In a tributary of the Amazon, a monster, half-man, half-fish, is captured and placed in a reservoir in a Florida national park to be observed by scientists.

Before the script was even finished for the first “Creature” film, plans already had been made to leave the ‘Creature’s fate uncertain at the end of the picture in order to leave an opening for a sequel.

I’ll be honest with you, it would be many years before I found out that there were sequels to the “Creature From The Black Lagoon”. I was only young when I first saw it (that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it), but I’ve also never felt the film needed a sequel.

With that being said I understand that it’s a movie business and it just goes to show that it’s always been the same ion this regard. It was also released in just a year after ‘Creature’s release, which is extremely fast, but that’s b-movies for you.

This film can actually be quite divisive, there are people who consider it to be absolute trash, there are people who consider it better than it’s predecessor, then there’s a few, like me, who are in the middle. My qualm with this film is it took the extremely predictable route.

Despite this the film does have some redeeming qualities, the cinematography is still brilliant and director Jack Arnold did a good job with what he was handed and kept some of the elements that made the first film a success.

In my opinion “Revenge Of The Creature” is not a bad sequel, but it isn’t great either. Though it has to be seen to understand the continuing story.

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Miscellaneous facts about the film:

Actor and stuntman Tom Hennesy almost drowned during filming. Playing the Creature, he grabs Helen Dobson (actually stuntwoman Ginger Stanley) on a pier and jumps with her into the water. The scene was shot at night, and when Hennesy and Stanley hit the water, they discovered it was full of jellyfish. In addition, a freak current started to pull them both down. Hennesy let go of Stanley, who swam to the surface, but Hennesy’s inflexible Gill-Man costume had become waterlogged and too heavy to fight the current. He was rescued by two local boys who happened to be watching the filming from a nearby boat, and quickly raced over and pulled him in.

A young Clint Eastwood makes his first uncredited screen appearance as lab technician Jennings. He discusses with Professor Ferguson (John Agar) about an experiment involving a cat and four rats sharing the same cage. He points out that one of the rats in the cage is missing and accuses the cat of eating it, but discovers that the missing rat was in his lab coat pocket.

Much of this movie was filmed on-location at the Marineland of Florida oceanarium. The actors and actresses filmed in the water during the tank scenes were required to swim with its real-life underwater inhabitants, including sharks, eels, barracudas, and more. Despite the close proximity to ocean predators, the only incident was that of a sea turtle biting off the prosthetic foot of Ricou Browning’s Creature costume.

At the beginning of Back to the Future Part III (1990), Marty exits a movie theater dressed in his cowboy outfit, and tells Doc, “I’m pretty sure Clint Eastwood wouldn’t wear this.” When he says this, he is standing next to the poster of this movie, which is Eastwood’s screen debut.

Many of the extras in this movie were employees at Independent Life Insurance Company in Jacksonville, Florida.

While re-releases of this movie in theaters and on television have utilized the more-recognizable red-and-blue glasses anaglyph form of 3-D, this movie was originally released as 3-D entertainment in theaters using the polarized light method and used glasses with gray polarizing filters.

Astute viewers may notice that the clock in the Lobster House moves forward in time by over two hours in just a matter of a few seconds. There is a good explanation for this continuity error. While filming the scene in the crowded restaurant, heat from the film equipment triggered the building’s sprinkler system. The actors, actresses, extras, and production equipment were soaked. It took several hours for the large number of people in the scene to dry off and find new clothes, and for the equipment to dry off. The break explains why time progressed on the clock so quickly in the final cut of the scene.

Ricou Browning requested to be credited for playing the Creature. He was denied this by studio executives, but did make an out-of-costume appearance as one of the lab technicians.

The restaurant from which the creature abducts Helen Dobson (Lori Nelson) was the Lobster House in Jacksonville, Florida. The restaurant was destroyed in a fire several years after the making of this movie.

In Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), the creature suit was built to hold the air in, so there were no bubbles when the creature was underwater. In order to save money and to provide air for the stuntman in underwater sequences, the suit design was changed to allow a hose to pump air to the actor. As a result, bubbles could be seen coming out of different parts of the suit.

This was released at a time when the 3-D craze had diminished. Many exhibitors chose to run the “flat” (non-3D) version. Trailers, posters and other promotional material was available that made no mention of the 3-D version.

Although he was perfectly cast as the Creature in the water, expert swimmer Ricou Browning was considered not menacing enough as the landed Creature, as he stood only 6’1″. Other, larger actors were cast as the land based Creature in all three movies. This one featured 6’5″ Tom Hennessey, well know to western fans as Mr. Sweet, the oil rigger who has a comical bar fight with John Wayne in “Big Jake”. He also has several other appearances, without the Creature costume, in this picture.

In the beginning of the movie, the Creature first appears when he grabs a crane sitting on a log and pulls it underwater to eat it. Ricou Browning had a neighbor who owned a pet crane and asked him to borrow his crane for the scene. Browning would pull the crane into the water for the camera. When the scene was done he would quickly emerge from the water and put the crane back on the log.

This movie is the first sequel to a 3-D movie to be shot in 3-D as well.

For this movie, Ricou Browning wore a creature head intended for John Lamb, who had originally been hired to assist Tom Hennesy in playing the Creature in this sequel. Lamb was dismissed after filming began, and Browning was hired to replace him. Lamb’s Creature suit had to be cut down to fit Browning.

The St. Johns River in Florida served as the setting for aquatic scenes filmed outside of the Ocean Harbor Oceanarium (Marineland Florida).

In its first run engagements, it was usually supported by Cult of the Cobra (1955) on the lower half of the bill.

Director Jack Arnold liked to use the sides of the movie screen as the arches in a proscenium-style theater with unexpected intrusions coming in from the sidelines. This technique can be seen here when Professor Clete Ferguson (John Agar) goes out into the darkened area around the motel to look for Helen Dobson’s (Lori Nelson’s) missing dog. A hand suddenly reaches out from the right side of the screen to touch him, giving him (and the audience) a start, but it’s not the dreaded Gill-Man, it’s simply Lori Nelson.

Tom Hennesy is the Creature in the receiving tank fighting Joe Hayes (John Bromfield) and others, when a cargo net is dropped on him to control him. In the next scene, when the Creature is being escorted into the permanent tank underwater, the Creature in the net is Ricou Browning, and Tom Hennesy is the diver swimming next to him wearing white swimming trunks. Later, Hennesy can be seen as the first diver climbing out of the tank.

The only one of the three “Creature” movies to be parodied on Mystery Science Theatre 3000 (1988). It was featured on the show’s Sci-Fi Channel premiere.

When the Gill-man becomes an attraction at Ocean Harbor, a life size cut-out of Ben Chapman in his Gill-man suit can be seen at the entrance.

In this film, the eyes of the Creature were a fixed part of the rubber construction of the suit. The actors who played the part of the “Gill Man” could barely see, if at all. In the second film, the eyes have been, somewhat ludicrously, replaced with large, bulbous fish-eyes to assist in the actor’s vision.

Reported to be the highest-grossing movie of the “Creature” trilogy.