Well, well, well, boils and ghouls. We’re more than halfway through my favorite month. Shocktober. Have you been good little trick or treaters? Taken out your old EC comics and given them a look? Maybe painted a glow in the dark Aurora monster model? Dug up a corpse? I’m sure you’ve been having your own little fright fests, revisiting moldy oldies on the latest plasma screens. Thanks to DVD, we can all play like Zacherly and program our very own personalized Chiller Theatre. I know what Tim’s TV Guide will look like. Come Wednesday the 20th, I plan to retire to my crypt and not come out until I have sucked the last drop of blood from three highly anticipated releases from Universal, the folks who practically invented the horror genre. For that is the day the second batch of the Monster Legacy Collection sees the light of the full moon. Yes, Ygor. I’m talking about The Invisible Man, The Mummy and, bang those skulls, folks... The Creature from the Black Lagoon! While my claws quiver in anticipation waiting to unwrap Claude Rains and Karloff, it is the Gill Man for whom my unstaked heart most yearns. For many, the Creature is THE greatest movie monster of all time. And this year the old green fella celebrates a very special birthday. Yep. He’s turning 50! Here to help me celebrate is a filmmaker who has taken his love of The Creature and created his own iconic monster. The man is Victor Salva. The monster is The Creeper.

Many thanks for joining me, Victor. The spotlight’s all yours..............

One hot summer night, in a large open field surrounded by movie lights, myself and Brad Parker, my friend and designer of the Creeper for both my Jeepers movies, were looking at a video monitor at Jonathan Breck as the Creeper, and recognized at the same time, that in this particular angle, our Creeper looked very much like the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

We were more thrilled than surprised.  We certainly hadn't patterned our movie monster after my all time favorite one, but I think our deep and lifelong love for the Gillman, somehow influenced all the sketches and the ideas and descriptions Brad and I tossed around before we decided on the shape and the look of our Creeper.

 From the time I was old enough to remember having a television, the CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON and its sequels were do-not-miss television events.  Remember that this was the time before VCRs, DVDs and televisions with 300 channels.  This was a time when TVs had four channels and were the only way to see a movie that wasn't in a theater.

Imagine only being able to see your favorite movie, one time, once a year.   Sounds ridiculous in this day and age, but back in the 60's and early 70's when I was growing up and bonding with my favorite movie monsters, this was the case, and why I think movies meant so much to us back then.  Their limited availability made them rare commodities and very special events.
Back in the day, THE WIZARD OF OZ, for instance, was a do-not-miss, once a year only, TV event that every kid I know looked forward to like a sports fan would look forward to the Super Bowl.   And why people my age, hold it in a well deserved and very special place of absolute movie magic.

The same was true for my favorite horror films and whenever THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON showed up in the TV listings; this was a cause for celebration. 

Though I loved all three films, with the original undoubtedly the best in the series,   the second film, THE REVENGE OF THE CREATURE, where the Gillman is studied at and escapes from, Marine World in Florida was my favorite as a kid.  

But back then, when I was just a tadpole, there was something about taking the Creature and putting him in our world, and then having him break loose and start rampaging through the local populace, including blasting into a local dance club and whisking away the apple of his eye as chaos ensued, that really excited me.

The kind of fright that is in itself, a kind of joy and why monster movies are so loved.  THE REVENGE OF THE CREATURE was my first exposure to the theme of “monster loose in your own hometown".   A theme that I continue to enjoy, and even emulate in some of my own work.

As with most things we hold a deep love for, I have collected pictures and scripts and interviews and models and soundtracks as much as is humanly possible about the Creature.  To name a couple I am most proud of,  I have a plaster cast taken from the original Creature mask worn in the first film, brilliantly painted for me by Steve Riojas, master kit builder along with various garage kits and other memorabilia that are equally stunning.

But the biggest thrill that I have had in connection with my favorite movie monster, are my conversations with the man who actually played him back in 1954.

A strikingly handsome Polynesian dancer named Ben Chapman was just a youngster when he got the gig of a lifetime --and it may not have seemed like such a great gig back then-- to wear what would become one of the most recognizable and admired monster designs in the history of creature features and essentially play The Creature from the Black Lagoon. 

