| The Gill-man | |
| Lbl21: | Type |
| Data21: | Devonian "Fish-Man" |
| First: | Creature from the Black Lagoon |
| Last: | The Monster Squad |
| Creator: | Milicent Patrick Harry Essex Arthur A. Ross Maurice Zimm |
| Portrayer: | Creature from the Black Lagoon Ben Chapman Revenge of the Creature Tom Hennesy The Creature Walks Among Us Don Megowan All underwater scenes: Ricou Browning |
| Lbl23: | Status |
| Data23: | Deceased |
The Gill-man—commonly called the Creature—is the main antagonist of the 1954 black-and-white science fiction film Creature from the Black Lagoon and its two sequels Revenge of the Creature (1955) and The Creature Walks Among Us (1956).
In all three films, Ricou Browning portrays the Gill-man when he is swimming underwater. In the scenes when the Gill-man is walking on dry land, Ben Chapman performed the Gill-man in the first film, followed by Tom Hennesy in the second, and Don Megowan in the third.
The Gill-man's popularity as an iconic monster of cinema has led to numerous cameo appearances, including an episode of The Munsters (1965), the motion picture The Monster Squad (1987), a stage show (2009), and a reimagining in 2017's The Shape of Water.[1] Despite this popularity, the Gill-man appeared in the fewest movies of all the Universal Classic Monsters.
| Year | Gill-man on land | Gill-man underwater | Gill-man stunts | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Creature from the Black Lagoon | 1954 | Ben Chapman | Ricou Browning | Ted White |
| Revenge of the Creature | 1955 | Tom Hennesy | style="text-align:center;" rowspan="2" | |
| The Creature Walks Among Us | 1956 | Don Megowan |
Producer William Alland was attending a dinner party during the filming of Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (in which Alland played the reporter Thompson) in 1941 when Mexican cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa told him about the myth of a race of half-fish, half-human creatures in the Amazon River. Figueroa spoke of a friend of his who disappeared in the Amazon while filming a documentary on a rumored population of fish-people. Alland then wrote story notes titled "The Sea Monster" 10 years later.[2] There were various designs for the Gill-man. William Alland envisioned the Gill-man as a "sad, beautiful monster" and the sculpture of it was much like that of an aquatic development of a human. Alland said: "It would still frighten you, but because how human it was, not the other way around". Originally, the Gill-man's design was meant to incorporate a sleek, feminine eel-like figure, which did not have as many bumps and gills as the final version. The designer of the approved Gill-man was former Disney illustrator Milicent Patrick, though her role was deliberately downplayed by makeup artist Bud Westmore, who for half a century would receive sole credit for the Gill-man's conception. The Gill-man suit was made from airtight molded sponge rubber and cost $15,000.[3] The underwater sequences were filmed at Wakulla Springs in northern Florida (today a state park), as were many of the rear projection images. Part of the film was shot in Jacksonville, Florida on the south side of the river near the foot of the old Acosta Bridge. In the underwater scenes, air was fed into the Gill-man suit with a rubber hose.
The Gill-man is fully amphibious, capable of breathing both in and out of the water. It possesses large, webbed hands with sharp claws on the tip of each finger. The Gill-man's scaly skin is extremely tough, which combined with a fast-acting healing factor, allows it to survive wounds which would be fatal to humans, such as gunshots and full immolation. It also possesses superhuman strength, which is flamboyantly displayed in the second and third films.
As shown in the third film, the Gill-man has a dormant set of lungs, should its gills be irreparably damaged. As shown in the first film, it is vulnerable to rotenone. The Gill-man is slightly photophobic, due to its murky water habitat. 35% of the Gill-man's blood is composed of white corpuscles, lacking a nucleus.[4]
After having found the fossilized remains of another Gill-man, a marine biology institute funds an expedition to the Amazon in order to find more remains. Though the Gill-man reacts violently to the intrusion, he develops a soft spot for the team's only female member, Kay, and repeatedly tries to abduct her, going as far as building a makeshift dam to prevent their boat from escaping. After having killed numerous members of the expedition, the Gill-man takes Kay to his underwater lair, where he is tracked down by the remaining survivors and riddled with bullets. The Gill-man tries to escape by swimming deep into the lagoon, but dies from his injuries.
Producer Gary Ross said in March 2007 that the Gill-man's origin would be reinvented, with him being the result of a pharmaceutical corporation polluting the Amazon.[5] In 2009, however, the proposed director, Breck Eisner, dropped out of the project.[6], the proposed remake has not been made.
Creature from the Black Lagoon was one of many films featuring the Universal monsters that would have received a reboot as a part of Universal Pictures' Dark Universe. The series would have brought Universal's monsters into a modern-day setting, beginning with The Mummy (2017). The Creature from the Black Lagoon had a story written by Jeff Pinkner and a script written by Will Beall. The Mummy alludes to the existence of the Gill-man when Nick Morton meets Dr. Henry Jekyll at Prodigium's base in London and one of the objects has the Gill-man's hand in it. However, Universal scrapped the Dark Universe to focus on individual films instead with The Invisible Man. It's unknown whether the reboot is going forward.
The 1977 novelization of Creature from the Black Lagoon by Carl Dreadstone offers a completely different origin for the Gill-man, who in this version of the story is a hermaphroditic giant, almost as big as the Rita itself, weighing in at 30 tons. This Gill-man is both cold-blooded and warm-blooded and also has a long whiplike tail. The gigantic creature is dubbed "AA", for "Advanced Amphibian", by the expedition team members. After slaying most of the team members, destroying a Sikorsky helicopter, and kidnapping Kay more than once, the Gill-man is killed by the crew of a United States Navy torpedo boat.
In Paul Di Filippo's novel Time's Black Lagoon, the Gill-man is depicted as descending from a race of extraterrestrials who came to Earth during the Devonian period on a giant spaceship called The Mother, which crashed on Earth. The Gill-People have the ability to communicate telepathically among themselves and among the human characters. Alphas such as "Fleshmolders", "Mudshapers", and "Fishcallers" are highly telepathic individuals in their tribal communities, who each choose a successor from among their respective tribes' children to take their place and title when they die.
The Gill-man itself is a degenerate member of this race, descended from an individual who explored deep in the ocean and became exposed to archaeobacteria, becoming deformed and insane, driven to infect others with the disease. Eventually, there were no healthy Gill-People left, and the race's numbers dwindled over the epochs to one individual in the 1950s, which is the one that appears in the original films.
The Gill-man was the star of , a live performance show that once was added to the Universal Studios Hollywood theme park in Los Angeles, California. It debuted on July 1, 2009, and replaced Fear Factor Live. It closed down for good on March 9, 2010 and was replaced by Special Effects Stage, which opened three months later on June 26.