Gill-Man: B+ Movie Edition, The

What a wonderful edit!

At its best, The Creature From The Black Lagoon is a moody monster movie that definitely deserves its 'classic' status. At its worst, it is a plodding slow burn of a film that is stuffed full of content simply there to pad the run time. This edit does away with all that filler and leaves us with a tight, suspenseful drama that brings forth the best qualities of the film. I went into this edit blind and then watched the original release for the first time afterwards. The difference is day and night. The cuts make sense, the pacing is vastly improved and all the minor changes add up to give a very fluid experience. The editing was seamless, the audio work was very nice and I love the black and white fanedit card. My only quibble was the video quality but with a little luck we'll see a HD rebuild of this edit in the not to distant future.

Fantastic work Scrib.

I heartily endorse A Scribbling Man's B+ movie series -- what a fantastic idea, to make older-but-iconic movies (or obscure overlooked ones) punchier and more palatable to modern audiences. Much like classic TV-to-movie edits, this a great idea and framing it as a series is a wonderful way to put these edits under one umbrella.

This edit, the inaugural entry in the series, ditches a lot of the dull bits of TCFTBL but still feels a bit poky in places. Part of that is just the nature of "slow burn" suspense movies from this era, and ASM has done the best possible job without reducing the film to a super-8-style clip reel, but there are other movies that will likely have more incident that will make the jump to modern action pacing a bit better. Nevertheless, this aquatic beast is a world-famous one for a reason and without all the slog that originally was part of the movie, this primeval monster can shine a whole lot better.

A great edit. This is an example of the potential of fanedits.

While I am a fan of the classic Universal monsters, and most of the associated movies, the gill-man saga was always pretty near the bottom of my list. Despite amazing creature design and a decent backstory, the gill-man fell victim in his first movie to a waffling script, some bad shots and a lot of filler. The film had impressive underwater camera work, but this got showcased to such an extent that the core -- an antediluvian creature in a black lagoon, dishing out doom, and how people try survive the relentless attacks -- got a bit lost. Tension was followed by blah. And blah was followed by more blah.

There were sequels, none as good as the first one, but the first one was just barely good.

This edit cuts almost a third of "The Creature from the Black Lagoon" but you won't miss any of it.
It delivers the movie that should always have been: a fast-moving, interesting movie with stakes and some debates on the parameters and goals of scientific research. And the focus is where it should be: a creature in a black lagoon, dishing out doom to trapped survivors, and their efforts to fight back.

Watch it. You will not be disappointed.

This was a great edit. I don't usually like many older movies due to pacing, and this one one of the cult classics I could never get into as much as I felt I should. But this was great, even almost half a century later, completely due to the pacing. Solid edit that keeps the best of the original and improves pacing so that I was glued to my seat the whole time, even for an old movie.

Thanks to the editor for this one. I know an HD update was discussed, but I watched the 720 on a big screen, and I thought it looks perfect - time period appropriate and probably keep a better suspension of belief. No need to update from this viewers POV. This was awesome.

A highly enjoyable edit that's absolutely worth watching, whether you're a fan of Creature from the Black Lagoon or not.