Rish Outfield's reviews
A lot of critics believe the '80s were a lowpoint for Hollywood filmmaking, when tons of trash was made, devoid of merit, and always aimed at the lowest common denominator. I happen to love the '80s, and the movies produced then. With one exception, the Fifties seems to be a time when movies most sucked, and Revenge of the Creature is a great example. Campy and lame.
While I was blown away by how good Creature From the Black Lagoon was, its follow up feels even weaker because of it. Lucas is back! This time, he brings a new group back to the Amazon to hunt the Gill Man. They capture him (though I believe this is a different Creature) and take him to Florida to display/torment him in a marine park.
The Creature is shown early on--within seven minutes of the start. There's a cool shot of Gill Man catching a stork or heron, probably not doable in today's unbelievably oversensitive environment. Sadly, the Gill Man is much less frightening this time. The eyes in the mask have changed, giving him a comical bug-eyed expression. The actor in the first suit just held his breath, creating the illusion that the Gill Man actually breathed underwater. This one is obviously using some kind of breathing apparatus, as bubbles are constantly coming out of a hole in the top of the mask. It's distracting and gay. A shame considering how great he was the first time around. But the monster does turn over a car, and kills a guy in a neat way, and that much was cool.
Greed is the driving force behind this sequel. From time to time, there's what can only be called "3D lameity," with actors mooning at the lense and objects poking you for no reason other than to draw attention to themselves. One of the things I most liked about the original was that it was wholly entertaining in only two dimensions, and unless you knew, you'd never suspect it was originally a 3D movie. The same awful three note theme is repeated ad nauseam. So, the Creature falls in love with a babe again. Lori Nelson is the girl this time, and while she's pretty, it's a thankless, almost degrading role. Why have the Creature wave at the camera? Stuff like that is just unspeakably offensive. This movie sucks–-it's like an extended commercial for this Florida marine resort. Long, dull underwater shots. This would've bored the crap out of me as a kid! Long, pointless swimming shots and a useless song and dance number eclipse anything the first film featured. The lame romantic subplot was so tacked on, you could see the holes in the corner. Again, they have a person grab the shoulder of someone else as a fake scare--but then they did it THRICE. "Everybody knows that when you're asleep the brain stops working." I haven't been insulted like this by a film in a long time. He likes the girl, okay, we get the point. They've chained the poor bastard to the bottom of a big fishtank, and drug and poke him regularly with an electric prod, yet HE'S the bad guy? I sure hoped this creature got revenge . . . bloody revenge. Man, I hated the people--one woman running from the "horrible monster" actually dropped her four year old and kept running. I laughed hard. Obviously the good guys were the bad guys here, which makes me wonder how much that is true in real life. Again, you've got to feel sorry for the Gill Man, besides the fact that bright light now hurts it. The poor creature just doesn't want to be chained up--but they play the shitty theme to try and jolt the moronic audience into feeling that he's bad--but I don't buy it.
There was one bright moment where I had to shout, "Holy crap--Clint Eastwood!" as he has an unbilled role as an absent-minded scientist, and that was cool, but other than that, there's not much here worth seeing. And it's really too bad, especially since the first one broke my stereotype of horror movies from the '50s being terrible (the one exception I mentioned, by the way, is Invasion of the Body Snatchers). The shot of a woman taking down her stockings and doing her hair with her nightgown open is as exploitative and lowbrow as anything made in the '80s. And the story, so empty of anything redeeming, is as bad as any of the teen slashers or idiot sequels.

Total Skulls: 16

Sequel
Sequel setup
Rips off earlier film
Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie
Future celebrity appears		Clint Eastwood
Former celebrity appears
Bad title
Bad premise
Bad acting
Bad dialogue
Bad execution
MTV Editing
OTS
Girl unnecessarily gets naked
Wanton sex
Death associated with sex
Unfulfilled promise of nudity
Characters forget about threat
Secluded location
Power is cut
Phone lines are cut
Someone investigates a strange noise
Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door
Camera is the killer
Victims cower in front of a window/door
Victim locks self in with killer
Victim running from killer inexplicably falls
Toilet stall scene
Shower/bath scene
Car stalls or won't start
Cat jumps out
Fake scare
Laughable scare
Stupid discovery of corpse
Dream sequence
Hallucination/Vision
No one believes only witness
Crazy, drunk, old man knows the truth
Warning goes unheeded
Music detracts from scene
Death in first five minutes
x years before/later
Flashback sequence
Dark and stormy night
Killer doesn't stay dead
Killer wears a mask
Killer is in closet
Killer is in car with victim
Villain is more sympathetic than heroes
Unscary villain/monster
Beheading
Blood fountain
Blood hits camera
Poor death effect
Excessive gore
No one dies at all
Virgin survives
Geek/Nerd survives
Little kid lamely survives
Dog/Pet miraculously survives
Unresolved subplots
"It was all a dream" ending
Unbelievably happy ending
Unbelievably crappy ending
What the hell?