Review: 'Classic Monsters, Modern Art'

When I took my wife to see The Bride of Frankenstein at NY's Museum of Modern Art on one of our first dates, the one thing she commented on after seeing it for the first time was how "iconic" every frame of it is. It may not be as lauded as Citizen Kane, but Kane doesn't have an image half as indelible as Karloff's monster lumbering through a crypt or Lanchester's Bride shrieking in horror when she first meets him. As far as I'm concerned, the horror of the unseen (see The Haunting or The Blair Witch Project) will always be scariest, but the monsters, crypts, and graveyards of less frightening films will never fail to scratch the itchy shoulders of those like me who look forward to Halloween more than Christmas.

Review: 'Halloween Nuggets: Haunted Underground Classics'

If there were two things parents hated in the fifties it was rock and roll and scary stuff. A kid was liable to find his new copy of "Tutti Frutti" plopped in the trash next to a cherished issue of The Vault of Horror if he didn't keep a close eye on his stash! So the two genres have always been inseparably linked in many ways. In fact, you're reading one of those links right now, Hep-Cat!

Farewell, Julie Adams

Julie Adams was the woman who stole the Gill Man's heart. Although she had a long and varied career that included appearances in some 149 films (especially westerns) and TV shows (One Step Beyond, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Perry Mason, 77 Sunset Strip, The Mod Squad, Murder She Wrote, Lost and many, many more...she also had a regular gig on the Jimmy Stewart Show as the star's wife, Martha), she was always most known and loved as Kay Lawrence in The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Sadly, Adams died yesterday at the age of 92 

Psychobabble’s 31 Favorite Universal Horrors: #12

Halloween season simply isn’t Halloween season without a regular dose of golden age Universal horror (1923-1963). Every day this October, I’ll be giving you a steady IV drip of it by counting down Psychobabble’s 31 Favorite Universal Horrors!

#12. The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954- dir. Jack Arnold)

Just when Universal horror seemed dead in the water, this little gem from Jack Arnold came bubbling to the surface. The supposition that there might be some sort of missing link between fish and person is goofy, but that’s okay since it spawned the Gill Man, and he may be the most interesting looking of all Universal monsters. Good work, Millicent Patrick! The underwater sequences are lovely, though they do tend to go on and on. The film really works best above lagoon level when the Gill Man is shuffling across the deck of the Rita, Nestor Paiva is gnawing his cigar and refusing to take shit from irritating Richard Denning, and Julie Adams is being Julie Adams.

Psychobabble’s 31 Favorite Universal Horrors: #19

Halloween season simply isn’t Halloween season without a regular dose of classic Universal horror (1923-1963). Every day this October, I’ll be giving you a steady IV drip of it by counting down Psychobabble’s 31 Favorite Universal Horrors!

#19. Revenge of the Creature (1955- dir. Jack Arnold)

Forgive it for inspiring Jaws 3-D. Revenge of the Creature is actually a really neat monster movie. It refreshes the Gill Man by pulling him out of the Amazon and into a Sea World-style amusement park where he goes on the requisite rampage. Now that we know what we know about how sea parks are run, it is very satisfying seeing him fuck up Ocean Park Oceanarium. Score one for the dolphins!

Psychobabble’s 31 Favorite Universal Horrors: #29

Halloween season simply isn’t Halloween season without a regular dose of classic Universal horror (1923-1963). Every day this October, I’ll be giving you a steady IV drip of it by counting down Psychobabble’s 31 Favorite Universal Horrors!

#29. The Creature Walks Among Us (1956- dir. John Sherwood)

The third and final installment of the Gill Man saga is slow going, but it pivots on a truly intriguing and original premise: burns from a fire reveal that beneath all those scales, old Gilly is actually pretty human, and he undergoes surgery to make him more so. The thing is, he definitely preferred his monstrous state, and when he starts breathing with lungs, he starts longing for the sea. His forlorn visits to the shore are genuinely poignant.

Review: 'The Future Then: Fascinating Art & Predictions from 145 years of Popular Science'

For nearly a century and a half, Popular Science magazine has been keeping the world on top of the latest developments in science and technology. Despite its prestigious history, it ain’t always right, and that’s one reason why The Future Then: Fascinating Art & Predictions from 145 years of Popular Science is fun. This attractive, hardcover tome collects everyone of the quarterly’s covers in full-color cover, each one positing some sort of scientific prediction made in the name of the mag. The captions assess whether or not that prediction came true, and they do so with cheeky irreverence. How could you not have your tongue in your cheek when combing over such wild brain waves as underground ice cities, a robotic exoskeleton called the “man amplifier” that can turn anyone into a superhero, and mechanical racehorses constructed from taxidermied stallions? Amazingly, some of this wackadoo stuff actually came to pass (though much did not exactly endure). It’s also interesting to note the particular obsessions of each decade, with the forties depressingly focused on machines of war (and also depressingly, most of those predictions came to pass), the fifties focused on DIY projects for new homeowners, and the sixties focused on…err… James Bond.

