Creature From the Black Lagoon

Creature from the Black Lagoon is a film that uses both our desire to explore the unknown and our interest in stories that scare us to create an intriguing narrative. Once again I feel that this film gives us an example of the urban verses rural ideology that can be scene in film like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. While this film focuses on the amazon and not rural america the sentiment is still the same. We have the film rural element represented by the Gill-man while the doctors represent the urban population. Like many of the films that take the urban versus rural approach this film uses the setup to tell a story of urban revenge for crimes committed by the rural entity. In this film that is seen in the creatures multiple attacks on the doctors where he claims multiple lives building up to a final confrontation that shows our doctors victorious as they are able to "kill" the Gill-man, though his death is left uncertain to leave room for a sequel. Like Texas Chainsaw this film focuses of fear stemming from the unknown. In this case it is our fear of sparsely populated areas like the amazon that hold unknown creatures and locations that have yet to be discovered by man. The film displays this unknown fear in the form of the Gill-man who comes to represent this abstract concept of the unknown rural terrors that lurk in the worlds undiscovered eras. One thing that I thought of in this film was the idea that horor film like this usually do not contain any interaction between protagonist and antagonist that could lead to a better understanding of the other party. While it may seem obvious as to why this dose not happen as it may make for a boring climax. The creature design made me think of the shape of water which does contain these elements and it just made me think off how a horror film would handle the idea of discovery between two parties that our alien to each other. I'm sure their are some I just can't seem to think of a true horror film that engages with that idea of the top of my head. I also find it interesting because this would seem to indicate the difficulty that ignorance between groups causes in the real world. While the idea of two opposing entities battling until one is vanquished may seem natural in films like this it does seem to give an interesting parallel into the real world struggles brought about by ignorance.