Revenge and Tarantula, Eastwood’s second appearance in an Universal creature feature / monster movie from 1955 directed by Jack Arnold. Eastwood plays the jet squadron leader in Tarantula, and Mr. Eastwood helps blow up the title character real good in a preview of his future action hero glory. I recommend Tarantula over Revenge of the Creature, but they do make a suitable double feature, sharing not only Arnold (and Eastwood) but producer William Alland, actors John Agar and Nestor Paiva, and Henry Mancini stock music.

At this point, I should mention that protagonists Professor Clete Ferguson (Agar) and Helen Dobson (Lori Nelson) spend most of the second half of Revenge locked in suck face embrace. Holy cow, why didn’t they just get a room … or a romantic comedy or something. I have not seen two love birds like Clete and Helen since Rod Arrants’ Tom Rose and Joanna Kerns’ Marilyn Baker in the 1976 anti-classic Ape. In all honesty, I wanted The Gill Man to come in and break up Clete and Helen sooner rather than later … and it just doesn’t happen soon enough.

I certainly don’t believe that Agar and Nelson are improvements from previous leads Richard Carlson and Julie Adams, and I don’t recall Creature bludgeoning us over the head with their romance. Revenge shows that our horny Gill Man does not discriminate in the hair color of leading ladies, loving and lusting after both brunette (Adams) and blonde (Nelson). How progressive! Nelson naturally spends a lot of her screen time scantily clad, in swimsuit and even her lingerie in one scene much to the delight of the Gill Man and likely millions of teenage boys of all ages in 1955. Here we are 65 years later and I’m not complaining, just merely stating actual factual information.

Yeah, anyway, Revenge takes its sweet time in getting to the good parts again once it gets the Gill Man into captivity and for that very reason, it ranks below not only Creature from the Black Lagoon and Tarantula but also The Incredible Shrinking Man, the 1957 science fiction classic from Universal directed by Arnold.

Revenge possesses some of the same virtues as Creature, especially sensational underwater photography, and it’s nice they at least brought Nestor Paiva’s enjoyable Lucas character back for the sequel without killing him off in his early appearance. I am looking forward to watching The Creature Walks Among Us and finishing the Universal Classic Monsters series.