But as I suggested, its factoids are just one reason why The Future Then is boss. The artwork is what really makes it a retro rush, as Popular Science’s painted covers look like they should adorn pulp novels for nerds. The magazine’s impressive roster of artists include Norman Rockwell and Reynold Brown, who’d really make a name for himself designing movie posters for such sci-fi classics as The Creature from the Black Lagoon and Attack of the 50-Foot Woman. Sadly, in the nineties, Popular Science discontinued its painted covers for sterile digital images, so the final sixty pages of The Future Then are not nearly as charming as the ones that precede them. It’s also tough to assess whether or not technology predicted so recently was a success or failure since it could still come to pass. So perhaps we should stay tuned for volume two, assuming that such quaint things as magazines, the ability to read, and life on Earth still exist in another 145 years. Have a nice day!

And Now for No Other Reason Than Universal Horror is Awesome, Here Are 20 Horrific Sketches...

I whipped up some sketches of classic Universal horror characters. Here they are...

Psychobabble’s 100 Favorite Monsters!

Welcome, foolish mortals, to Psychobabble’s House of 100 Monsters. Creak up the steps and over the threshold. Within this vile abode you will encounter not 98, not 99, but one hundred of the most terrifying, horrifying, unpleasantifying creatures who have ever haunted the page, the screen, and the breakfast table. They are my personal favorite freaks, ranked from terriblest to really terriblest. No Halloween is complete without a visit to a spook house, and my house of horrors is as spooky as it gets. So I formally invite you to freak out to Psychobabble’s 100 Favorite Monsters. Step right this way…

100. Tar Man

First, allow me to guide you down into the basement where a certain deceased individual has recently been resurrected by a certain military-grade toxic gas. Don’t ask me who he was in life, but in death this standout star of Return of the Living Dead is like an E.C. Comics zombie in the oozing flesh and he wants one thing only... brains!

99. Black Frost

Sidestep the Tar Man and take a break by our deep freeze. Oops. Bad idea, because inside is a terrifying thingy that blasts incapacitating frosty air from its jockstrap. This is how Black Frost brought down The Mighty Boosh, and it traumatized many viewers of their surreal British comedy by baring its unsettlingly white teeth before breaking into a hideous dance of death. He’s one icy bastard.

98. Clayface

Wait a minute… that chap wasn’t Black Frost at all! His face has morphed back into its natural state—that of one Matt Hagen, better known as Batman’s hulking, shape-shifting nemesis Clayface, one of the nastiest and most genuinely monstrous monsters to ever menace Gotham City!

97. Wampa

Back in the deep freeze is another terrible creature, a towering snow beast with white, shaggy fur and clawed paws the size of trashcan lids. Is it the Yeti? Nah. They wouldn’t know what the hell a Yeti is up on the distant planet of Hoth. That’s where the Wampa whomps Luke Skywalker’s face off in the shocking attack that kicks The Empire Strikes Back into gear.

96. Pumpkinhead

Review: 'The Monster Movies of Universal Studios'

When I was a Monster Kid, there was nothing I liked to check out from the school library better than books about classic horror movies. They gave you the basic rundown of what made flicks like Dracula and The Wolf Man so boss and delivered plenty of B&W photos to back it up. Today, works such as Gary D. Rhodes’s Tod Browning’s Dracula and David J. Skal’s The Monster Show take a more scholarly and/or critical look at the classics. The Monster Movies of Universal Studios falls somewhere between the kids and film criticism library shelves.

Author James L. Neibaur zips though the 29 movies he covers too swiftly for the book to qualify as scholarship, and his writing is simple enough for any Monster Kid to grasp (Neibaur is an Encyclopedia Britannica contributor, and his affectless writing would not be out of place in an encyclopedia), but he does make room in each roughly 5-to-10 page chapter to get into a bit of plot synopsis, a bit of criticism, and a bit of background history. For those of us who’ve consumed what’s already out there, chapters on well-examined films such as Dracula and The Wolf Man are redundant, but ones on items such as The Invisible Woman and The Mummy’s Tomb are fresher—if not exactly revelatory— and more likely to stimulate Neibaur’s critical side. That latter observation is not a sly criticism of Neibaur, since the Monster Kid in me appreciates his unabashed love of Dracula, a delightful film too often run down in contemporary criticism, and since analysis is not the author’s primary goal.

