Director Jack Arnold saved an otherwise monotonous B-horror with a few imaginative touches. An amphibious man-monster is discovered in an Amazonian lagoon by explorer Richard Carlson and covets Julia Adams.
The characterisation is two-dimensional, the story plodding. But you forgive all of that for that single scene where the Creature swims underneath Adams, unaware of what's stalking her, in a surreal aquatic sexual ballet. It's quite uniquely Freudian. Elsewhere, the story only gets slightly more exciting when the hero confronts it in a hauntingly dank grotto.
The film spawned two rudimentary sequels. By now Universal was branching more into science fiction - alien invaders and atomic mutations - and Arnold became the film-maker most sympathetic to this sub-genre.
The characterisation is two-dimensional, the story plodding. But you forgive all of that for that single scene where the Creature swims underneath Adams, unaware of what's stalking her, in a surreal aquatic sexual ballet. It's quite uniquely Freudian. Elsewhere, the story only gets slightly more exciting when the hero confronts it in a hauntingly dank grotto.
The film spawned two rudimentary sequels. By now Universal was branching more into science fiction - alien invaders and atomic mutations - and Arnold became the film-maker most sympathetic to this sub-genre.