Revenge of the Creature (1955)

Get ready for this—it’s Sequel Month: The Sequel!

Tasked with putting out a follow-up to Creature From the Black Lagoon just over a year later, producer William Alland, director Jack Arnold, and screenwriter Martin Berkeley (who also co-wrote the Arnold-directed Tarantula) took what was probably the most logical path: if the the first Creature film seemed directly inspired by the voyage to a prehistoric world as seen in King Kong, then a second one should take cues from the New York climax. In Revenge of the Creature, the once dominant life form in a secluded natural habitat is forcibly transplanted to our modern world—rather than a film about entering an unreal world of evolutionary alternatives, it’s about the unreal entrapped by more recognizable surroundings. By itself, this storytelling decision de-mystifies the monster by taking him out of his element and making it a lone aberration interrupting normalcy—but, intentionally or not, the rest of the movie degrades and diminishes it to such a degree that it may be an even more pitiable figure than in the first movie.

Day the World Ended (1955)

We’re now in the merry Cormonth of Cormay, which is my extremely tortured way of saying that the rest of the month will be devoted to films by B-Movie King Roger Corman, who has directed 55 movies and produced hundreds more over a seven decade career (and while many of them are actually in the public domain, you can find the best quality versions on Shout Factory’s streaming site.) Corman is famous for many things, especially during the fifties and sixties: his economical (some might say tightfisted) budgets, speedy filmmaking, and an eye for talent that has given early breaks to some of the biggest names in Hollywood. Day the World Ended (which was apparently also the day proper grammar ended) is the first Sci-Fi/monster movie Corman directed solo, made in ten days (a record that he will quickly beat, as we will see), and embodies many of the common elements of Corman’s directorial efforts from this period, being efficient (with a small cast of actors and a limited number of locations), having a goofy-looking monster made (and played) by monster suit pioneer Paul Blaisdell, and being surprisingly effective for what it is.