Neibaur limits his discussions to films that deal with the big six monsters of Universal (or Universale, as he repeatedly spells it for some reason) —Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster, The Wolf Man, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, and The Creature—which means that both Chaney and Rains’s Phantoms and Abbott & Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde get left out of the chat, as do non-Monster horrors such as The Black Cat and The Old Dark House. So The Monster Movies of Universal Studios isn’t exactly the definitive book on the topic, but I bet some modern-day Monster Kids might still enjoy checking it out of their own school libraries.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 228

The Date: May 15

The Movie: Revenge of the Creature (1955)

What Is It?: So what do you do if you find the last fish-man on Earth? Well, you capture him, drag him to a marine park, and put him on display so a bunch of morons can gawp at him while wolfing down hot dogs. Can you blame him when he breaks free and runs amok? This movie should be called Assholes Get What They Deserve.

Why Today?: Today is Endangered Species Day, and no species is as endangered as the last fish-man on Earth.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 199

The Date: April 16

The Movie: Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

What Is It?: Last hoorah of Universal’s golden age of monster movies or first hoorah for the new age of sci-fi terrors? Who cares when the creature design and underwater photography are so beautiful?

Why Today?: The Devonian Era that saw the birth of gill men started 416 million years ago and today is 4/16.

8 Flaws in Universal's Great 8 Monster Movies

From the twenties through the fifties, Universal Studios completely defined horror cinema, bringing iconic literary characters and the exclusive creations of all their Dr. Frankensteins on staff to life. Modern audiences may have trouble relating to these “slow,” black & white films created some eighty or seventy years ago, but they will surely be as familiar with the glowering visages of Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster, and the Wolf Man as they are with the mugs of Santa Claus or Jesus. For us fans who do not dismiss the best and most enduring of Universal's monster movies—Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, Bride of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, and Creature from the Black Lagoon— these are films that defy criticism. Yet each film does have at least one noteworthy flaw. At the risk of ruining your enjoyment of the Gill Man's underwater frolics or the Phantom's floor show, let's take off our fan caps for a second and put on our critical thinking ones instead, because we're about to whine about 8 Flaws in Universal's Great 8 Monster Movies. 

The Phantom of the Opera

Our first flaw is the most fundamental one on this list. You’ve got a movie called The Phantom of the Opera. You do not have sound. See the problem? Carl Laemmle could have selected any piece of public domain horror literature under the sun. Why choose one in which sound plays such an integral role before the advent of sound cinema? So there are scenes of singing without song, elaborate orchestral performances with only whatever melody the pit organist could pump out. We need to hear Christine’s lovely voice, and this flaw was not one unrecognized in its time. In fact, as soon as sound started invading film in the late twenties, Universal schemed to reissue its flagship horror with the sound the film always demanded. In lieu of original director Rupert Julian (or Lon Chaney, depending on which making-of account you want to believe), new directors Ernst Laemmle and Frank McCormick began shooting replacement footage for half the movie, which enjoyed a successful opening in 1930. Unfortunately, only the soundtrack remains, and a proper reissue of the sound Phantom of the Opera is not currently available. It’s a testament to the original film’s elaborate design and Chaney’s still-terrifying performance as Erik the Phantom that a seemingly major flaw does not really seem that bad when watching a silent film about opera. No sound remake has ever bettered it.

Dracula

Review: 'Monster Mash: The Creepy Kooky Monster Craze in America 1957-1972'

Writers such as David Skal have dealt with the zany monster revival of the fifties and sixties before, but as far as I know, Monster Mash: The Creepy Kooky Monster Craze in America 1957-1972 is the first book devoted to that topic alone. Mark Voger makes up for lost time by cramming as many monsters, Munsters, Addamses, Dark Shadows, issues of Famous Monsters of Filmland and Creepy, Borises Karloff and Pickett, horrific toys, models, and hot rods into a slim 190 pages as he can stuff. Unlike scholarly Skal, Voger captures the gee-whiz enthusiasm of a true Monster Kid with goofy prose and a scattered structure that screams, “Oh wait…here’s another boss thing that happened during the monster craze!”