Ben played the Creature on land and a young swimmer named Ricou Browning played the Creature (in a much smaller suit) when he was swimming underwater, in the 1954 original.    The stories about the making of the original Creature from the Black Lagoon have been great to hear from Ben Chapman, and why sometimes the perks of being a filmmaker are without measure, as my conversations with Ben are about as close to "touching the dream" as any Creature fan could ever get.   

I was very interested in what kind of director Jack Arnold was.  Jack gave us the original Creature from the Black Lagoon and its first sequel Revenge of the Creature.   Ben said Jack was a great guy, who listened to everyone but knew what he wanted and how to get it.   Ben said the five or six weeks spent shooting the film, was one of those rare jobs where you actually looked forward to going to work in the morning.  

Believe me folks, not every movie set can be described as such.  The director sets the tone and it sounds like Jack Arnold was a great guy to work with.

Ben says that he and the gorgeous Julia Adams were really the kids on the set of that movie, surrounded by veteran actors like Richard Denning, Whit Bissel, Richard Carlson and Nestor Paiva.

The design and look of the Creature, was I guess a very closely guarded secret, which made for some fun according to Ben, in the way of surprising visitors on the back lot at Universal where they were shooting. 

It seems Rock Hudson, who was also making a picture on the lot (and may have been under contract to Universal at that time) took great delight in working out with Ben, a practical joke that they pulled several times, where Rock would bring a couple of unknowing friends down to "the Lagoon" and Ben would leap out of the water in the full Creature outfit and scare the living you know what out of them. 

Rock got such a kick out of it, that they kept doing it over and over again until someone got so seriously scared on one occasion that the powers that be at Universal said "knock it off."

Ben also had the pleasure of sitting down with Marilyn Monroe at a party given by his friend Peter Lawford, and being introduced to Marilyn as the actual Creature from the Black Lagoon.   For those who don't know, in her classic film THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH, Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell are leaving a movie theater, having just seen the first Creature film, and she tells Tom how sorry she feels for the Creature, how alone he must have been --this is just as her dress is blown up as she stands over a subway grate in the most memorable moment of that picture. 

Turns out in talking to Marilyn, Ben learned she had actually seen Ben as the Creature and shared those exact sentiments about the Gillman that the script spoke of.   There are many stories that Ben has about his fascinating life, and I feel lucky to be able to hear some of them.

Ben lives in Hawaii now, enjoying his unique position in movie history and for those as taken with the Creature as me, Ben has a terrific web site that I visit often as it is an endless source of Creature trivia and lots of other goodies.

When Tim Sullivan asked me to write for Shock and Roll about my deep and lifelong affection for this trilogy of Universal horror films, the first thing that came to mind, is in my humble opinion, maybe one of the all time highlights of horror filmmaking, a gorgeous Julia Adams, goes for an ill-advised swim in the Black Lagoon, and the Creature, in a rare moment of strange poetry --mirrors her swimming.

The Creature, who up to now has been killing all the trespassers who have come into his lagoon, is fascinated with this swimming "lady-thing".   Really we get the idea that he is mesmerized by her loveliness. 

This unique and unmatched moment in any of the Creature films, builds to a suspenseful climax as the Creature gets closer,  and even braves a tentative touch or two, before the finale of the scene, where he rockets through the water to claim her, but is caught in The Rita's fishing net before the he can claim his fascinating prize. 

Sure this is a scene of suspense from a 50's horror flick, we are terrified at what Creature might do to this woman, and the sexual overtones, the suggestion of the Creature's desire for her, I am sure was meant to titillate any audience member older than twelve, but there is even another level to this scene.  

It's as brilliant a horror moment as Michael Meyers stabbing the guy to the kitchen wall and then studying him, tilting his head like a curious child, fascinated by his own grizzly handiwork.   

It's as brilliant a moment as the sinister crows gathering on the monkey bars behind  Tippi Hedren, as we hear their intended victims, the school children, singing, oblivious, inside.

Or Mia Farrow staring down into that black bassinet for that first, horrified look at her newborn devil-spawn.   Or that horrible eye staring out the crack in the door in BLACK CHRISTMAS,  or the moment we get our first glimpse of  a distant, gawky, seemingly harmless looking old man lurching across the graveyard toward Barbara and her brother. “They’re coming to get you, Barbara…”

These indelible moments, like the swimming sequence in Black Lagoon, elevates these films to a high mark and puts them firmly in film and horror history. 

