The Creature Walks Among Us (1956)

One of my all time favorites.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

A monster movie with a difference: in this one, the monster attacks only when provoked - even seeing an act of violence stirs up its own violent instincts. The monster makeup and rubber suit are good, as are the destruction effects at the end, and there are some long & impressive underwater sequences. The only cast member who deserves equal billing with the creature is Leigh Snowden as a shapely, adventurous but oppressed 1950s wife; her most memorable scene has her suddenly shooting at sharks! The men are interchangeable. **1/2 out of 4.

Uniquely unlike the first two Creature films, this one is set apart in its own gloom. While it seemed to have been the lowest graded version of the three, I find it in some ways the best. As the second and final "remake," it had to branch out somewhat, and I believe it did so with merit and credibility.Shadowed with the gloomy backdrop of Dr. Barton's troubled marriage, his paranoia about his wife's flirtation with the deck-hand while our scary title character stalks around unhappily as the post-op air-breathing humanoid, this final effort includes a psychological / philosophical leaning that sets it apartBeyond this, the plastic surgery component of the screenplay further differentiates it, as it morphs into a more modern-day Frankenstein take. Noteworthy as an ending is the death of Barton at the hands of his morphed creature, followed by "Blackie's" own suicide.Perhaps lost now without much notice, the film is still a gem. When you have forgotten hundreds of movies you saw after 1956, while remembering ones like this, perhaps that says something.

THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US is the third and final of the trilogy that began with CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON and followed with REVENGE OF THE CREATURE. While I appreciate that the writers of this third instalment wanted to do something a bit different to what had come previously, there's no denying that THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US is a low budget effort that disappoints slightly.The problem with this film is its predictability. It starts off on a usual footing with the main characters going on a creature hunt. One of them is played by B-movie regular Jeff Morrow, who you may or may not have seen in THE GIANT CLAW. The usual murky underwater photography follows, and then the film's highlight comes, an outstanding moment in which the Creature attacks. From this point in the film becomes something of a re-run of MIGHTY JOE YOUNG, with the Creature reinvented as a tragic antihero.There's a fair amount of padding in what is already a rather short film, and a lot of scenes of characters standing around and yapping. The characters aren't very interesting and the Creature himself is a bit of an oddball, looking like a hulking Michael Myers clone in a fish head mask rather than the lithe and graceful figure of the past two films. It only starts picking up again at the climax. It's not a bad film per se, but it could have been so much better...

It's pretty easy to see why there was not a 4th CREATURE movie in 1957 after watching this Edsel of a misfire from 1956. Lame-brained screenwriter Arthur Ross apparently thought that if having one or two scientific doctors spouting pseudojargon, as in the first couple of CREATURE installments, was grudgingly accepted by the movie audiences of the day, putting four docs in the same flick would have film-goers rolling gaga in the aisles, beside themselves. Unfortunately, from the first stand-up comedy team-like "Hello doctor," "Doctor," "Morning, Doctor, "Same to you, Doctor," endless round of introductions, this wordy sequel bogs down whenever a character opens their mouth. Apparently realizing that this doctor-doctor bit could take the film only so far, Ross fills the rest of the script with the psychobabble of the day. First Gill Man's psyche is analyzed ad nauseum, then Dr. Barton's. After going back and forth between these two sets of increasingly boring case studies, the final climactic portion of the film (set in California, for some implausible reason) tries to make a tortured analogy between Gill Man and Barton. Fearing that the movie-goers of his day were dumber than posts, Ross finally has Barton spell this out two or three times HIMSELF (actor Leigh Snowden barely keeps a straight face). The whole point of the subconscious is that you're not aware of it, but this is too subtle for Ross to grasp. Instead of being thrilled by the CREATURE wrecking more havoc, along the lines of the preceding films, we're left with a third-rate psychological yak-fest. Way to ruin a good thing, dude!