The focus of Monster Mash is its copious interviews and photos. During his career as a journalist and pro-horror geek, Voger has interviewed such genre major players as writer/editor Forrest J. Ackerman, publisher James Warren, singer Bobby “Boris” Pickett, artists Basil Gogos and Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, and actors John Astin, Lisa Loring, Al Lewis, Butch Patrick, Pat Priest, and Kathryn Leigh Scott. Those fun (it’s heartwarming to discover how much the “Addams Family” cast adored each other), sometimes frothy interviews constitute a good portion of this book’s text. However, they cannot compete with all the ghoulishly, gleefully, garish full-color photos of monster memorabilia. Don Post masks and Famous Monsters covers and comics panels and Aurora models and “Munsters” lunchboxes and Wolf Man dolls and Gill Man Soakies. Looking at Monster Mash is like having a giant nostalgia bug lay lovely eggs in your eye sockets. 

Review: 'The Creature Chronicles: Exploring the Black Lagoon Trilogy'

The Creature from the Black Lagoon was made long enough ago that it is considered the final chapter of Universal’s monster movie golden age (by some folks, at least), but recently enough that most of its principal players were still alive for the Monster Kid age that continues to this day and hopefully will last well into the future. So unlike Dracula or Frankenstein, The Creature from the Black Lagoon spawned a wealth of documentation about its making, as did its sequels Revenge of the Creature and The Creature Walks Among Us.

One of the highest-profile Monster Kids, Tom Weaver, conducted a heap of his own research to put together the lagoon-clogging The Creature Chronicles: Exploring the Black Lagoon Trilogy. His (and a clutch of guest contributors') gargantuan heap of cast-and-crew interviews, archive diving, and close attention to the films, themselves, makes this the definitive Gill Man document by an astoundingly long shot. Everything you’ve ever wondered about our beloved man-fish and his three movies—and probably a shitload of things that never even crossed your mind—are covered between its nearly 400 over-sized, hardbound, photo-splattered pages. Do you want to know the warts-and-all backgrounds of everyone involved in these films, including lecherous director Jack Arnold, beastly leading man John Agar, and Gill Man portrayer/right-wing nut job Tom Hennesy? They’re in here. Do you want to know who allegedly played the creature along with everyone officially identified? That’s here too. The weird promo campaign suggestions; the failed early story drafts; the daily production mishaps and triumphs; critical analyses; the long-teased but never produced remakes to which such names as John Landis, Peter Jackson, and Robert Rodriguez have been attached; and a really long introduction by Lagoon star Julie Adams are all here too. The only thing I thought was a bit underserved in The Creature Chronicles is the 3-D process, but in all honesty, I didn’t actually care that much about it. It’s just that this book is so exhaustive that when one of the films’ significant aspects isn’t explored from every possible angle, it sticks out a bit.

Weaver makes all the minutia readable with his smirking prose, and all of the films were produced under weird enough circumstances by wild enough crews that the whole damn thing will hold your attention regardless of your interest in Revenge and Walks (and if you’re not interested in them, shame on you). Really, this is both a book about particular movies and about the filmmaking process in general, so cinema professors may want to think about assigning The Creature Chronicles after boring their students with the usual Bordwell and Thompson textbooks.

...And for No Other Reason Than They're Awesome, Here Are Some Boxes of Monster Candy Cigarettes...

Review: 'Capturing Archetypes: Twenty Years of Sideshow Collectibles Art'

Sideshow Collectibles are strangely multifaceted for models of characters from comics and genre movies. Sure, they’re basically scaled down representations of Darth Vader and Batman and the Alien and Bride of Frankenstein and The Creature from the Black Lagoon, progeny of the Aurora models adored by the monster kids of the fifties and sixties. But they are also exemplars of how seriously the geeks of today take their obsessions. The jocks can have their cheap plastic football trophies. Sideshow Collectibles are lovingly, intricately sculpted from assorted materials—resin, polystone, real cloth and leather, fiberglass. They may depict the icons of alleged low culture, but they are genuine art pieces, and they’re affixed with big art piece price tags, which also yokes them with the dubious distinction of being status symbols too (as of this writing, the most inexpensive item on Sideshow’s official site is a $69.99 vinyl doll of a character that looks like a licorice jelly bean called Dolly Colorway; the most expensive are lifesize busts of similar looking guys called War Machine and Iron Patriot, both running $8999.99). This means that they are only available to the wealthiest nerds, guys like Guillermo Del Toro, who pens the introduction to the new coffee table tribute Capturing Archetypes: Twenty Years of Sideshow Collectibles Art. This book is a far more economical way to collect these pieces than actually collecting them.

