BEFORE: Oh, I had such ambitious plans for my four days off from movies - for starters, I was going to re-alphabetize a few thousand comic books, to work in 8 longbows full of books into my shelves, after I took four other longbows to my storage space a couple weekends ago. Well, it didn't happen, for a number of reasons, like having a cold and working on the Oscar qualification paperwork for a short animated film, and now I'll have to wait for the next window of opportunity, which will come in November, after the horror chain and a few more films, but before the Christmas tasks begin. Such is the way of things.
Richard Jenkins carries over from "Kong: Skull Island", where he played a U.S. Senator. I got really lucky with the linking, because I'd already done an Octavia Spencer chain this year, and three other films with Michael Shannon, too. There was an obvious way to work this one in there, I could have watched it between ""Fahrenheit 451" with Michael Shannon and "Fruitvale Station" with Octavia Spencer - but then, it seemed to thematically belong here in October rather than July.
So I split this one off from the herd and hoped that another linking opportunity would come along in October. When it did, I even borrowed an Academy screener from my boss, but there was no need - HBO happened to start running it just about a week before the slot I had set aside for it, so things just have a funny way of working out, don't they?
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Creature From the Black Lagoon" (Movie #2,756), "Revenge of the Creature" (Movie #2,757)
THE PLOT: At a top secret research facility in the 1960s, a lonely janitor forms a unique relationship with an amphibious creature that is being held in captivity.
AFTER: Not many people talk about it, but there was a second sequel to "Creature From the Black Lagoon", in which the Gill-Man, or Gil for short, had spent so much time around humans that he started to shed his scales and began breathing air through some hidden lungs, rather than through his gills. So the team of scientists tried to integrate him into human society by putting some clothing on him, and giving him a nice little waterfront home, with a picket fence and a token job down at the harbor. Well, it didn't pan out, because he missed his underwater home, someone blamed him for a murder he didn't commit, and before you know it, he's gone off on another one of his rampages. I swear to God I am not making this up, you can look it up if you don't believe me, it's called "The Creature Walks Among Us". It really killed this Gill-Man/Creature franchise, at least until Guillermo Del Toro sort of resurrected the concept with this unauthorized semi-sequel (?) 60 years later. I only know about this film because I watched both "Creature" films last year, and the host on TCM was talking about it before the movie.
There was always some small measure of sexual innuendo in the franchise - in the first two films, whenever there was an expedition to that remote area of the Amazon - you know, where the Black Lagoon is - they always had one hot 1950's woman with them. I suppose she was the "Creature Bait", because before long Old Gil would sneak aboard their boat, grab the hot dame in the one-piece swimsuit and drag her underwater to his lair. Yeah, he kind of didn't understand that she couldn't breathe under water, so she'd usually pass out in the process, but Gil didn't mind. Gil was kind of grabby and gropey to begin with, and come to think of it, Gil was kind of a creep. But it was a different time, monsters back then just weren't as enlightened, and nobody thought much about it if Fay Wray passed out in King Kong's arms or Dracula hypnotized women before drinking their blood. The rules about consent didn't matter to these monsters. (I hate to judge, but that's what they were, monsters...)
Thankfully, we're living in a (mostly) more enlightened age. The more modern spin on this Gill-Man is that he's just misunderstood, hopelessly naive, and somewhere there must be a lonely woman who would appreciate his crude advances. That's what we're shown in Elisa, a mute cleaning woman who works at the secret lab - though you have to wonder how secret the place could be if so many people work there, just on the cleaning staff alone. This is a side of the government we rarely see, not just the power-hungry military officers and the mad scientists playing god with biology, but the hired help - the cafeteria workers, the payroll accountants, the guys who check cars into the parking lot. All of these people know where the secret lab is, so how secret can it really be? The answer is, not very, especially if the Russkies already have a man working on the inside, eager to find out about Gill-Man, or as he's known here, "The Asset".
In a process rife with metaphor, Elisa befriends the strange creature in the lab, and starts bringing him hard-boiled eggs from her lunch. Eggs symbolize fertility, woman-hood, and giving Gil her eggs means she's giving part of herself, something she's got a limited number of. And they're hard-boiled from being in hot water, just like herself in those hot, steamy baths she keeps taking while she dreams about amphibious men. Before long, she's concocted a plan to get Gil out of her dreams and into her bathtub. With a little help from her friends, she pulls off the job and a Russian strike team gets the blame. How convenient. But eggs also symbolize life denied, life unfulfilled, life unfertilized and life consumed. This is a woman who had dreams, which so far don't seem to have come to fruition. How many eggs are left, at any given point?
