As the legend goes, it was while working for Orson Wells, back in the Mercury Theater days, that producer William Alland first heard the tales of a legendary fish-man that lived somewhere way upstream in the backwaters of the Amazon river. And these tales, told by famed Mexican cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa, eventually germinated into one of the most iconic cinematic monsters ever conceived and executed on film. And though it’s usually one of the first things that come to mind while thinking about 3-D pictures, but truthfully, Creature from the Black Lagoon was one of the last big features to use the already rapidly waning process.
I’ve been lucky enough to see a 3-D print of both Creature and its sequel, Revenge of the Creature, and the differences between seeing them flat and seeing them topographical is like the difference between how long Ben Chapman and Riccou Browning can hold their breath underwater. And now, with advances in home video technology, we all can see the Gill-Man unrequited quest for love in all it’s Stereo-Scopic glory!
Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) Universal International / P: William Alland / D: Jack Arnold / W: Harry Essex, Arthur A. Ross / C: William E. Snyder / E: Ted J. Kent / M: Joseph Gershenson, Henry Mancini, Hans J. Salter, Herman Stein / S: Richard Carlson, Julie Adams, Richard Denning, Antonio Moreno, Whit Bissell, Nestor Paiva
Project M7 (1953) Two Cities Films :: Universal Pictures / EP: Earl St. John / P: Antony Darnborough / D: Antony Darnborough / W: William Fairchild, John Pudney (novel) / C: Desmond Dickinson / E: Frederick Wilson / M: Benjamin Frankel / S: Phyllis Calvert, James Donald, Robert Beatty, Herbert Lom, Muriel Pavlow
Scenes from the Morgue 