Del Toro offhandedly but insightfully mentions the “fetishistic” impulses of the collector, and Capturing Archetypes is nothing if not fetishistic. Instead of depicting the sculptures in flat full view, the book presents them in alluring shadows, lighting, and smoke, often zooming in on a particular feature or contour. There is an unabashed gaze on body parts, most obviously in the leering sculptures and photographs of curvaceous female characters, such as Catwoman, Molotov Cocktease, Lady Death, Vampira, Elvira, and Jessica Rabbit—who actually receives her own centerfold!—but also the absurd, veiny musculature of male characters like Dare Devil, the Hulk, and even Darth Maul. Capturing Geek Porn might have been a more accurate title for this book, but only the most blinkered critic would deny the true artistry of the pieces it depicts. And besides, Psychobabble Reader, whose body would you rather ogle: David’s or Boba Fett’s?

That’s what I thought.

Greg Nicotero's 'The United Monster Talent Agency'

Greg Nicotero had a twenty-five year career as one of Hollywood's leading makeup whiz's in his back pocket by the time he finally directed his own film in 2010. That's when the dude who brought creeps to life in Evil Dead II and Bride of Re-Animator, and worked additional magic on David Lynch's Mulholland Dr. and a plethora of Quentin Tarantino movies, created the utterly delightful "The United Monster Talent Agency". The eight-minute short jets back to a Hollywood when classic monsters were in such high demand that they required their very own talent agency to keep them in rotation.

As detailed in Donna Davies's groovy documentary Nightmare Factory (now streaming on Netflix), Nicotero and his crew did it all the old-fashioned way: lap-dissolving the Wolf Man's (comedian Dana Gould...one of several familiar faces you'll find in the film) transformation, stop-motion animating King Kong, and building all of the miraculously authentic costumes from scratch. They literally don't make 'em like this anymore, folks. Check out "The United Monster Talent Agency" here and see how many monsters you can spot!

Being Smart on Halloween: A Monster Movie Guide

If you’re too old for trick-or-treating or too clever to actually throw your Halloween party on Halloween (so rarely it falls on a weekend night, and who wants to get blitzed on Tuesday and have to drag themselves to work Wednesday morning?) you might spend October 31^st doing what I do: cramming as many horror movies into 24 hours as you can. But what to choose? What to choose? One wrong selection and— Ka-POW!—the entire atmosphere of this most atmospheric of holidays shoots right down the crapper, leaving you holding your head in anguish and weeping, “Why, oh why did I ever put Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood into the DVD player?” That would be pretty stupid. So here’s some Halloween-movie-selecting advice that will make you smart.

Obviously, a film set on or around Halloween is the perfect choice, though these are shockingly rare. Halloween and its sundry sequels and remakes are at the front of the pack. Jacques Tourneur’s Night of the Demon, with its children’s Halloween party gone awry, is a wonderful seasonal mood piece, as is the “Sleepy Hollow” episode of Disney’s marvelous Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad. More recent examples are Rob Zombie’s House of 1,000 Corpses, a rummage through dusty Halloween decorations stored in an attic reeking with dankness, and Michael Dougherty’s Trick ‘r Treat, a picture I didn’t care for but one that has some truly rabid proponents who adore its nostalgic ambience. Something Wicked This Way Comes begins just a week before Halloween in a golden October in which “1,000 pumpkins lie waiting to be cut,” and movies don’t come richer in autumnal atmosphere than Jack Clayton’s. The neo-cult classic May finds the title character collecting some bloody booty during a psychotic trick-or-treat excursion. As the kids of The Blair Witch Project prepare for their own excursion into the woods, we see Halloween decorations in shop windows, so that one passes muster too.

There are exceptions to this seemingly obvious rule. Movies with Halloween scenes aren’t always ideal holiday fare. Classics they may be, but I wouldn’t want to spend the night of spooks watching, To Kill a Mockingbird, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, or Meet Me in St. Louis, though a chorus of “Clang, clang, clang went the trolley” has been known to terrify.

Certain movies are pretty safe to categorize as honorary Halloweeners. We know that a man may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright, but for all we know The Wolf Man takes place in late September, November, or shudder to think, early December. Nevertheless, it’s a good choice, so try not to get too hung up on when exactly Larry Talbot’s life goes to pot.

