:09:01
The military throws out a dragnet, but the
Pisces Man is able to elude the searchers.
:09:05
It climbs through a window into a house
to hide, sees a small child sleeping,
:09:09
and adjusts the kid's blanket
before it leaves.
:09:12
But when the Pisces Man tries to get
back in the water by crossing a beach,
:09:15
Dr Reed shoots him
over and over and over.
:09:17
Reed yells "If I can't have him alive,
I'll have him dead."
:09:20
The Pisces Man crawls into the water,
which instantly starts churning
:09:23
because piranha are attacking it. Kay
dumps Dr Reed and flies back with Ted.
:09:29
The Zimm treatment is too much like
King Kong, apart from all its other flaws.
:09:34
But when it was discussed
in a December 1952 memo,
:09:37
the memo writer, who didn't sign a name,
wrote that it could be developed into
:09:41
"a very fine horror movie".
The memo writer, whoever he was,
:09:45
also mentions discussing the script with
Alland, who said he'd change the ending
:09:49
"to provide a means of possibly
continuing this into sequels
:09:52
by keeping the monster alive or leaving
his fate in doubt at the end of the picture".
:09:57
So as early as 1952, plans were being
made to turn Black Lagoon into a series.
:10:09
There were monster's-eye-view shots
in It Came from Outer Space,
:10:12
produced by Alland and directed
by Jack Arnold several months earlier.
:10:15
Alland and Arnold,
again teamed on this picture,
:10:18
used that gimmick here,
and then again later, in Tarantula.
:10:20
They also teased the audience by keeping
the gill-man offscreen in its first scenes.
:10:25
We don't really see the creature
until a third of the way through.
:10:28
For the roar of the gill-man,
which you'll hear in a moment,
:10:31
the Universal sound technicians
experimented with a lot of strange noises,
:10:35
from a foghorn blown underwater, to
an opera recording played at low speed.
:10:39
To be honest, I don't know
what they did use for the roar,
:10:42
but I do know that for the
Steven Spielberg TV movie Duel,
:10:45
a distorted gill-man roar is used
as the sound of the truck crashing.
:10:48
That's just great, that baseball-mitt-sized
hand grabbing Rodd Redwing's head.
:10:53
Everybody I know who saw this movie
on its original run in 1954
:10:56
tells me this was one of
the scariest scenes in the movie.