This past Christmas I was given a wall calendar, now adorning the wall of my office, called Cinema Noir. Along with posters for The Big Sleep, The Killer That Stalked New York and The Third Man, it bafflingly includes posters from The Birds, Citizen Kane, King Kong and the original Dracula.
Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s a cool calendar full of cool posters for cool movies, and I’ve been enjoying it all year. But…noir? Citizen Kane? King Kong?
October’s selection is…
Monster-of-the-Week: …this poster, featuring this week’s honoree…
…the Gill-Man, in The Creature Walks Among Us, the neglected third chapter of Universal’s Creature of the Black Lagoon trilogy, in which the Gill-Man is surgically altered and becomes, rather poignantly, more human.
I’ve always had a liking for this odd, melancholy little movie, but even so at first glance its inclusion in a Cinema Noir calendar seemed preposterous. But when I thought about it, it probably can make a better case than some of the others. After all, its main plot is a love triangle, and the Gill-Man witnesses, and is framed for, a murder. He may be a primordial abomination from the muck, but in this movie, he’s just a patsy.
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