So, she makes a decision, and as you might have heard or guessed, it involves becoming intimate with the Fish-Man. Hey, it's Gil's lucky day! Which is what I've always found leads to success with women, most don't like it if you come on too strong or appear desperate in any way, even if you are desperate for some human contact, it's best not to let that show. All through college I was way too interested in women, and I didn't get anywhere until I started acting like I wasn't - there's a strange irony there. I only got lucky when I acted like I didn't need to. Similarly, the Gill-Man is an aloof character here, and that makes him very attractive to Elisa. He's one cool customer, like deep-sea underwater cool, and that's reflected in the entire color palette of this film, everything's green or blue or some shade of teal, even the cars and the fillings in the pie shop.
Speaking of that, at first I wondered why this woman was so lonely, when she's got a connection with the older man next door. Why can't she just date HIM? They seemed to have some sort of platonic bond, and they even went out for pie together, which almost seemed like a date. Ah, but he only wanted to talk to the guy who served them pie, and that's when I figured it out, because he set off my gaydar. Heck, he's a graphic artist, he has a bunch of cats, and he watches old movie musicals - if it were the 1970's, he'd probably be in a disco group with a cop, a Native American and a leather-clad biker.
But anyway, back to the romance with the Gill-Man. Elisa's attitude seems to be based on "Don't fear the unknown, embrace it." Then see if you can bone it. Yep, in what can only be described as a "reverse Little Mermaid", she gets it on with the fish creature. This is why some reviews referred to this film as "Whale Rider" or even "Grinding Nemo". And there is a monster in the movie, only it's not the character you might think - it's the guy who treats women as inferior, and non-human creatures as disposable.
ASIDE: Did sailors really have sex with manatees, back in the day? The old story I've been told is that some sailors used to believe that sea cows were mermaids, but sea cows aren't exactly very attractive. Did all of these sailors have bad vision? Or had it been so long since they'd gotten any action from a human woman, or even seen one, that they would hump just about anything? I'm not sure if I believe this old wives' tale, or maybe I'm wondering if one sailor was just pranking another, and it led to some bestiality now and then. Anyway, I don't know how this woman can sleep with a giant Fish-Man in her bathtub, my wife can't seem to sleep when there's a spider on our front porch, that makes her very nervous.
I didn't really care for Del Toro's work before - especially "Pan's Labyrinth", which I didn't get at all. I also watched the "Hellboy" films, but I can't say I really understood them. I do read a lot of comics, but not those. This is probably the most accessible Del Toro film ever made, because in a way it sort of feels like the Coen Brothers taking on the fantasy genre, with an angry Army colonel, a couple of inept Russian spies, and a bunch of other misfits that reside on the fringes of society, sort of like "Burn After Reading" crossed with a monster movie. Is this REALLY the BEST Picture of 2017? I'm not sure - so far I've only seen 5 of the 9 films that were nominated. I've got three of the others on my list now ("Dunkirk", "Darkest Hour" and "Call Me By Your Name") and they just started running the last one, "Phantom Thread" on premium cable, so that will be on my watchlist soon.
Speaking of the Best Picture category, the Academy nixed that silly proposal that would have created a new category, the "Best Most Popular Film" or whatever that was. Which I predicted would happen, that category would only have sown confusion, and it's better to just stick with one big winner each year. Besides, "The Shape of Water" did all right, so splitting hairs between what's "best" and what's "popular" made no sense and was never going to fly.
Also starring Sally Hawkins (last seen in "Godzilla" (2014)), Doug Jones (last seen in "Stuck on You"), Michael Shannon (last seen in "Fahrenheit 451"), Octavia Spencer (last seen in "Gifted"), Michael Stuhlbarg (last seen in "The Post"), David Hewlett (last seen in "Rise of the Planet of the Apes"), Nick Searcy (last seen in "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri"), Stewart Arnott (last seen in "Robocop"), Nigel Bennett (last seen in "xXx: Return of Xander Cage"), Lauren Lee Smith (last seen in "Trick 'r Treat"), Martin Roach (last seen in "Spotlight"), Allegra Fulton, John Kapelos (last seen in "Guilty as Sin"), Morgan Kelly
RATING: 6 out of 10 time-cards
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