The Creature Walks Among Us!

The Creature Walks Among Us is the third and final entry in the Black Lagoon trilogy and it's a though-provoking movie, if not at all times a particularly exciting one. As the title suggests the Black Lagoon gets visited one more time, and this trip they capture the Creature but he is horribly burned in the effort. At once to save his life and to satisfy calculating scientific curiosity the eggheads work to transform the sea creature into more of a human being-like creation. The have limited success.

The elegance of the first film is missing here as it was in the first sequel, but at least that one had the great Creature costume to gaze on. This one denies us that pleasure and instead we get the out-sized mutant who wears clothes and reminds me mostly of one of the Mole People from that classic Universal effort. The beauty of the Creature is replaced by a lumbering brute who is (by design) out of his element and clumsy. The point is intentional, but minus the underwater ambiance, this one loses the essence of the earlier efforts.

It makes up for it with a robust theme which suggests a lot about the inherently violent nature of man. We are presented with a truly villainous type  (the first out and out villain in the series) in the jealous scientist-millionaire played by Jeff Morrow. Morrow plays a wife-abusing lout who despite his monetary success feels threatened by every man and manlike creature he comes across. His beautiful wife (Leigh Snowden) seems dutiful enough and undeserving of the cruelty she suffers. The real hero played by Rex Reason is there to keep things from getting too out of hand, but by the end we are dealing with murder and more as the Creature's ferocity is unleashed.

The ending is elegant and thoughtful, but we are uncertain of what will follow. It's suggested the Creature returns to a sea no longer able to give him sustenance, but he's seemed doomed before. There will be no sequels, so we'll never know for certain, but he most certainly lives in our imaginations.

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