It remains an above-average B movie with a slick look and pace if few ideas.

| Aug 7, 2024

Creature From the Black Lagoon creates a moody ambiance around a simple core idea, executed excellently. It is a visually stunning and well-designed film that both entertains and thrills, leaving a lasting impression.

| Nov 18, 2023

[Jack] Arnold turns what is effectively a B movie plot—an expedition in the jungle captures a creature and it escapes to wreak havoc and kidnap the team’s sole woman—into a moody, stylish low budget feature.

| Jan 7, 2023

Another classic Universal Monsters filled to the brim with homoerotic undertones. From Mark's obsessive interest in David to phallic Gill-Man to the murky white underwater gas, Creature From the Black Lagoon is chock full of queer.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 6, 2021

Featuring some outstanding underwater cinematography and a sympathetic, if terrifying, monster, Creature From the Black Lagoon earns its place as a classic of horror cinema.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 28, 2021

Along comes one of those tedious, topeed expeditions, in a battered white boat, and the "Gill-Man" is chased, photographed, speared, half-asphyxiated, and screamed at. No wonder he commits murder (five of them).

| Oct 13, 2020

The boys at Universal were on a fanciful binge, putting on an enjoyable show in the water, something less in dry-dock.

| Oct 13, 2020

Short on science, the picture's long enough on excitement, strongly recalling the hit Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.

| Oct 13, 2020

A prehistoric man shaped fish falls in love with screaming Julia Adams in an Amazon backwater, but his courtship is a failure. So is the movie.

| Oct 13, 2020

There are some effective underwater scenes; otherwise script and direction are commonplace.

| Oct 13, 2020

The subject matter has been handled in a way that makes for a maximum of suspense and with an eye toward satisfying those who seek horrific chills and thrills.

| Oct 13, 2020

It's horribly dated, the acting's lousy, the 3D effects are worthless and the monster is a man in a rubber suit. Yet Creature from the Black Lagoon remains one of the all-time classic monster movies.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 13, 2020

This is certainly one of the most fondly remembered of the science fiction films of the 1950s.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Sep 18, 2020

This is a pulp classic with good reason.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Aug 29, 2019

The whole thing is ultimately just a '50s B-movie, but it's hard to imagine what they could have done to make it a better one.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Dec 11, 2016

It makes for solid horror-thrill entertainment.

| Nov 16, 2014

Okay, it's just a guy in a rubber suit. Even people in the 1950's weren't afraid of this so-called monster. But, there's some camp value to this on-the-water and under-the-water adventure.

| Original Score: B- | Oct 26, 2014

When I was a kid, this was the movie monster I wanted to be.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Sep 18, 2014

What distinguished Jack Arnold's pictures from mutant spinoffs/knockoffs is even more imperative to sci-fi today than it was in 1954: wonderment.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 11, 2012

The beats of the film are like overused sandpaper, too worn down and tattered to have more than a passing effect.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 16, 2011