Films that immediately break the seasonal spell are those that glaringly take place in the wrong season or environment: desert horrors such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Near Dark, seaside ones such as The Birds, or snowy ones such as The Thing. And perish the thought of watching one that takes place on a completely different holiday! That means no Gremlins (Christmas), Jaws (4^th of July), or April Fool’s Day (April Fool’s Day). If you lived in the New York area during the late seventies/early eighties, you may also find that King Kong has too many Thanksgiving associations to enjoy it on October 31^st. With its island and metropolitan settings, it’s not very Halloweeny anyway.

You get an F for effort, King Kong.

Creature from the Black Lagoon is a bit of a grey area. On the one hand, no environment recalls Halloween less than the Amazon (except maybe space, which means no Alien!). On the other hand, as the studio’s ad campaign once insisted, “Universal IS Halloween.” Considering the place its iconic monsters hold in Halloween costumes, decorations, and holiday movie marathons, exceptions can be made for Black Lagoon and the snowy Invisible Man. Go ahead and enjoy them with a clear conscience on October 31^st. That being said, more ideal selections would be Dracula, The Mummy, Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, or The Wolf Man. But you already knew about that last one.

Halloween is a distinctly western holiday, so at the risk of coming off xenophobic (I swear I’m not! Some of my best friends are xenos!), Asian horror films may not exactly hit that sweet spot. Still, North American Halloween influences have become pretty internationally pervasive over the years, so if you still feel compelled to spend your holiday with Godzilla or that cute little girl from Ringu, that is your prerogative. I also encourage you to indulge in movies centered on such seasonal tropes as haunted houses (recommended: Robert Wise’s The Haunting), black cats (recommended: Edgar G. Ulmer’s The Black Cat), witches (recommended: John Llewellyn Moxey’s The City of the Dead), pumpkins (recommended: Stan Winston’s Pumpkinhead), and candy corn (recommended: TK).

Oh yeah. That's the stuff.

Just remember that as kooky and crazy as Halloween is, there are rules to enjoying it. Stay safe. Always wear reflective clothing. Check your candy for razor blades and light artillery. And no matter what you do, follow every guideline I’ve delineated above. Doing so just may save your life.

Brace Yourself for 'The Return of the Creature'

In 1954, the Universal Monster age briefly gasped back to life through its scaly gills with the successful release of Creature from the Black Lagoon. The following year, director Jack Arnold was back to strike again while the iron continued glowing bright red with Revenge of the Creature. In 1956, the Gill Man would take his final stroll in the melancholic Creature Walks Among Us, but as it turns out, this was not exactly the third creature feature. In the interim between parts 1 and 2, members of Arnold’s crew and some of the folks from Marineland Studios, the aquatic animal park that was the setting of Revenge (now known as Marineland), created a comedic Gill Man short to screen at the Revenge of the Creature wrap party.

The Return of the Creature was a 21 minute, 8mm film starring Patsy Beery (aka Patricia Powers), who played the unforgettable, uncredited role of “Girl in Convertible” in Revenge of the Creature. On his website, Patsy’s brother Jere, who played the uncredited part of a photographer in Revenge, had this to say about his sister's picture: “(Patsy’s husband) Clayton (Powers) worked at Marineland and made many friends with the movie crew who were there to film the Black Lagoon sequel. After the production crew left town, Clayton and Patsy produced a (sic) amateur home movie satire of the Revenge of the Creature… One particular memorable scene in this no-budget production was when the ‘Creature’ is revived and kept alive in a apartment bath tub while being fed martinis to keep him sedated.”

A still of Patsy Beery with a makeshift Gill Man from The Return of the Creature.

Although Jere Beery goes on to say that members of the Revenge crew received copies of The Return of the Creature, it has generally been considered a lost film for the past 58 years. Film historian Tom Weaver performed his own search to find out if this was true. Weaver’s creature quest brought him to an associate of Cornelius Vanderbilt, the founder of Marine Studios, which led him to the filmmaker behind Return, who then sent Weaver a DVD duplicate of the film.

This is not the end of the story, because on Friday, July 19, The Return of the Creature will finally go public at the Monster Bash convention in Pittsburgh. Tom Weaver, who attested that the movie is laugh-out-loud funny, will be on hand to introduce the film.

In other Creature news, Bloody Disgusting.com reported yesterday that Gammi Illustrations has released some spectacular, unpublished, color-corrected photos from the set of Black Lagoon originally shot for Life magazine in 1953. Check them out in all their full-color glory here.