Who Is The Real Monster?
Despite addressing a number of serious issues, 1956’s The Creature Walks Among Us falls short of being an excellent film. Considered to be the final core entry in Universal’s Classic Monsters line, the movie features a more than capable cast, but ultimately fails to impress.
The film’s plot seems pretty simple on the surface: A mad scientist heads into the Florida Everglades to capture the Creature in order to study it and, possibly, make it a better, more human-like being. The Creature is captured but is severely burned during the battle, damaging its gills beyond repair. Luckily for the Creature, it is revealed to have a more human-like layer of flesh beneath the scales and the mad scientist manages to save the Creature by opening up its human lungs a bit. Then the Creature is unleashed on the scientist’s compound in California and chaos ensues.
Seems pretty standard, right? Well, there are a few underlying stories thrown into the mix that address everything from jealousy and paranoia to rape, failing marriages, and whether or not humans are more of a monster than the Creature. As important as some of these topics are (and a tad scandalous and/or taboo in the 1950’s), the film never really does more with them than toss them into the mix in order to get Gill-Man angry.
The film stars Jeff Morrow as the jealous Dr. William Barton. He’s the mad scientist that I mentioned earlier. He’s a distant but overly protective husband to Marcia Barton (Leigh Snowden), a lovely and adventurous woman who draws unwanted and excessively aggressive attention from Jed Grant (Gregg Palmer). William believes that Jed is just the latest in a long line of men that Marcia has been having affairs with behind his back.
Along for the ride are Rex Reason as Dr. Thomas Morgan, Maurice Manson as Dr. Borg, and James Rawley as Dr. Johnson. This trio assists Dr. Barton in saving Gill-Man from death, but they aren’t too sure about Barton’s behavior after the surgery proves to be successful. They believe that the Creature is actually becoming more docile and that it only displays violent behavior when it is provoked whereas Barton thinks that the monster is regressing to a more animalistic nature.
The other doctors are right, of course, but a series of events ends up leaving the Creature as the prime suspect in the death of Jed Grant. Initially the Creature does attack Grant, but only in order to prevent him from raping Marcia. Later on, Dr. Barton murders Grant in a fit of rage and frames Gill-Man for the crime.
This results in a final confrontation with Dr. Barton and the Creature making a run for the ocean. He ultimately just wants to be alone, but those meddling humans keep attempting to make him a better…..person.
The film never really finds its footing and the potential for a great story dies with rushed conclusions, a weird evolution issue, and disjointed writing. I wanted the Creature to escape and I actually felt sorry for him. I quickly figured out that it is the humans that are the actual monsters in this film (which is the blatant and obvious point of the movie overall) and poor Gill just wants to go home.
I don’t understand how the otherwise slender Gill-Man (portrayed in a few brief underwater sequences by Ricou Browning once again) is severely burned and then evolves into this thicker and bulkier land version of himself (portrayed by Don Megowan). Did he drink a protein shake and hit the gym after he left the water?
I also don’t see the point of bringing Grant back to California with the rest of the gang, especially since Dr. Barton didn’t trust him around his wife. Why didn’t they just leave him in Florida to hunt gators or something? Nope, instead they had him hang out at the Barton compound and watch the Creature recover from his wounds AND made sure that Marcia was left alone in order to give Jed an opportunity to rape her.
This movie could have been something special. It wanted to make the audience look at itself and failed to do so by opting for a monster fight at the end instead of getting a tad more philosophical. It was a missed opportunity for Universal, who would follow up this film with a string of less-than-memorable horror flicks like The Mole People (1956) and The Leech Woman (1960) to close out Universal’s successful run of classic horror films.
I wanted to like this film. I hoped that it would end Universal’s legacy of horror on a high note, but instead it just sort of sits there, enjoyable enough but ultimately all wet. Watch it if you want to close out the Creature movie trilogy, but don’t expect too much from it.
Thanks for reading. I’ve got eleven movies left to review (I’m doing a double feature on Saturday) and you don’t want to miss it!
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