Creature from the Black Lagoon (Monsters Series)

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Summary: Relive the monster movie "Creature from the Black Lagoon"
Review: So, boys and girls, you want to know what we did way back when, before VCRs were in every room of every home and the only way you could see your favorite black & white monster movie was at a revival house or on late night television. Well, one part of the answer is juvenile novelizations like this adaptation of "Creature From the Black Lagoon." When a fossilized hand with terrible claws is discovered in the jungle a team from the Marine Biology Institute heads up the mysterious River of the Black Lagoon. The scientists believe they are looking for an extinct creature, but they are wrong--terribly wrong. Once they learn the creature (a.k.a. the gill man) is very much alive, the scientists are torn between killing it and capturing it (read: making lots of money versus extending the knowledge of science). However, the lonely creature has its own agenda with regards to Kay Lawrence (Julie Adams), the expedition's resident swimsuit babe and prospective damsel in distress. But you know, this relationship is never going to work out.

You can still see novelizations today for every film from "Tomb Raider" to "XXX," but you will not find them filled with as many pictures as this 1981 effort. Even better, this volume includes not only the original film but the two inferior sequels, "Revenge of the Creature" (1955) and "The Creature Walks Among Us" (1956), albeit both films are covered and dismissed in a few pages each. Do you sense an attempt to cash in on the success of the original? The book concludes with a look at The Making of the Creature, which talks about the 3-D process that was used for the first two films and how makeup expert Bud Westmore created the creature's costume. I thought it was interesting that different actors were used to play the creature on land (Ben Chapman) versus in the underwater sequences (Ricou Browning).

Furthermore, before you dismiss this book as claptrap allow to point out it is edited by Dr. Howard Schroeder, Professor in Reading and Language Arts, Department of Elementary Education, Mankato State University. Yes, this book is an attempt by well-meaning educators to trick young students into enjoying reading. Other volumes in this series are devoted to all of the classic movie monsters, from Dracula and Frankenstein to King Kong and Godzilla to the Wolf Man and the Mummy. Pretty monstrous, huh?