Revenge of the creature

1955

Who’s in this?
John Agar as Professor Clete Ferguson, studier of fish, hot female scientist and gillmen. Agar was once married to Shirley Temple, did a few films with John Wayne and eventually (much to his dismay) ended up in monsters films like this one, Tarantula, The mole people, Daughter of Dr, Jekyll, Attack of the puppet people and more.

Lori Nelson as Helen Dobson. Attracts Clete and the gillman/creature. She got into show business of sorts two doing dancing. She was in Hollywood by her late teens and worked fairly steady in tv and film for almost two decades.

*Both Nelson and Agar reprised theire roles from this film in the spoof The Naked Monster which was done almost fifty years later.

John Bromfield as Joe Hayes a worker at the marine place. Also Clete thinks he’ll try to scoop up Lori but you not literally. Bromfield worked in a lot of westerns from the late 40’s and onto the 1960’s.

How was I supposed to know the waterbed was going to burst?

What’s this about? Holy Toledo I think the gillman is still alive! For the sake of having a sequel I hope he is. Well, he’s captured and this time he’s carted back to the mainland where he’s stuck in a marineland type place to be dealt with and for a bunch of tourists to come and see old fish face. Eventually he breaks loose, kills Joe, chases a bunch of people,flips a car and heads to the ocean. So it’s kind of like a typical spring break only he’s scaly dude instead of just a dumb college guy. Anyways he goes around for awhile. With the creature on the loose Clete and Lori decide it’s a good time to go dancing. Hey, the creature has good taste he grabs Lori and takes off with her. Some dunderheads get tossed around by old gilly, but eventually the coppers and the eggheads show up to end the fun for the creature. Oh, well roll the credits.

The negatives-This first sequel to the Creature from the black lagoon gets ripped a lot for not being as good as the original. The creature sure looked dead in the first film, but sequels always find a way around that.The plot is far more basic as it eventually becomes the old creature on the loose. John Agar annoys the crap out of me, but part of that me be due to when I saw him give an interview back before his death griping some about doing this type of film.

The positives-If you have read much here before you know that I am a big creature fan. This may be the weakest of the three, but it’s still one of the best creature on the loose films of the 50’s. The settings are good, the action is solid enough as is the pacing. I love the part where the gillman flips the car and throwing the guy into the tree is pretty cool too. Lori Nelson looks great. Really a good monster films that gets far more negative vibes than it deserves.

As everyone else who has ever reviewed this film mentions-yes, that is a young Clint Eastwood as a lab assistant.