The Creature films had a modern sensibility and a deep humanitarian streak, best illustrated in the first film, that had a well executed script with a smart, sophisticated take on how the missing link between man and fish, might still be swimming through the waters of the Amazon and how he might be practicing his own shark-like territoriality.

The Creature is deadly, but true to the nature of most animals, man included, he only attacks those who trespass in his home or who clearly intend to attack him.  And in the case of the third but probably weakest of the three Creature movies, THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US, (still one of my favorite movie titles of all time) the Creature, after catching on fire and going through a transformation from Gillman to gill-less man (a lumbering, over muscular man-fish in giant pajamas) still only resorts to violence when attacked (by a mountain lion) or when he witnesses the humans, his captors,  being brutally inhumane to each other.

This third Creature film, for all its misplaced melodrama about jealousy and infidelity, has the strangest, most disturbing and poignant ending of the three films.    The Creature, now unable to exist in water because his gills have burned off --instinctually longs for his life underwater.

And in the final frames of this final film, he lumbers down to the shore, back toward the sea.   But no longer an amphibian, he will drown.   His instinct tells him that water is what he needs to live, when actually it is what will destroy him. 

He makes his choice --that he cannot be without it --and walks out to sea and his certain death.This is a Greek tragedy with gills!  And to a kid in love with the Creature --a terrible and heartbreaking life dilemma.

Maybe that is why these films still live so strongly in my heart.  And why in these days of over-produced, ear-splitting, gut slashing horror movies whose huge budgets and effects are larger than anything else in the picture,  the Creature from the Black Lagoon still stands in its own quiet, somewhat naive,  but lovingly executed and completely compelling universe.

Today, the Creature is often marked as ripe for a remake, and the likes of Brian DePalma, John Carpenter and more recently Guillermo DelToro have been bantered about in connection with the possible retelling of this classic fish tale.

And believe you me, I have submitted more than one well thought out and exciting story pitch and some stunning Brad Parker artwork to Universal for what my take would be on a new look at THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON --all of it cheerfully ignored. 

This may have subconsciously motivated my decision to create my own movie monster and why I have quite unexpectedly spent the last three years of my life making JEEPERS CREEPERS 1 and 2.   And maybe why on that hot summer night on the set of Jeeps 2, Brad Parker and I saw that our own Creeper looked so much like a distant relative of the Gillman.

To add to the coincidences, while shooting the first Jeepers Creepers in central Florida, the head of the film commission mentioned in passing one day, that we were filming only ten miles from the fresh water springs where they shot almost all the underwater footage for THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON. 

I couldn't believe my ears, but then saw some local antique postcards that advertised just that.  My six degrees of separation from the Creature continued to get even smaller during that shoot, because one of our crew members, an electrician, turned out to be a grown up Luke Halpin, one of the two young brothers in the FLIPPER TV series, that anyone my age grew up watching on TV.

The Flipper series was the brainchild of Ricou Browning, who after he swam as the Creature in all three Lagoon films, turned a chance encounter with TV producer Ivan Tors into a long career producing, writing and directing television.

Probably my biggest Lagoon related regret, was not having the time during my own Florida shoot,  to visit a house somewhere out there in Florida Jeepers land, where it was reported to me that one of the original Creature suits is on display.

It's hard to say why a movie or a character stays with you and becomes a part of, what I call, your collective movie euphoria, (movies that we love so much, our heart skips a beat when we see or hear about them or are even reminded of them) but the Creature from the Black Lagoon, his striking amphibious design and his classic, three-note motif played by fluttering trumpets that always announced him with shrieking brass (written by the rarely credited Herman Stein)  sits at the center of my own movie euphoria, right along with JAWS and THE WIZARD OF OZ to name some of a very special few.

And it’s not just me, the Creature remains one of the most recognized, collectible and beloved icons in horror history.   Why does he seem to stand the test of time?

My theory is simple, the Creature in these films, is like Hollywood's creation of the Gillman himself, he has survived the changing times, the social tumult and the escalating climate of ultra-violent horror films, to remain what he remains:   the blood, sweat and tears of some hard working dream weavers and storytellers, who in the case of the Creature, really got it right.

Something about the Gillman hit a note deep inside me years ago, and still does to this day.   And maybe only other red-blooded, true-blue, horror moving loving geeks like me, will understand why, because it really is indescribable what I am talking about.

That rare thing that bonds a boy with his monster…